00. Introduction
Syncope (sin-kuh-pee), meaning ‘fainting’, is a state when the mind temporarily becomes unconscious as a result of an extreme stimulus response. For most listeners, music serves as a great tool to alter their moods and drive their emotive responses towards certain thoughts or situations. Music has this psychoacoustic effect on our brain that triggers sensations, which I like to term as ‘sonible emotions’.
As a music creator, I wanted to explore this potential of music to make a collection of songs that can induce these ‘sonible emotions’, with the use of intensive sound design, emotive harmonic structures and spatial audio. This is how the ‘Syncope’ EP was born.
The EP goes through the 5 stages (as described in the sections below), that take you through physiological responses of human beings when they encounter certain stimuli. With each song, there is an associated harmonic structure that triggered a specific feeling for me (and hope the same happens when you listen to it) that helped me define the sonic palette of every song. The sound design that accompanies each song, plays a major role in painting the emotive soundscape related to them.
With the help of binaural audio and Dolby Atmos, I was able to enhance the listening experience by creating a 3D sonic atmosphere around the listener that helps sketch the emotive states in a pseudo-physical form.
The sections that follow give you an insight into my thought process and my music making process behind each song, and I hope that these descriptions will further enhance your listening experience.
A big thanks to all of you for listening and supporting my debut project.
Ishaan (knordest)
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01. Inception
The inception of emotions is not a slow process. Multiple specialised neurons in different parts of our cerebral cortex get activated within moments and our mind, as we call it, instantly becomes aware. Usually during this stage, humans have an immediate physiological response associated with the inception, which is spontaneous, unfiltered and is usually very intense in nature.‘Kismet’ is a depiction of this state.
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The song starts with an ambient textural form, which rises and dips depicting the confusion and tension while experiencing something severe. The ambient section then goes into a powerful rhythm driven section and ends with an intense ‘Alap’ (improvised melodic structures that reveal the musical characteristic). The vocal performance portrays the vigour of this stage of inception.
I took an enormous amount of inspiration from the stories of Tansen, a legendary musician in the Hindustani Classical Music history. Ancient literature had stories about him, describing how his singing would bring down rains, which I have tried to represent in the first half of the song. You can hear rain, wind and bells ringing, hence creating a very intense scenery of Tansens’s musical performance.
Akshay Baheti contributed his knowledge in Hindustani Classical Music and sang on the song, animating the imagination that I had for this song.
02. Question
The second step in the journey of experiencing a sensation is questioning what it is and why it is. This might prove to be harder because one emotion might mask another, which might also result in multiple chains of emotions. Confusion is obvious in this state and it may become complex with the mind trying to resolve and settle on something which feels valid.
‘Broken Solder’ is a depiction of this stage. The song contains a repeating 16 bar harmonic progression which represents the path through the journey of confusion to resolution. Multiple broken structures of mechanical and granular sounds correlate to the blend of feelings that become intense but eventually reach a resolution. The broken pluck bass sound has a melodic movement which creates a sense of tension and release. I sometimes feel that this broken pluck bass sound is a voice inside us that constantly questions us, but ironically has an answer to every question as well.
The song ends with the same harmonic vehicle, but the roaring synths with their filters open give off a sonic realisation; a dawn of awareness.
03. Pause & Contemplation
Sometimes pausing gives space for contemplation and leads to a much better response to the inward stimulus that had triggered an uncontrolled sequence of physiological events. This is also the time needed for acceptance and maybe detachment if required.
‘Luz Naciente’, which means ‘the nascent light’ in Spanish, was my first experimentation with an upright piano along with a reactive and generative synth system. I recorded some improvised chords and melodies over the reactive synth patch and recorded everything together in Ableton to generate an unpredictable base. The music stalls in an ambient space, which signifies the pause but eventually crescendos into a silence, giving a perfect conclusion to the process.
04. Reaction/Response
It is eventually time to express how the stimuli has affected the mind and let the reaction emerge after much (or no) contemplation. The way an individual reacts or responds is heavily dependent on their past experiences and decisions. Ironically, these reactions may even start parallel stimuli and deep realisations, which sets the entire process into a feedback loop. Similarly, bottling up thoughts and emotions and suppressing them from time to time might result in an outburst, if the situations are suitable.
The title track of the EP 'Syncope’ was my attempt to create something which had a sense of suspense and rush. I wanted to portray the urgency of letting out heavily triggered reactions when suppressed for a long time. The synths falling and rising in pitch, the heavily distorted low end and the deep layers of percussive sounds heavily compressed together, represent a cramped up mind that needs an outlet. Every section builds up to a climax and bursts into a heavily distorted main section of the song, which depicts a point of outburst. My decision to add strings and horns to this song was merely my will to experiment with orchestral music, which surprisingly went well with the theme of the song.
05. Resolution
After going through multiple physiological and biological processes, the mind tries to return to a normal state. Realisation kicks in soon & one might feel content and satisfied, or, they may feel even more hesitant and conflicted (which then becomes a cycle until resolution). Resolution offers learnings, self-awareness and an altered state of mind.
‘Zenith’ is a point of resolution, a point of achievement and it is powerful. The song starts off with a very delicate synth and a harmonic structure that repeats throughout the song, but the major body of the song grows with the addition of layers of synths, basses and distorted white noise. With every repetition of the chord progression, the sound scape becomes bigger and wider, and it literally ascends into a very loud pass of the harmonic repetition, where everything is super distorted and it just pulls you in. This growth in the song is equivalent to self growth and achievement of a positive state of mind after an emotional experience.
I have also tried to incorporate some 3D binaural pannings to widen the space of the composition to showcase triumph and success.
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Few words before I leave you to immerse in a sonic journey of 'Syncope':
While making these songs, I have personally gone through multiple emotional states and I have put all my expressions into these 5 pieces of music. I hope you feel these sensations too and experience the emotive landscape.
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If you own Apple AirPods Pro, AirPods Max or AirPods gen 3, then you can listen to the Dolby Atmos mixes by streaming the EP on Apple Music. If you turn on the ‘Head Tracking’ feature, you can move your head around and experience the songs from different directions! Do not get surprised if things fly by around your head or come at you from all different directions! :)
If you read it till here, I am super positive that you are a genuine supporter and I would like to thank you specially for reading through my thoughts/perceptions and for listening to these songs.