DEAFNOTES001: Rethinking origins.
DEAFNOTES001: Rethinking origins.
Or why I appreciate drone music.
I have had profound hearing loss on both sides since early childhood and have always worn hearing aids in both ears. Most of the time I ignored the fact that, unlike other children with normal hearing, I was confronted with other challenges: that at some point my device batteries ran out and had to be replaced, that I avoided games with water, was always the loser in whispering mail or simply couldn't classify the spatiality of sounds.
They are part of my everyday life, these small, dark, bulky amplifiers in and behind my outer ear. They always made these strange noises when I sweated while playing as a child: a deep hissing and muffled crackling. Then I always had to take them off. As soon as I had put them aside to dry, the world was a quieter place. In this state, I only heard - or I would rather say: felt - lower frequency ranges, everything very muffled, as if something was blocking my ear canal. I often listened with interest to this low, steady hum coming from everywhere.
It is still a strange sound for me today, as its spatiality is different to other sounds, because it comes from inside, whereas most of acoustic stimuli come from outside. Sometimes I was quite sure: this has to be the sound of the blood flowing through my body! Then I turned sceptic when I did my research: Or maybe it’s some kind of auditory pareidolia where my brain invents sounds to fill the silence?
A very prominent case who has shared a similar experience is John Cage, American composer and artist, when he visited the most silent room in the world, the anechoic chambers of Harvard University in 1951. He described the following:
I was like: Huh? Further investigations in the biography of Cage by David Revell, "The Roaring Silence", showed that the author describes that engineer Peter Gena, who was present at the time, had it confirmed by several doctors that no one could hear the operation of his own nervous system; the blood circulation would remain inaudible unless there was an incipient cardiovascular blockage. Cage may just have heard tinnitus.
This made me rethink my experiences and and I had already read about different types of tinnitus. I guess, I probably heard something like low-frequency tinnitus or something like that (or have cardiovascular blockage (note to myself: I should definitely check that)):
Low-frequency tinnitus: Perhaps the most confusing type of tinnitus because sufferers aren’t sure whether the sound is being produced internally or externally. Often, the tones correspond to the two lowest octaves on a piano and are described as a humming, murmuring, rumbling, or deep droning. This type of noise seems to affect people most strongly.
Experiences like these sound phenomena shaped my perception and made me curious. Due to my physical limitations in hearing, it seemed almost impossible challenging to me early on that I could have professionalized in the field of music or as a sound engineer. I chose a different path: to be a self-taught sound artist - where I could explore such experiences experimentally and independently.
In the winter of 2023, as part of a project for the PHASMA Collective, I published a work under a different artist pseudonym and tried to reproduce this phenomenon of auditory pareidolia I had in my childhood (at that time still Orphean Vault, but this artist pseudonym is no longer active), just using a guitar, a pedalboard with loopers, octavers, reverbs and a Tascam Mixer Model 12. The result was more an textural interpretation than a concise reproduction (I this even possible?), which I then used as the sampled and textural foundation for an entire concept album talking about phantom sounds or auditory pareidolia.
But first, here it is, the track “Auditory Pareidolia”:
The concept album was accompanied by my visual work "Phantoms" (also still under the pseudonym Orphean Vault, not active anymore), in which I explored the phenomenon of auditory pareidolia further and tried to depict the feeling of disorientation and eeriness that can arise while experiencing such phenomena visually.
There is something odd about this inner, muffled noise; I can hear it right now, for example, as I write this while wearing my hearing aids. I currently have no control over it, except that I could drown it out with some music, or simply ignore it in the routine of everyday life - but if I don't notice if it's there, does it even exist?
Despite its familiarity, this phenomenon also has something uncanny and disorienting about it. This is precisely where the artistic confrontation with it comes in and gives me the opportunity not to become master of it, but to cope with it creatively and to be able to accept it as part of my life.
As someone who is profoundly deaf, this topic has a particular significance for me. Not always being able to fully understand an auditory stimulus or even misunderstanding it is a part of my everyday life. My hearing aids are essential helpers that make life easier for me in many ways, but they have their limitations since they cannot compensate for all deficits.
Particularly when it involves something like this presumably low-frequency tinnitus that permeates within me and simply exists. It doesn’t start and stop like a song that can be played, paused, or ended; rather, it is continuously present without any indication of when it began or where it came from. And then, suddenly, it is just gone. It's somewhat like dreaming, where as a dreamer, you don’t enter the dream world through a door or something; you are just there, and then at the end, you are simply awake.
As an artist, I strive to express and expand upon such experiences through my art, drawing on my background. There are various methods, tools, and approaches available, and I’m extensively experimenting with them. Throughout this exploration, I have repeatedly found myself gravitating towards a particular style or technique, so to speak: it’s drone music.
Why? What’s that?
Drone music is a genre that includes long sustained tones with only subtle variations over the course of a piece. Drone appears in avant-garde rock music, heavy metal, ambient music, folk music and the minimalist subset of classical music.
In drone music, harmonic rhythm scarcely plays an integral role. This is because chords shift and transition very slowly throughout the song. Drone artists tend to focus more on elements like timbre and dynamics. In a typical drone piece, these tend to change more rapidly than chords do.
For all those who would like to take a really and interesting deep dive into the topic of drone music, I can warmly recommend this article by Elmar Tagi from 2023.
The production of drones can be very different. So far, I've worked with a set containing a guitar, effects pedals and a mixer and have been discovering other possibilities for some time now, such as tape loops and field recordings (I'll discuss exactly what this looks like in a separate article in the future). In my opinion, one of the most exciting works is that of musician La Monte Young. In 2021, Dust Archive published a work on La Monte Young's composition 1960 No7, which also shows wonderfully how drones can be created.
For me personally, it is also an interesting and touching reflection to see where I am now and that experiences and memories that have flown through space and time like loose snippets now make sense. It is certainly no coincidence that drones exude a familiarity for me, nor that I keep coming back to them.
In studying them, I sharpen my damaged hearing in a contemplative way. I do not delude myself. My hearing is irreparably damaged and tends to be degressive. My hearing aids are a magnificent invention that will hopefully allow me to continue to enjoy what I may never be able to fully absorb for a very long time to come.
But it seems to be just that: The imperfection of things. This state also enables me to become creative in order to fill the space that is not accessible to me with my own. I always try to make the supposed disadvantages I have more positive in order to learn how I can create and express.
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