Three Reverberating Mice

Drifting Down Again

2008-04-15T11:02:00.000-07:00

Initially I was very intimidated by the prospect of having to create something melodious – and therefore ostensibly musical for this project. I love music and I listen to a good deal of it while I do any number of things, but I’m personally notoriously un-musical. I don’t sing, play an instrument or remix things and frankly the several instances where I have sung or attempted to play an instrument have not gone over well. This was added to the fact that I didn’t quite understand what, exactly, is meant by the term ‘melody’. I talked to various people and read a little bit about it, but I still couldn’t quite wrap my head around what part of music was the melody. Thus, this piece is the result of my exploration to discover what melody is or isn’t.

I tried many different approaches with this project. First I wanted to try and create something using lips of the human voice, but this proved to result only in jarring, and definitely un-melodic, white noise. I figured that maybe I was straying too far away from the essence of music as a beginner, so next I tried to create something out of existing musical pieces I had on my computer. This too, only resulted a disconcerting combination of beats, which was what I was actively trying to avoid. After trying that I thought maybe I should just concentrate on one main source and try to create a remix of an existing song and play off the melody that already existed. Even this ended in an audibly painful disaster. After this mishap I had no idea what to do and I tried again to see if there was something I was doing wrong.

As I went sifting through the internet I happened upon www.splicemusic.com where people can create music using sample sounds, either their own or the loops of others. I figured that I had nothing to lose, especially since the interface was specifically geared for creating music. The idea of melody that I decided to work with when I began to play around with the program was calm. Since all my failures had been jarring bits of noise I wanted something that was relaxing and subtle but still managed to create a sort of narrative that I figure melody does.

Amusingly enough, I showed the finished piece to one of my friends who’s currently majoring in performance music, only to be told that it was completely anti-melodic. Apparently I still don’t quite understand the idea of melody, however I’m still quite proud of the piece I created, which I believe embodies my attempts to understand the concept and my efforts to work with it.

Drifting Down Again

Dinosaur sounds

2008-03-23T18:12:00.000-07:00

The idea I had in mind while creating my dinosaur piece was creating a kind of dinosaur sampler, where there were several different dinosaur sounds that could, in theory, be plugged right in to video or with models and remixed as needed. For that reason I tried to make dinosaur sounds that were as organic and plausible as possible while still aiming to create something that wasn't simply a louder version of an existing animal etc. As a result I tried to keep the different dinosaurs seperate in the track, but I hoped that within each sound a distinct personality or character of the dinosaur would still come across. Personally, I envision the first sound with a large carnivour, the second with a large herbivore, the third with a smaller omnivore that likely travels in packs, and the last to a smaller predator.

The sounds that I used to create each dinosaur were taken from animals, in keeping with my goal of an organic feel. The first is a combination of a dog, crow, camel and a bobcat. The second is made up of a duck, tiger and a sheep; the third a goose, rooster and a pig and the last one a robin, budgies, lion and a porcupine.

Prehistoric mumbling

List of Numbers

2008-03-18T17:56:00.000-07:00

For my number-based piece I chose to use the directional data from the route march my dad recently did as part of an annual battle-fitness test. While the march was a real event, it could easily be distilled down to meters, degrees and gird-reference points to describe it. I felt that this type of translation was an appropriate mirror to my larger experiences as the daughter of a soldier. My dad has done several operational tours and countless exercises and training courses throughout his career. These experiences were certainly full of very real events, but by their very nature they have either been things that couldn’t be accurately described to people who hadn’t been there, or couldn’t be mentioned at all because of security reasons. So, in a way I’ve grown up with only a partial picture of such a major element that affects my family. I get a certain set of, usually sparse, data and I have to imagine in the parts that are left unsaid.

That was the approach I took when I decided to create a sound piece using the data from the route march. It was easy to take a map and trace the route, figure out distances and how many degrees a turn was, but I had no personal sense of the march myself. I’ve never walked that particular route, carried a full rucksack, dug a trench or any of the other things that happened during the march. I don’t know what was said, the sounds that were heard, or even what the weather was like. (If you can guess, my dad really isn’t the talkative type.)

What did I have to identify the experience to? In this case, there is no shortage of marching music that I’ve listened to over the years. Music, in this case, that is both meant to help soldiers keep in step, and at the same time is something readily accessible to a civilian as well. Thus I chose the march Black Bear-Retreat to Barracks, taken from the longer track We’re No’ Awa’ Tae Bide Awa’ performed by The Lowland Band of the Scottish Division and Qvs Pipes & Drums. Black Bear itself is fairly short, as it is a retreat, and I figured it mirrored the fact that when marches are portrayed it is usually the end that is featured most prominently. I decided then, that I’d take this symbolic end of a march and use it to emphasize the length of a march that I felt in trying to conceptualise it.

I took Black Bear, sectioned it off in proportion to the distances between the way-points of the route march, used the changing grid references to scale the volume of the left and right audio channels, using the references east for the left channel, and north for the right channel. The degree of turn at each way point I then reflected through the balance of each section and finally had the overall volume relate to the accumulated distance.

The result turns an energetic, rousing tune and turns it into, what I feel, is something reminiscent of slowly and steadily plodding on in disjointed surroundings.

My list of numbers:
east north degree meters
701830 5655363 274 102
701728 5655368 250 126
701611 5655320 288 107
701508 5655350 219 66.1
701468 5655298 196 150
701431 5655152 122 490
701857 5654905 171 60
701868 5654846 250 403
701492 5654695 204 140
701438 5654565 185 93.8
701433 5654471 90 2250
703686 5654552 0 1630
703629 5656184 269 203
703425 5656175 180 781
703447 5655394

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2008-03-12T13:11:00.000-07:00

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#P hidden connect 147 0 145 0;
#P hidden connect 143 0 146 0;
#P hidden connect 144 0 143 0;
#P hidden connect 123 0 122 0;
#P hidden connect 122 0 131 0;
#P hidden connect 145 0 144 0;
#P hidden connect 146 0 125 0;
#P hidden connect 124 0 122 1;
#P hidden connect 122 1 131 1;
#P hidden connect 125 0 122 2;
#P pop;

MIDI machine

2008-03-11T16:45:00.000-07:00

I remember hearing someone say that all music had its roots in the beat of the human heart and that was why it connects so well with people. Now, I don’t know how accurate that statement was, but it got me thinking come this project. I’m utterly clueless about music, but I do know a thing or two about science. It was clear that whatever I made it probably wouldn’t be something purely musical. So, instead I took my inspiration from the heart.

I figured, if music the foundation of music was the heart beat, wouldn’t it be neat to make something that would simulate the beat of the heart using musical, MIDI, notes which simulate musical instruments? In this way, I think my Max program is half like a drum machine and half like a heart beat simulator.

How I created it was by taking the various stages of one heart beat, dividing it into sections for each individual sound and then creating an equation for each that would set them off according to whatever heart rate was input into the machine, just as if one were listening in with a stethoscope, except that each sound can be changed to a number of different instruments and volumes like with a drum machine. The information I based my calculations for the program on came from this website. The thing I was surprised by the most was the real heart sounds were more reminiscent of machinery than something organic.

While I was working on it, I didn’t expect it to mimic heart sounds accurately. I knew after all, that I was trying to recreate something on a very basic level with sounds that had been made with an entirely different purpose in mind. When I began plugging in values I was blown away by how the output could come to sound like the reference samples I'd listened to, as well as how very industrial the sound was. In the end my machine creates mostly what appears to seems to be industrial white noise, all around the base of the heart beat, which I find highly intriguing.

Thus, I proudly present my Max MIDI machine: MIDIHeart

And here is a sample that I recorded from it earlier:

download link here.

Sound Meme

2008-03-08T14:39:00.000-08:00

LISTENING QUESTIONS
from: Deep Listening: A Composer's Sound Practice by Pauline Oliveros

1.What is your earliest memory of sound? How do you feel about it now?
I honestly don't remember sounds all that much. But if I had to pick an earliest memory, it would probably the squeak of the bathroom door in my house. It's still as annoying now as it was over a decade ago.

2. When do you notice your breath?
I tend to notice my breath more when I'm trying to concentrate on something, or when I'm relaxed. I don't tend to notice it too much when I'm stressed or rushing around.

3. What is attention?
Focusing intently on something.

4. Can you imagine composing or improvising a piece based on breath rhythms?
I don't think I could. My sense of rhythm is practically non-existent. I prefer to manipulate existing sounds and patterns rather than direct my own.

5. What sound reminds you of home?
Probably the sound of bannock frying in the oven.

6. Do you listen for sound in your dreams? What do you hear? How does it
affect you?
My dreams almost never have sound. There is talking, but what's said is understood, never heard, so they're kind of like silent movies with subtitles or something of the sort.

7. The distinguished historian, Wiliam H. McNeil, has recently argued in his
book Keeping Together in Time that "coordinated rhythmical activity is
fundamental to life in society."
Can you imagine tracking a rhythm pattern in your daily life and writing about
it?
I think it might be possible, but since I tend to over think things I don't think the pattern would be my genuine normal one. Possibly somehow recording it and then writing about it shortly afterwards would make more sense, I think. That way I would have no chance to arbitrarily change my routine.

8. Can you imagine rhythm pattern for the rhythm circle with your own form of
notation?
No.

9. Can you imagine composing or improvising a piece for voices using attention
patterns?
Again, composing and I fail to see eye to eye. I'll stick to editing.

10. What is sound?
Vibrations transmitted in a wave-like form.

11. What is listening?
Paying attention to a certain set of sounds while overlooking others.

12. What action(s) is usually synchronized with sound?
What actions aren't synchronized with sound? Personally, I can't think of any truly silent actions. No matter how small, there is always a corresponding sound.

13. When do you feel sound in your body?
Either when the sound is an especially deep one, or when I'm especially close to the sound, such as when I'm listening to something in a very quiet environment or with headphones.

14. What sound fascinates you?
Sounds that involve wooden surfaces, whether it's tapping on a desk top or walking in wooden shoes definitely fascinates me.

15. What is a soundscape?
An encompassing environment where the sounds work together to describe a scene or convey a certain feeling/mood.

16. What are you hearing right now? How is it changing?
Must I be honest? Kamen Rider and Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei theme songs, which are obviously changing as the different tracks play. Just typical Japanese pop music.

17. How many sounds can you hear all at once?
I think that depends on the range of sounds. If there is one especially powerful one it could block out many others. Or if all the sounds were roughly the same they'd likely just become an indistinct mess. I suppose 10 would probably be a realistic limit for actually being able to recognise sounds all at once.

18. How far can you hear sounds?
Again, it depends on the kind of sound. For quiet ones I can hear them across a room or down a hall, and loud ones a couple blocks away.

19. Are you sure that you are hearing every thing that is to hear?
I'm sure that I'm not hearing everything. If my brain didn't filter some of the unnecessary sounds out, I'm sure I'd go crazy. Since I have asperger's syndrome, this is more a learned process out of necessity rather than an automatic one, so I can definitely say insanity would likely result.

20. What more could you hear if you had bigger ears? (or smaller)
I think that sounds would just be clearer and more defined as opposed to picking up new spectrums of vibrations, considering that human eardrums are only built to be able to understand certain frequencies.

21. Can you hear more sounds if you are quiet? How many more?
I think I can hear about 5 -10 more sounds when I'm quiet. Usually just those ambient sounds that normal activity tends to drown out.

22. How long can you listen?
I think my attention span for really listening to something maxes out around 15 minutes.

23. When are you not listening?
I lapse into not listening whenever my current train of thought deviates drastically from the subject of the sounds around me.

24. Can you not listen when something is sounding?
This depends upon how much I don't want to be hearing whatever that sound is. If it doesn't particularly bother me I'll continue to listen, but if it's such that I can't stand it I can usually block most of it out.

25. Try not listen to anything. What happens?
I kept hearing various sounds anyway. There was always some sound to intrude on my attempts no to hear.

26. How can you not listen if your ears never close?
Your brain decides that it doesn't want to listen and ignores the signals sent from the ear or reroutes them elsewhere.

27. What meaning does any sound have for you?
I think sounds has meaning as far as it reinforces that of other objects, whether it's combined with words, images or objects. I feel that sound on its own can convey a mood or a feeling, but flounders when it comes to imparting meaning totally on its own.

28. What is favourite sound? How is it made? When can you hear it? Are you
hearing it now?
I don't think that I have a favourite sound.

29. What is the soundscape of the space you are now occupying?
Japanese pop music, the whirr of a computer fan, the clacking of computer keys and the sound of footsteps though the ceiling.

30. How is the soundscape shaped? or what makes a soundscape?
A soundscape is shaped though the combination of many sounds all added together to form a collective experience. These sounds have to relate to each other in some sort of logical or spacial way in order to form a functioning soundscape.

31. What is the soundscape of your neighborhood?
Traffic, sirens, traffic and more sirens. Occasionally there's a songbird or two.

32. What is the soundscape of your city?
Ask me that after I spend more time actually in the city and not cooped up at school or in my basement.

33. How many different soundscapes can you imagine?
Too many to have to list them all off.

34. What would you like to have in your own soundscape?
The sound of a muted wind, preferably through the leaves of a tree. And music that fits my mood at the current moment. After that I like the variety of other sounds moving in and out of the soundscape.

35. What would you record to represent your soundscape?
Likely, I'd choose the sound of walking around through my house, with its creaky doors and floors, set to some muted music.

36. What sound makes you speculative?
The muted noise from fans tends to add to my contemplative mood.

37. What sounds gives you chills?
Without a doubt, the sound of a metal fork or spoon scraping the bottom of a metal pot or bowl.

38. What sound ruffles your scalp?
The squeaking sound that comes from wiping glass clean with a cloth.

39. What sound changes your breathing?
Any sudden, sharp sounds, such as my alarm clock going off in the morning.

40. What sound would you like whispered in your ear?
I can't think of any particular sound at the moment. Whispering has always bothered me personally, so I tend not to think about it much.

Eerie

2008-02-05T17:45:00.000-08:00

The program I chose to use was Theremin 1.0 created by Nicolas Fournel.

As a child I remember adoring the eerie undulating music of the old sci-fi movies that used to be aired on TV almost perpetually through the lazy hours of the weekend and in the summer, even if I really never cared for the movies themselves. To me then, those soundtracks were truly other-worldly and I had always wondered how they had been made. When I discovered the existence of the Theremin several years back it captured my interest in a similar way. The way it practically played the air as opposed to a set of strings, holes or keys really appealed to me, especially since I’m pretty well helpless in front of conventional instruments. I was dismayed to learn how rare they were now, so when I saw this program I jumped on it, so to speak.

Using the program was an absolute delight. I didn’t have to worry about particular notes or beats or complex math. I could treat the sound like a treat a drawing and just start to build lines and movements on top of one another more or less intuitively as I chose. Where I find myself intimidated by the ‘rules’ of music this program managed to break through and I took to just playing with it.

One feature I especially enjoy is the ability to sample other audio and then manipulate it through the Theremin to create more complex compositions, though I have yet to test a full range of different noises with it.

The piece I’ve created using the program was done while I learned it, testing different areas of pressure sensitivity, different types of motion and placement within the program, which comes to sound, I think, fondly like some of those first soundtracks that I remember from when I was younger.

Sonic Journey

2008-01-30T06:50:00.000-08:00

For my sonic journey I thought it would be interesting to record my walk through one of my favorite places in the city, where I go when I need to get out or relax. The mix of eastern and western culture in Chinatown is something I never tire of, and I thought sound might just be able to capture a bit of that experience. I was also intrigued with the idea of recording people covertly, just to see what kind of sounds I could capture that I’d normally just ignore if I wasn't intent on listening. This journey is a compilation of some of the different moments in my hour-long recording.

I started my walk downtown amidst the perpetual construction and traffic along Centre Street, and then in through several of the malls in Chinatown and back to the CTrain as I usually do. Only this time I really tried to be aware of the snippets of conversation as I passed people or the subtle noises in the background. It was quite the surprise when I went and re-listened to the journey recording after it was finished. I had thought that I’d been listening intently as I’d recorded the journey, yet some of the sounds, like one of the store owner’s high heels and the creak of one of the doors I hadn’t remembered hearing at all. It was really a testament to just how much sound is filtered. Getting to listen to my journey again and hear these little subtleties played back definitely gave me a new appreciation both for the ambient sounds of an environment as well as the capabilities of the recorder.

Overall, I found the project really enlightening, both because of the experience of trying to actively listen to my environment and sounds I’d normally dismiss as well as being able to re-hear all the different nuances in the recording. The one thing that I think I’d change if I were to do this again, would be to wait for a bit warmer weather so that I could have the microphone coming out of my purse instead of a coat pocket, because of the fabric rustling, though very much a part of a journey on a cold day, can at times distract from the more interesting sounds in the environment.

Cardboard Drum

2008-01-22T17:40:00.000-08:00

Here's a quick sample of the (limited) range of my cardboard drum from the first day of class.

Ubu Websound

2008-01-20T13:31:00.000-08:00

The piece of sound-art that I've chosen is 1/1970; (blank) 1 by Bengt Emil Johnson, 1970.

I chose this piece because I find myself drawn to the landscape that he creates - both comfortable and disconcerting in turns. As well, I'm facinated by the idea of using text/words just as sound without having worring about the assocations each word carries. Finally, it was interesting to hear, in this piece, one of the first such uses of words as sound in art.

Drum photo #2

2008-01-19T13:06:00.001-08:00

IMG_4392
Originally uploaded by ssjvegeta1632

This is the second photo of my drum for the MADT sound art class.

Drum photo #1

2008-01-19T13:00:00.001-08:00

IMG_4393
Originally uploaded by ssjvegeta1632

The first picture of the drum project for MADT sound art.

cello

2008-01-17T10:06:00.000-08:00

cello loop first upload.