Resonance Part 3

Writer/Editor Susan Bell
Image via artfuledit.com

In previous posts, we examined how the principle of resonance operates in music.  A fundamental note produces other notes, overtones, that hover to varying degrees in our awareness.  We also observed how clutter impedes resonance. But once we remove clutter, what might we observe about how resonance works? It accumulates.

In an essay on restraint, interior designer Steven Volpe observes . . .

Objects, like people, accrue meaning as they meet others, and this is a process that takes place in real time. . . We orchestrate major and minor elements as delicately as we can, certain that the sum of the parts- their polyphony, if you will—is greater than the accumulation of individual characteristics

(Interior Design Master Class, edited by Carl Dellatore, p.10)

Notice how Volpe employs musical metaphors. Pieces of furniture, decor, and art, he suggests, interact and build meaning together like an orchestra, as they do in this picture of Volpe seated in his own home.

Photo by Mark Mahaney for wsj.com

Notice how the elements in this room magnify each other. Each object seems to pick up notes from the others and make something larger.

This same principle explains why, for instance, a recording of twenty violinists playing together will sound more expansive than a single violinist overdubbed twenty times. The lone violinist will have no other instruments with which to resonate. Or, think of how, when dinner guests rub the top of their wine glasses in concert, you can hear the sound waves combine, magnify. This is resonance in action.

This same principle can be applied to writing where we can think of the text as producing overtones of meaning.  A sharp example is found in the pages of writer/editor Susan Bell’s wonderful book The Artful Edit, where she compares two drafts of the same scene from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.  

The first is from an earlier draft:

They were both in white and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just blown in after a short flight around the house.  I must have stood for a few moments on the threshold, dazzled by the alabaster light, listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall.

The second is from the finished novel:

They were both in white and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just blown in after a short flight around the house.  I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall.

Neither version of this passage would be called wordy, but as Bell observes, “Fitzgerald likely decided that ‘dazzled by the alabaster light’ would tip the passage over the line.”  (Susan Bell, The Artful Edit, p. 84) 

Perhaps alabaster and dazzled resonated too loudly for Fitzgerald. Or, perhaps Fitzgerald noticed that even after the phrase’s removal, the sense of being ‘dazzled by the alabaster light’ remains as a semantic overtone, the meaning having accumulated from the surrounding words.

It is a reminder even after being removed, an idea can hover in the reader’s awareness if the rest of the passage, like a fundamental tone in music, has sounded a clear note.  Attending to resonance allows creators to produce work that, paradoxically, is both richer and easier to absorb.

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 Thank you for reading.

Resonance Part 2

As we observed in the previous post, acoustic resonance requires a certain aural space in which a pitch can resound.  Other, competing sounds, would lessen the effect.  As we take the idea of resonance out of the strictly acoustic realm, it might help to first notice what happens when we remove clutter.

Marie Kondo, famed organizing consultant, author, and host of her own Netflix series, invites her clients to transform their homes by going through their belongings and getting rid of those items that don’t ‘spark joy.’  The phrase itself draws on the notion of resonance.  “Spark joy” in Kondo’s native language, Japanese, connotes fluttering, palpitation, vibration. By parting with books, clothes, and other belongings that clutter and occlude, Kondo’s method suggests, her clients’ dwellings will indeed sing with joy.

Here is a video of someone who tried Kondo’s method for herself. 

At the 13:55 mark, she reflects on having finished and what she noticed about the Mari Kondo method. 

“We didn’t add anything to the room.  It was just a purely subtractive process.  . . . We have really nice things here . . . [but they were] hidden amongst ridiculous amounts of clutter.”

By decluttering, the tidied dwelling resonates more clearly with notes of joy, or perhaps simply with a clearer sense of the person living there.

If writers strive to produce work that resonates more clearly with who they are, then wordiness is the writer’s version of clutter.

In their classic book on writing, The Elements of Style, William Strunk and E. B. White offer two versions of the same passage to illustrate this point.

The first is 51 words.

Macbeth was very ambitious. This led him to wish to become king of Scotland. The witches told him that this wish of his would come true. The king of Scotland at this time was Duncan. Encouraged by his wife, Macbeth murdered Duncan. He was thus enabled to succeed Duncan as king.

The second is 26.

Encouraged by his wife, Macbeth achieved his ambition and realized the prediction of the witches by murdering Duncan and becoming king of Scotland in his place.

(William Strunk and E. B. White, The Elements of Style, p. 25)

After pruning half the words, the second version resonates with clearer meaning.  We might regard some of words excised from the second version—was, that, this—the way someone cleaning their apartment might regard books and clothes that spark no joy.  Or, in more directly musical terms, if the first version is a guitar string, it hangs too loosely on the page to vibrate.  The second version, by contrast, is taut enough to sound a clear note.

The maxim “Avoid unnecessary words” might therefore be understood as a law of writerly acoustics, especially if one wants the writing to sing.

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Thank you for reading.

Resonance Part 1

The musical landscape is shaped by the laws of acoustics, and one such law concerns the principle of resonant overtones.  Simply put, we often hear more notes than those being played. 

For example, under the right conditions, striking a note on a piano may cause other notes to be audible in varying degrees.  The struck note is called the fundamental, and the additional notes we hear are called overtones.

The principle is demonstrated in this video.

Musicians, composers, and arrangers make constant use of overtones. Here’s an illustration of how overtones show up when singers harmonize.

Again, we hear more than we may consciously acknowledge.  More notes sound than are being sung.

The phenomenon allows a wide range of musical applications.  Tuvan throat singers, for example, employ various vocal techniques that enable one singer to sing multiple notes at once.

While overtones usually hover more lightly in our awareness than the fundamental, under some conditions the overtone can sound more loudly than the fundamental. Many overtones escape our awareness altogether. 

It’s important to note that in order to hear overtones, the tones must not be obstructed.  For example, had the man in the first video placed a blanket over the piano strings, the resonant effect would effectively have been eliminated. 

Likewise, to be perceived, overtones require a certain amount of aural space around them, lest they be crowded out.  It’s easy to imagine, for instance, that if the Tuvan singer had been accompanied by a large instrumental ensemble we would miss a large number of the overtones she produced. 

All of this means that under the right conditions, we perceive more than what is presented to us, and this carries implications that extend beyond music. 

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Thank you for reading.