Have You Ever Thought of Sound as of a Living Organism?

Have You Ever Thought of Sound as of a Living Organism?

I meet waves, frequencies - sound - everywhere and all the time. The planets and their orbits – they are sound. They would collapse into the sun or escape into the Universe if their orbits weren´t like the partials of sound.

The whole Universe is sound.

The chair I´m sitting in is a well organised aggregation of small and smallest particles which are said to be nothing else than waves - waves
of probability as the physicists say - sometimes acting like firm particles and sometimes being just – frequencies - sound.

My chair is sound.

This stone is sound - and this one

The air all around me is sound. I am sound.

All these people are sound, same as the place they are standing and waiting for their busses, which are - of course - sound as well.

You are sound.

Isn´t it telling and typical that we can close our eyes, but we can´t close our ears? - Never!
Isn´t it telling and typical that my eyes - these sharp and mighty analytical instruments - can notice everything that´s - on the surface? - only!

You can SEE the paleness on face the of your friend, but you can HEAR her heart beat.

So - sound seems to me the most basic, the most important phenomenon in life.
SOUND IS LIFE. - And vice versa.

Sound can reproduce itself,

can ask and can answer in musical phrases

can even walk around, go away and return in delays and echoes,

in Hallways,

in forests,

in our computer,

in your head.

But taking in all these facts I ask myself, no, I am convinced:

There must be a genetic code specifying sound, giving sound it´s individual character.

There must be something like a Gene of sound, building up sequences that make a particular sound unique.

And then, is it possible to transfer such a sequence of genes of a sound to another sound, giving the second one some of the characteristics and attributes of the first one?

For those who are familiar with the designing of sound:
Where shall I go and look for such a genetic code?

Shall I think about grains, these small fractions of a second of sound?

Or should I rather think of additive synthesis and partials? Of these huge numbers of single sine waves and their development and their changes in time?

And what about spectral analysis?

Or may it be things like frequency modulation or phase distortion that lead me to a kind of genetic code of sound?

Or is it just wizardry I´m dreaming of?

Well, perhaps there is nothing like a gene, a smallest but characterising particle of sound.

But, to be honest, I´m not REALLY aiming anywhere. My claim is to be looking for, to search, to research, to investigate and to find - SOMETHING. No matter what.

No matter what I will have been looking for, when I find this SOMETHING.

Something interesting, perhaps even something fundamental.

So,

why looking for a genetic code of sound, why looking for something, which probably doesn´t exist at all?

Well, it´s like crossing a wide field.

Depending on where you want to get, what point you want to reach, you meet different things on the way, you learn different phenomena on your way across the field.

Let´s cross the field, then.

Let´s go for some sonic adventures.

And I would really love to have you by my side.

We might not find it, that mystic genetic sequence. But the lovers of music among us – who use to listen only – and enjoy - might obtain a deeper love and joy consuming their favourite tunes, the sound designers in our party might find a different system of designing or might come upon a different workflow and the musicians, instrumentalists and singers might begin to understand what they are doing even better and deeper and more intuitively.

And most of all:
Let´s enjoy the journey.

Rolf