In this short article I will tell you about His Majesty il Sound, and his "best friend", the Stamp, not in their physical / technical aspect, but as "essence", with the ability to determine the characteristics of a piece and influence its composition.
Often a few seconds of listening to a song are enough to identify a characteristic sound, the creator artist and the musical genre to which it belongs, even before recognizing the song itself.
Then: SOUND=> ARTIST=> TRACK => GENDER they are indissolubly linked. If you reflect, in contemporary music, and beyond, often the sound "does the piece", even before the melodic-harmonic structure of the song.
Think what was the sound of the harpsichord for baroque music, the organ sound for the Holy music, the set of piano-drums-double bass sounds for Jazz. We all know that the great revolution of the beat generation and of rock has among its foundations the advent of the sound of electric guitar and its innovative and creative use.
Another instrument that profoundly influenced music from the 70s of the last century onwards was the synthesizer. All this just to mention a few very small examples.
In each revolution scientific-cultural (and the creation of a new instrument with its sound and its creative use is a scientific-cultural revolution), we always start with some brilliant mind that "sees beyond", that is, sees what others do not perceive, thus opening new paths .
Returning to the sound and timbre of an instrument and its processing, this is generally the result of the artist's research and represents his precise imprint. There are numerous examples of ARTIST => SOUND. As we all have tried, often when listening to a "song", in the first few seconds, even before recognizing the song, we can identify a characteristic sound and attribute it to the artist who created it, easily identifying the musical genre and only after the song.
The sound of the guitar of Santana, Metheny, gilmour, Hendrix, Hackett… Just to name a few, they are immediately recognizable. Thus the sonorities of the Rock, from the Jazz, from the Blues and Musica Classica... .. are identifiable even before the identification of the song itself.
From an evolutionary point of view, our brain has developed with the ability to identify sounds and noises and to do so in a very short time. Sounds are immediately classified (by survival or sociability) as signals of danger or familiarity, of joy, of sadness, etc. often with great emotional involvement.
The best example of what I affirm is the recognition of human voice. A newborn is able to immediately distinguish the voice of the mother among the many, and then the voice of their family, distinguishing them from those of strangers. Every voice it has its own sound, its own timbre, and our brain has evolved with the ability to distinguish even small nuances. This is true for a lot of sounds, albeit with different brain screening capabilities. Wanting to illustrate the example sound-danger-recognition, we can summarize that the ancient ancestors, who did not have the ability to recognize, among many sounds, those that represented a clear signal of danger, could no longer transmit their genes to subsequent generations ... The ability to recognize sounds, for reasons safety / survival / social security has evolved more and more.
Returning to music, and especially modern music, each great artist-musician (guitarist, bassist, keyboardist, percussionist ...) has the its sound, Its musical fingerprint that characterizes him and defines the genre he performs.
So, the message for i “sailing musicians"Can only be: look for your sound, a sound that is yours and represents you, that makes you feel at ease during the performances and that allows you to express yourself without taking anything away from your ideas, indeed amplifying them.
Let your sound be the starting point for your music.
Salvatore Savio Aversano
