Noise music

Noise music is a category of music that is characterised by the expressive use of noise within a musical context. This type of music tends to challenge the distinction that is made in conventional musical practices between musical and non-musical sound. Noise music includes a wide range of musical styles and sound-based creative practices that feature noise as a primary aspect. It can feature acoustically or electronically generated noise, and both traditional and unconventional musical instruments. It may incorporate live machine sounds, non-musical vocal techniques, physically manipulated audio media, processed sound recordings, field recording, computer-generated noise, stochastic process, and other randomly produced electronic signals such as distortion, feedback, static, hiss and hum. There may also be emphasis on high volume levels and lengthy, continuous pieces. More generally noise music may contain aspects such as improvisation, extended technique, cacophony and indeterminacy, and in many instances conventional use of melody, harmony, rhythm and pulse is dispensed with.

White noise (disambiguation)

White noise is a signal or sound with a flat frequency spectrum.

White noise may also refer to:

In music

Noise

Noise is a variety of sound. It means any unwanted sound. Sounds, particularly loud ones, that disturb people or make it difficult to hear wanted sounds, are noise. For example, conversations of other people may be called noise by people not involved in any of them; any unwanted sound such as neighbours playing loud music, portable mechanical saws, road traffic sounds, or a distant aircraft in quiet countryside, is called noise.

Acoustic noise can be anything from quiet but annoying to loud and harmful. At one extreme users of public transport sometimes complain about the faint and tinny sounds emanating from the headphones or earbuds of somebody listening to a portable audio player; at the other the sound of very loud music, a jet engine at close quarters, etc. can cause irreversible hearing damage. At intermediate levels there are a range of deleterious health effects from noise. This "intolerable corruption of human space" can be called noise pollution. A claim made by Luigi Russolo in his article, The Joys of Noise is that noise has become so prominent that pure sound no longer exists.

Music

Music is an art form and cultural activity whose medium is sound and silence. The common elements of music are pitch (which governs melody and harmony), rhythm (and its associated concepts tempo, meter, and articulation), dynamics (loudness and softness), and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture (which are sometimes termed the "color" of a musical sound). Different styles or types of music may emphasize, de-emphasize or omit some of these elements. Music is performed with a vast range of instruments and with vocal techniques ranging from singing to rapping, and there are solely instrumental pieces, solely vocal pieces and pieces that combine singing and instruments. The word derives from Greek μουσική (mousike; "art of the Muses"). In its most general form, the activities describing music as an art form include the production of works of music (songs, tunes, symphonies, and so on), the criticism of music, the study of the history of music, and the aesthetic examination of music. Ancient Greek and Indian philosophers defined music as tones ordered horizontally as melodies and vertically as harmonies. Common sayings such as "the harmony of the spheres" and "it is music to my ears" point to the notion that music is often ordered and pleasant to listen to. However, 20th-century composer John Cage thought that any sound can be music, saying, for example, "There is no noise, only sound."

Beastie Boys

The Beastie Boys were an American hip hop/rock band from New York City, formed in 1981. For the majority of its career, the group consisted of Michael "Mike D" Diamond (vocals, drums), Adam "MCA" Yauch (vocals, bass) and Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz (vocals, guitar).

Originally formed as a four-piece hardcore punk band, The Young Aborigines, in 1978 by Diamond (vocals), John Berry (guitar), Yauch (bass) and Kate Schellenbach (drums), the band appeared on the compilation cassette New York Thrash, before recording their first EP, Polly Wog Stew, in 1982. Berry left shortly thereafter, and was replaced by Horovitz. After achieving moderate local success with the 1983 experimental hip hop 12-inch "Cooky Puss", Schellenbach dropped out and the group made a full transition to hip hop, releasing a string of successful singles. The Beastie Boys toured with Madonna in 1985 and a year later released their debut album Licensed to Ill. The group sold 26 million albums in the United States and 50 million albums worldwide, making them, according to Billboard, "the biggest-selling rap group" since the magazine began recording sales data in 1991.