Hello, I'm Penny. I am a producer and musician based in Dublin. I am passionate about basically all things you can hear: music, sound, noise. I am particularly interested in exploring experimental sounds and compositional techniques, and using them in music to stretch conventional boundaries and create something new and fresh! At the moment, I am focused on working in sound design.
This project focuses on what 'noise' is, how it can be used within music and what the average listener's perception of noise is. I created short music pieces with various experimental techniques and timbres used in each and asked an audience whether they perceived the pieces to be music and noise and to explain their answers. The responses were collected and analysed within the thesis and a long-form music piece was created as a result of the research conducted.
This thesis aims to understand what 'noise' is within the context of music, how it can be used within music to introduce interesting timbres and ideas, and what musical characteristics cause the average listener to perceive a piece as either noise or music. Research was conducted to understand these areas better and data from a survey was collected and analysed in order to understand what the average listener's perspective of sound is.