Deep Note - Previous Works

Previous Works

Prior to the creation of Deep Note, several other works made use of similar techniques of frequency spread.

In their book Analog Days, Trevor Pinch and Frank Trocco point to the track "Spaced," from the 1970 Beaver & Krause album In a Wild Sanctuary as the source for Deep Note. They quote synthesizer builder Tom Oberheim as saying the original analog form is much richer than the "digital perfection" used in movie theatres.

Other similar predecessors include:

• Iannis Xenakis' piece Metastaseis (1955), which contains a very similar effect in the first minute that begins on a single tone and slowly spreads into a tone cluster.
• The Beatles' 1967 song "A Day in the Life," which concludes with "an orchestral crescendo," climbing in a free-form manner before stopping at a single high note, followed after a pause by a single crashing piano chord.
• Styx's 1974 song "Krakatoa," which features the spread tone.
• Yellow Magic Orchestra's 1981 track "Loom," with an upward slow glissando to crescendo at the beginning. A similar sound appeared in Yellow Magic Orchestra member Haruomi Hosono's earlier 1978 album Cochin Moon. Both versions were synthesized.
• A similar effect is used several times in the 1979 version of When a Stranger Calls.
• A similar effect appears on the track Something's Moving of Michael Stearns' 1981 album Planetary Unfolding.
• A similar sound was created for use in the 1979 horror film Phantasm. The sound was used for the "Dimensional Fork," a vibration which supposedly created a rift in time and space. The same sound appeared in the sequel, Phantasm II and was used, along with other sounds created in the third movie, in Phantasm IV: Oblivion.