Speech Patterns, by NOAH WALL

Speech Patterns

by NOAH WALL

supported by

	/

Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
• Edition of 100
• Each LP features unique cover art by Noah Wall, hand-stamped with shapes derived from Speech Patterns notation
• Insert includes liner notes by Alan Licht
• Mastered for vinyl by renowned engineer Josh Bonati

Includes unlimited streaming of Speech Patterns via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

ships out within 5 days

Purchasable with gift card

$25 USD or more
Cassette + Digital Album
• Edition of 50
• Each cassette features unique cover art by Noah Wall, hand-stamped with shapes derived from Speech Patterns notation
• Insert includes liner notes by Alan Licht

Includes unlimited streaming of Speech Patterns via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

ships out within 5 days

Purchasable with gift card

$15 USD or more
Streaming + Download

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

Purchasable with gift card

$7 USD or more

1.	bell 02:39	buy track
2.	In Tongues 02:14	buy track
3.	Michel and Noam 02:40	buy track
4.	Octavia 03:22	buy track
5.	There in Spirit 03:36	buy track
6.	Voicemail 02:19	buy track
7.	Filibuster 01:08	buy track
8.	ASMR 02:47	buy track
9.	Nikki and James 03:07	buy track
10.	Auctioneer 02:17	buy track
11.	Golden Record 05:08	buy track

about

Liner notes by Alan Licht:

There can be a thin line between spoken language and music; if “every room has its own melody hiding there until it’s made audible,” as Alvin Lucier once said, then maybe every sentence does too. Sure, there’s sprechstimme, and talkboxes, vocoders and other gadgets that exploit the tonal qualities of speech and split the difference between spoken and sung words; and many instances of free improvisation between two or more people can have a conversational quality. But with this collection Noah Wall charts a new course in composition via processing recordings of human speech from a unique hybrid of autotuning and musique concrete, a combination of sonic applications that seems so inevitable it’s remarkable that no one else has engineered it sooner.

Starting with a phone machine message left by the late Michael Evans, Noah took a bunch of YouTube videos of conversations and speeches, put the audio through Melodyne (an autotune app) and then saved the results as a MIDI document. From there he spread the data out to various MIDI instruments to play back the pitch conversions of the sourced talk. The material is stretched out, looped, and manipulated in various ways to achieve a true polyphony that belies its monophonic origins. Even more than musique concrete, the results seem utterly divorced from their original source, as here another layer of representation is eliminated by rubbing out the content of the speeches, as opposed to using a sound recognizable as a train, for instance, or anything whose sound only signifies the object itself rather than additionally conveying a linguistic meaning. Sometimes they’re purposely contrary to their source material, as in the ominous, bass-heavy ”ASMR,” a marked contrast to the intentionally soothing, semi-whispered female voice it’s taken from. The music is startlingly melodic, given its backstory, but Noah’s old one-man band Jukeboxer demonstrated his capabilities as a tunesmith; Speech Patterns is the logical product of the same mind behind the Jukeboxer songs as well as the subversive masterstroke of making anagrams of every Brian Eno/Peter Schmidt Oblique Strategy card (Grotesque Tables II). The music’s polyrhythms, derived from the cadences of the speakers’ phrasing, indicate a parallel between polyrhythm and dialogue, as well as recalling Conlon Nancarrow’s dizzying Studies for Player Piano and Frank Zappa’s “While You Were Art II” (a Synclavier playback of a transcription of one his guitar solos).

Not to mention that Speech Patterns sidesteps the typical funhouse-mirror goofiness of experimental music that leaves spoken word too recognizable as such after being subjected to various electronic modifications. By transmuting the human voice into pure pitch and rhythm rather than pulling a melody out of thin air or relying on tried-and-true chord progressions and time signatures, Noah also eliminates the gestural cliches so prevalent in composed music. (Hanne Darboven’s practice of conjuring strikingly tonal music solely from mathematical calculations comes to mind as another precursor.) Paradoxically, this is music that speaks to the nexus of sound and human identity that could only be achieved by machines, equally organic and synthetic.

credits

released April 14, 2023

All music conceived and composed by Noah Wall
Mastered by Josh Bonati

Source material:

bell: bell hooks and John Paulson
In Tongues: speaking in tongues by Princess
Michel and Noam: Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault
Octavia: Octavia Butler and John Pomeranz
There in Spirit: speaking in tongues by Annie
Voicemail: Michael Evans
Filibuster: Bernie Sanders
ASMR: Gentle Whispering ASMR
Nikki and James: Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin
Auctioneer: John Korrey
Golden Record: The Voyager Golden Record by NASA

license

about

NOAH WALL Brooklyn, New York

Multidisciplinary artist and composer based in New York

contact / help

Contact NOAH WALL

Streaming and
Download help

Redeem code

Report this album or account

If you like NOAH WALL, you may also like:

NYC LIMINAL SERIES, vol. 3: Drums
by Chaikin Records

supported by 4 fans who also own “Speech Patterns”
go to album
Pulse Music
by John McGuire

supported by 4 fans who also own “Speech Patterns”

Fantastic stuff!!! Scratches all my itches: reich, bit of glass, some Laurie spiegel…. Just killer stuff. Can’t wait for my vinyl to arrvie! Jay Hodgson
go to album
Live at h0l0 01_31_2020
by Hisham Akira Bharoocha

supported by 4 fans who also own “Speech Patterns”
go to album
The Fifth Season (Versions)
by Lafawndah

featured on Bandcamp Radio Apr 9, 2024
go to album
Hotel Nota
by Roméo Poirier

featured on Bandcamp Radio Apr 9, 2024
go to album
Parallax
by Ahnnu

featured on Bandcamp Radio Apr 9, 2024
go to album
Jolifanto
by ZA! + Perrate

A chance meeting between likeminded artists resulted in this work of radical experiments on the edges of pop. Bandcamp New & Notable Mar 30, 2024
go to album