What a sound idea

I'D NEVER truly heard the sound of silence before - and let me tell you, it's an eerie experience. Deep beneath the magnificent concert hall at York University's new £2.5m music research centre is a state-of-the-art recording studio.

It's one of those carpeted, insulated, air-conditioned and artificially-lit spaces that seem far away from daylight and everyday life. Through a large, clear window you can look through to the adjoining performance space that seems equally cut off from the world above. I'm reminded of that slogan from the film Alien: 'In space, no one can hear you scream'.

The moment Dr Tony Myatt, director of the new music research centre, closes the door, the sense of oppression increases. The only sound is the faint whisper of the air-conditioning. Then Tony kills that too and asks me to listen.

I can just detect, from somewhere, a faint, high-pitched hum, that seems not to be there at all, somehow, and yet all around me at the same time. The longer I listen, the louder it seems to get. And there's another sound, too: a low, whispering rumble, almost undetectable.

It is, Tony tells me, the sound of silence. I raise a sceptical eyebrow.

"That high sound is your own nervous system," he explains, "and the low rumble is your blood. You are very rarely ever in a situation where there is no other sound in your environment. What you're hearing now is purely internal sound."

It is an achingly lonely thought, but I don't let it distract me for too long. The recording studio is wonderfully impressive, made to exacting standards and incorporating state-of-the-art digital sound systems. The adjoining performance space, where artists will come to sing or play the music to be recorded, is equally up-to-the-mark: lined floor-to-ceiling with adjustable acoustic panels that allow you to alter the acoustics in whatever way you want.

The two rooms are part of an underground suite of recording, composing, and music research rooms which, along with the new auditorium above, make this the most advanced research centre of its kind in the country.

The composing room is almost like an art-gallery in its stark simplicity: a single spotlit flatscreen computer resting on a desk in a room that's otherwise almost dark.

The computer, Tony explains, is revolutionising composition the way the word processor did writing. In this quiet room, musicians can compose without ever needing to go near a musical instrument.

A little further down the corridor, he leads me into what he calls the 'engine room' of the whole building.

Giant computer banks line the wall. They have over one terabyte - that's a thousand thousand megabytes - of storage space, Tony says: enough to store a solid month of stereo recordings.

It is, he says, the research centre's 'reservoir of sound'. Every computer in the building is linked up to it, and musicians can access any of the music and sound stored on it from any of the other computers.

This ends the tedious process of carrying tapes around. Thanks to these giant computer banks, musicians can access anything saved on any other computer in the building.

Upstairs, there are more studios - for sound engineers, postgraduate students, and research staff. And above that, the piece de resistance of the new centre, the new 150-seat Arthur Sykes Rymer auditorium.

This has been built to complement the 320-seat Jack Lyons Concert Hall next door. It is a more intimate performance space intended for performances such as guitar or piano recitals.

The natural acoustics are astonishing. When Tony and I slip in, concert pianist Professor Peter Hill is putting the auditorium's new Fazioli grand piano through its paces. From 20 or so rows back, every glorious, trembling note of Bach's Prelude and Fugue sounds as clear and intimate as if we were standing right beside the piano.

The auditorium will be a marvellous addition to York's performance space, but it is far more than just that. When not in use for concerts and recitals, it will be used for research.

It has been designed to allow 'surround-sound' reproduction from speakers that line the walls - and can even produce sound from under the comfortable seats.

"We'll be able to do all sorts of research here," Tony says. "Anything that requires critical listening; how we hear music, how our ears work in response to surround sound; the optimum way to encode sound for surround-sound loudspeakers."

This research could one day filter through into the sound you enjoy at your local cinema, or to the quality of sound available on digital CD systems. The future, Tony says, is 3-D 'sound images' - a wall of recorded sound that surrounds you from all sides. In fact, he admits, he is surprised that simple stereo sound has persisted for so long.

The timing of this new research centre - it was officially opened by Roger Wright, the Controller of Radio 3, yesterday - could hardly be more perfect.

Music and the science of sound and acoustics stand on the brink of huge change. Throughout history, Tony points out, music has evolved as the tools to make it have evolved, and vice-versa. Today, computers are revolutionising music.

For a start, instrumental and vocal music can be recorded and stored with a digital clarity unimaginable a few years ago. It can also be enhanced, re-mixed and manipulated at the touch of a keyboard.

Computers can also create sound, taking noise and turning it into mathematical patterns of sound and music unlike anything heard before. There are whole generations of musicians now, Tony says, who have never touched a musical instrument.

The possibilities go much further. Because the way in which a musician uses a computer to create music is similar to how a graphic artist uses a computer to produce a work of visual art, the boundaries between the two disciplines are disappearing.

"It has become easier for artists to think about working in more than one medium," Tony says. "Before, being a sound artist almost precluded you from being a visual artist."

Not any more. As an example of the way in which sound and visual art are linking together, Tony is working with Peter Fluck, of Spitting Image fame, on a 'horizontal pendulum'.

This is an elegant piece of moving visual art, a construction of curved, slender arms and pendulum weights that moves about itself in graceful circles, rather like a giant clock mechanism.

It is not controlled; the movement is random and 'chaotic' - but as it moves, the pendulum's motion is scanned by a video camera connected to a computer, which then 'composes' music in real time to accompany the pendulum's movement.

Tony already has a working model of the pendulum in his research room. The aim is to make a much larger piece that can go on display in a gallery: a classic example of the visual and the acoustic coming together to create a single work of art.

Quite what the future of music and 'acoustic art' will be he doesn't really know - except that there will be 'phenomenal change'. Professor Nicola LeFanu, of York University's Music department, is confident that whatever that future proves to be, the new music research centre is perfectly placed to be a part of it.

"It is designed for what is going to happen over the next 20 years," she says. "In England, there is no other centre like it."

There will be a festival of digital audio and interactive music at the centre next week, from April 26 to May 1, featuring a range of contemporary computer-based art involving sound and image projection. For more information contact the university box office on 01904 432439.

Updated: 11:21 Wednesday, April 21, 2004