This is the final post of a research series that was done during my studies in audio production at Blekinge Institute of Technology. The research focused on a psychoacoustic phenomenon I have labeled as "phonentesia" which is a merger of the Greek words phono-, meaning audio or voice, and -éntasi, meaning tension. Below you will find two sound examples that I created during the research to experiment how different methods of expressing tension through sound changes the impression of the whole piece.
Tension 1_1
The first iteration starts with a synthesized chord that morphs from dissonance to consonance. As the chord reaches consonance other layers of sounds starts to appear, such as a steadily rising note and slowly dragging a pick across the winding of an electric guitar string.
Tension 1_2
The second iteration has retained the steadily rising note and scratching sound of the guitar pick from the previous iteration. However, the initial chord has changed in character, even though it plays the same figure. The chords progression from dissonant to consonant is much more fast, and the rhythmic element is instead played by a bass. As the rising note and scratching sound of the guitar pick enters, the piece also introduces a lower synthetic voice that distorts more and more, together with a recording of an Euler disc spinning in its final sequences. The full sound also loses resemblance of any tonality towards its climax.
Final Thoughts
I think these two iterations offer an interesting comparison of how the common sound between the pieces can change in character by what happens tonally and rhythmically around them. My impression is that the first piece does not produce as much phonentesia as the second one. The slowly morphing chord in Tension 1_1 rather seems to relieve the phonentesia that is produced by the sharp and stabbing chord at the beginning, regardless of the rising layers that plays in the background. Whereas Tension 1_2 have a rapid transformation of the dissonant chords, which instead invites the listener to a position of relief early and then recreates phonentesia by morphing into a kind of toneless hysteresis where the tension emerges from the listeners brief sense of relief.
My name is Jacob Westberg and I am a game composer, software developer, and educator of game audio. You can find topics here surrounding creative work in game music that I find insightful and interesting to research.
In order to share my research with others for free, all articles on this website will be open and accessible for anyone. You can support this open research by subscribing to my Patreon.
