Lorin Tone: "I Have No Words" at HIE

 Virtual worlds have a limited impact on our senses - no smells or tastes in the metaverse at present ... but while sight is the dominant sense we use here, sound is the magnifier of sensations and it deepens the immersive experience exponentially. But like visual effects, sound effects only really enhance the virtual experience when they are done right.

One of the highlights of the Park is Lorin Tone's build for HIE - it is so elegant and appropriate, the title is  "I have no words". It's a sort of interactive sound sculpture and fits the mood of our multi-language event perfectly.  

It is located on craft-world.org:8002:HIE 2 at the Expo in the HIE auditorium park, which will be staying up until December 15, so if you didn't get a chance to visit the whole thing yet, jump over and check it out.

Lorin Tone: The system that I've used for it is a sound loop-based script set that uses an overall Master

synchronization script. The Master script is set at a tempo of 115 BPM (beats per minute) in 4/4 time signature for this project, but it can be any BPM. This requires that each sound loop is precisely 16.700 seconds time duration.

Lorin Tone: When I decided to bring the SL version into Alternate Metaverse grid, scripter Savage Taurus dug into it and made a few modifications that I requested. He did a superb job of it, making it work far more precisely than any other previous version. The HIE conference is the first venue that I've used it in. Craft World grid's system handles it extremely well. 

Lorin Tone: My goal in creating the HIE version's sound loops set was to use instrumentation and voices from around the world. The challenge in this was the fact that each loop would need to work musically with any other combination of loops. It became exponentially more difficult as it came together to such an extent that I attempted to use Artificial Intelligence systems to generate some loops of children and adults chanting and singing in NO language at all, but in defined key and time signatures. Hence the name of the project. In the end, I ended up using a few AI-generated loops. 

The build includes many strange and wonderful sounds, that Lorin collected and modded for use in the sound sculpture.

Lorin Tone: Most are chants, choirs and instruments from real people around the world; Bulgaria, Tibet, Africa, South America, Central Europe, Mongolia, China, USA and some undefined noises. While over 250 loops were created and tested, just under 100 of them ended up passing muster with my dedicated team of advisers (me, LOL).  Are any particularly unusual? “Unusual” is in the ears of those who hear it. For example, in East Indian music, their scales have notes that are quarter tones or “semitones” that are tuned between the notes in “Western” music's 12-tone scales. While these might seem to be out of tune to many of us, they are used as inflections and even exclamation points. Some of that is included in the build.

Lorin Tone:  Then we come to the question of instrumentation. There is Gamelan, which is widely used in Sudanese, Balinese and other cultures. There is the chordal dissonance mastered by various Bulgarian choral composers which I find to be my absolute favorite challenging music to study. There is the throat-singing that is surprisingly wide-ranging from Tibetan monks to Russia, Mongolia, Japan and other places. It's been great having a few months to come up with something that worked

because wow...I could spend the rest of my life expanding on this concept. Frankly, I probably will.

It turns out, Lorin is also an accomplished dancer

As a sound guy, what did you make of the whole HIE language experience?

Lorin Tone: I am just a typical American who is not multilingual, but I did try. I'm just not good at

languages. I speak or understand tiny parts of Latin, German, Spanish and I can embarrass myself with Svenska and Dutch...but even the Dutch seem to admit that it's impossible! The most important part of the HIE conference for me was the translation systems in place and the translators who pulled it off, making it possible for me to attend presentations that were contributed by excellent presenters, with language posing only minimal barriers. I do encourage HIE to continue with the goal of uniting OpenSim in the interest of improving virtual world environments and inter-cultural collaboration. Any time that I can offer assistance, I will. 

Lorin in the HIE park

Can't help wondering - can you remember the first sounds you uploaded to Second Life, back in the day? What were they and why did you upload them?

Lorin Tone: The first sound(s) that I made in SL were done in self defense, and they were natural ambience sounds and birdsong. Here's why. I had entered SL in late November of 2006 along with the first large “wave” of residents. There was a bird sound effect, built into the viewer if I recall correctly. I hated it, I loathed it! I wanted to shoot that bird, throw it off a cliff in flames and bury it, arrrgh! 

Can you tell us a bit about your background in Sound - from a RL point of view?

Lorin Tone: My RL experience with sound began in 1976 when I was still in high school. I had obtained a scholarship to Brigham Young University for a summer course because I had submitted a tape of music I'd made using a MiniMoog synthesizer. The then-head of the music dept., H. Jarrold Harris, had obtained a large ARP 2500 modular synthesizer that he had no idea how to use. I went there during the summer prior to my senior year in high school to both teach Dr. Harris and learn their ARP modular synth.

Lorin Tone: I was also introduced to professional recording gear at that time, learning in BYU's recording studio (apart from the ARP synth), where I met Donny Osmond, who didn't like me at all because I had long hair. It broke the BYU rules, but Dr. Harris waived the required haircut for me. For me, that was a very memorable summer. From that time onward, I tried to stay on top of music and sound production.

Opensim is full of builders with challenging environments they want to enhance with sound, but it can be a challenge! It's possible to get help from Lorin in a number of ways.

Lorin Tone: I'm most active in Alternate Metaverse grid. I'm always busy with projects but am happy to take new projects on...generally paid, but affordable. Navigate to the Soundscapes region on that grid to ride the sound tour effects demo tour, visit my shop (currency is Gloebits) and definitely attend my

classes! You can always visit my classroom area and grab the free sound effects scripts and instructions any time. However, best to attend a class, because it's not about how to make noise, but how to create a soundscape. 

Lorin Tone: I teach classes on a bi-weekly basis in SL at Happy Hippo University. In OpenSim the first classes I taught were at the Digiworldz Metaverse University. They went dormant during this past

summer, but may be revived. I teach biweekly at Alternate Metaverse grid's Koryphon Academy, in my Soundscapes Region. The next class will be Sunday, 15 October at 9:30 AM grid time. The class runs about an hour, sometimes a little more. Free, full perms sound effects scripts are given out and I explain how each of them are used. I also explain how NOT to use sound effects, like that bloody SL

bird sound.

Lorin Tone: I must give props to Clifford Hanger and Cataplexia Numbers the co-owners of Alternate Metaverse Grid for providing me with a bit of land in which I can demonstrate how sound effects are used in virtual worlds. There is a tour that is installed on that region and the HG LM is included in the freebies box at my booth. Just take the ride through the demo!