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Tools shape the way in which we see and in turn shape the world ourselves. We must not let them dictate our actions.
I recently got back into playing with audio tools. I dabbled in it a few years back but turned to other interests later, as is the way of fixations. I remember using FL Studio with its most basic VST (Virtual Sound Technology) pack. A triple oscillator here, a sequencer there, and a few synthesizer presets modified to my liking. I tried a bit of Ableton too, seeing as I was told it was the better option for more precise control over the shape of sound. Now, years later, I find myself without the option of using FL Studio or Ableton, as none of those work on my Linux system. So I'm left navigating in the world of linux audio production, with its own set of software, open source Digital Audio Workstations, open osurce synths, sequencers and drum machines, all running on one or another audio driver.
Sound design is the practice of playing with audio snippets called samples or with sound synthesis options, shaping a basic audio output into something with more character. Most of the time it relies on meticulously standing over one piece of sound, finely tweaking many options, choosing the right wave shape, adding reverb, compression, left-right panning, etc. for hours on end until one gets something interesting, beautiful, or worth preserving. Your favorite local musician's favorite sample pack was probably made through that practice, or at least went through a stage of sound design after being recorded live. Through sound design one can mimic the texture of sand, a glitch, a guitar string, or an animal's scream, out of four simple shapes of sound: the sine, the triangle, the saw, and the square. Or even from less. Or from more.
It's sort of like a painter mixing colors, or giving his strokes texture. In any case, it's more about creating something that will be a tool, to be understood as an aesthetic quality in a larger piece, rather than the spatial arrangement that defines the whole piece.
But that tool has to be made from tools itself. There's an infinite cycle of substance informing practice and practice informing substance, all of which boils down to how we think about matter and shape. I'll run the risk of going too deep and remind that considering these two concepts and their relationship dates back to Antiquity. Hylomorphism is an Aristotelian model of reality that affirms that all things are made of matter (hylo) and form (morphe). Here hylo is conceived of as formless, shapeless, before meeting morphe. There's an imposition of form, of shape, and this shape comes from an idea in the human mind, onto the material natural resource of the physical world. See the resemblance with sound design yet?
But one thing fails to be considered. As Tim Ingold stresses in Toward an Ecology of Materials, by citing Gilbert Simondon's example of the brick maker, form is not simply "applied" or "imposed" on matter, rather there is a two-way information and communication, between the raw materials that compose both the brick and the device for shaping it. The brick is not simply born out of shapeless clay being shaped by a device. The device itself was at most made and conceived, and at least used, in a way that would make a brick. Its materials are chosen precisely because they can embrace and resist the very real materiality and form of the clay. Its shape is chosen so that this clay, whose shape conflicts with that of the device, results in what we call a brick, something that can be laid to create a wall. The clay itself is anything but formless, it goes through water and human hands that condition it. The clay, the brick mold, and the action of hands that accompany this process of brick making, are all affected by one another, to come to the final goal of creating a brick. Not just any brick but this brick, with its precise and specific shape, its texture, its strength, density. Do you see where I'm going?
The clay is our source of sound, be it a sample or a simple square sound wave. The brick mold is the tool we use for sound design. The action of the hands is the process of sound design, that we today create with our mouse- and keyboard-enhanced hands. The sound design software, or tool, that we use, was itself made from the same scheme of opposing forces that create the sound samples we design. Or that others design; I myself am not very good This tool is not a given, not a basis, not an ever-present entity, and definitely and most importantly is not the only tool we can use. So can we make a round clay ball with our square brick mold? No. But why would we, you could ask, what would a round ball accomplish in creating a wall?
Did I tell you we were building a wall, or did that thought just pop into your head because most uses of a brick involve making a wall? And going back to our sound design, while most sound design ends up creating a sample used in a musical composition as a pad, a bass tone, a guitar string, or a snare drum, who's to say we don't use it however we want? Maybe we want to prolong the sound indefinitely to see where it's going and when it's going to break. That's something William Basinski does in his disintegration loops, looping one leitmotif indefinitely until the magnetic tape loses its potential. We might want to extend it to hear the infinite details in the sound more often and notice them more, and add a little modulation. That's something Eliane Radigue does in practically all of her work. Or we might want to change the source sound in such a way that it's used as a totally different instrument, say a piano key becoming a substitute for a hi-hat, or a screaming cat, what the hell.
Well, luckily, most audio tools generally can be used, with a varying degree of difficulty and time, to create most modifications we want to hear. The same goes for most digital design tools, like photo or vector editors. Whereas a brick mold only has one shape and size, the tools we use today are more akin to sets of brick molds, add to that the option to tweak them on the fly. This means we don't only have a square brick mold in our workshop, but a round one, whose corners and texture we can change as much as we want, and to which we can add a pattern, a stamp, etc. But one more thing goes into the trifecta of tool-hands-matter; it is something we may have not even though about, generally because it's imperceptible: how we have learned to use our tools. And here I come to my point.
Learning to use a tool is a very important thing. While you can't blow your leg off with Inkscape or Audacity, you can damage your file, your speakers, your hearing, or your computer. You have to know what the safe limits for the use of the specific tool are. You have to know what the tool is capable of easily, and what it takes more time to do. If you're going to use the tool in a professional capacity that requires urgency, you're better off knowing it inside and out. I'm not saying that learning or teaching a tool is a bad thing.
However, now that I'm back on that mini-fixation of sound design, I wanted to learn one or two things about what all the knobs, envelopes, phases, etc mean, concretely. Some I can understand just by looking, others require more explanation. Like how additive synthesis, LFOs and frequency modulation work. So I fire up YouTube. Tutorials by the dozen are ambiguously titled "wobble bass" "give your samples more character"... None of them specifying a tool at first glance, but all of them opening a specific VST and DAW, in short imposing a specific use of a specific tool, often the most known or praised.
And while I understand where this comes from, I stand for a tool-agnostic education. I tried looking up tutorials for wobble bass for example, for good old LMMS (another audio workstation software). And then I realized something. I'd be blindly pushing buttons in a sequence I remember without necessarily understanding what's behind them. I recall a ninth grade math teacher telling me to calculate a sine function with my calculator, to which I responded with a question: what does it mean and do when I do that? My question was met with an order to just follow the example. Displeased, I fired back, saying I don't just do things I barely understand, and that it's nowhere near helpful to tell us to simply push those buttons if we don't have the slightest explanation of what a sine function is. Needless to say, my retort wasn't welcome. But I wanted to know what it does so next time I'm pushing those buttons, I'd know why, and when I'd have to do it on something other than this calculator, I'd know how.
If you teach a certain discipline, practice, or craft, teaching it on only one tool affects at least two things in the person on the other end of the lesson. For one thing, they'd immediately cycle back to the same tool for such an operation or a similar one, having a harder time adjusting to other settings. The other problem is that when they use this tool, they'll undoubtedly overuse this one thing they know, this one action which composes this one practice which creates this one result. If many people learn this same way, odds are they'll cycle back to the same results. This creates trends, trends create a 'coolness factor' and this factor is inversely proportional to innovation, originality, or experimentation.
Of course, this is nowhere near absolute, everyone has a personal variation in their practice, every result has a unique variation in its qualities, and the human mind is more than able to change, adapt, and overcome the obstacles of the unknown. But pairing a practice with a specific tool makes one partially dependent on that tool, and on the possibilities of the tool. Vilém Flusser puts it so:
The photographer's gesture as the search for a viewpoint onto a scene takes place within the possibilities offered by the apparatus. The photographer moves within specific categories of space and time regarding the scene: proximity and distance, bird- and worm's-eye views, frontal- and side-views, short or long exposures, etc. The Gestalt of space–time surrounding the scene is prefigured for the photographer by the categories of his camera. These categories are an a priori for him. He must 'decide' within them: he must press the trigger.
The only way to emancipate yourself from the confines of decisionmaking that a tool creates is to change the tool, and have many tools at your disposal. Treat those confines, those limits, as a challenge rather than scopes of possibility: How can you bend a tool so that it produces results unanticipated at the time of its conception? How can you hack it?
I could give more examples, and I will in short form:
When and if you teach someone something, any practice, attempt this one language trick. Add "so you can do it with any tool of your choice" to "I will teach you x". And organize your way of teaching around this. You and the person learning will be better off.
If you wrote a reply to this article or on the same subject, please email me at sayhi[at]delyo[dot]be to notify me. I'd love to hear your feedback and link it here.
Tool-agnostic education was published on 2024-05-20