https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000tlw8 Listened to a great documentary on Muzak. Which I have been a fan of for many years. I am exploring this potentially as one of my essay topics. These Radio show features fascinating contributions by Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo, writer Joseph Lanza, artist Mika Taanila, scholar Caroline Potter, science historian Alexandra Hui, Nigel Rodgers …
Author archives: Steve Stonhold
Between The Ears – BBC 3 Show
Through Jana Winderen’s feature on Between The Ears, I have discovered some very thought provoking radiophonic journeys through environments. Mixed between some classical music, field recording and speech, these shows evoke very satisfying autonomous sensory response. Powerful glimpses into experience through sound. Some of the recordings of bees in this particular show I found really …
Jana Winderen
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/371/6529/eaba4658 Using Hydrophones on a bees nest. As they are still piezo microphones. With hydrophones, patience is really important, Winderen will sometimes wait for 30 minutes before attuning to the water. Winderen uses her hydrophones outside of water as they are basically high powered contract microphones, showing us a demonstration of plugging them into a …
Creative Projects: Thoughts on Deep Listening Excercises
A deep listening exercise we did in Jose’s class. We uploaded all of our surroundings to our group padlet to see how each other’s experiences differed. An observation I made from this exercise was listing which sounds we found pleasant and unpleasant. Experience of sound can be quite subjective. There are certain sounds that some …
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Creative Sound Projects
I am really enjoying the work of Daphne Oram, in a lesson with Gareth we covered ‘Oramics’, her synthesizer and sound producing machine. Gareth was talking about the Science Museum’s retrospective look at Oram’s synthesizers, with some of the spearheads of the curation saying that Oram at this time was the UK equivalent of Robert …
Who Owns Silence?
Cage: More than Silence. When Silence Rises from Earth. Ugandan Dub collective, produce a powerful reinterpretation of John Cage’s 4,33. “Silence” is an interesting word. We know that John Cage isn’t talking about the non-existance of sound but the microcosms that go unnoticed as we all go about existing loudly. Silence in this case was …
Creative Sound Projects: Jose’s Lessons
Here are some of my favourite links shared in classes with Jose. We have been learning about layering sounds and I found this Jurassic Park video especially helpful when visualizing how someone might apply SFX design to a film by playing along on a loaded sampler. It took me a while to get to grips …
Creative Sound Projects: Making Visual Scores with Gareth
With my visual score I wanted to use colours and their intersections as a way to demonstrate how the sounds might engage with each other in the piece, in my eyes each colour was a different sound or player, and each sound should be informed by their relation with the other. I had always seen …
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Creative Sound Projects: Reflections on Gareth’s class
This was my first time hearing Kurt Schwitters and Jaap Blonk, both providing quite stimulating vocal works that instantaneously come off as free and playful, this so far is my favourite aspect to vocal improvisation. Whilst I appreciated Cathy Berberian, I didn’t particularly like the structure to the performance, it felt quite conceptual and academic …
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Reflections on Assessment Feedback
“Your reflective writing focuses on the lack of a shared physical space which curiously is one of the defining characteristics of sound culture since the invention of recording in 1877.” – Ed This was an interesting opening observation to open with. I think I was mostly talking about shared physical space of performance and how …