A sound is something that is heard. Listening is an activity.
Sound design is fine-tuning the message your audience will sense. Sound may be buried in the message and only noticed if it is ever taken away. Sound may be the message. Without it we limit the use of one of our most receptive senses. Naturally, certain tones are conveyed by using certain sounds that ultimately communicate a message. It will be up to you to determine what you want to say and how you want to say it through the design of sound.
Below is a list of five words. Each student must compose sound from a sample or recorded means or a combination of both that communicates each word. Listen critically to how different sounds portray different messages. Each sound should be exactly ten seconds in length, exported as .mp3 files. We will play each .mp3 one at a time through the QuickTime player. Do not use music.
The words to use are:
Soft
Global
Digital
Speed
Mournful
Details. Five, ten-second .mp3 files.
Each file should be labeled with the corresponding sound names as well as students’ initials followed with .mp3 (for instance soft_studentinitials.aif). Place the files in a folder labeled “sound_studentslastname” and burn it to a CD labeled with your first and last name as well as “Sound.” Be prepared to load the files onto the presentation computer at the beginning of class.
Grading
Audio: 100%. Student demonstrated the ability to record, import, edit, compose, and export .aif files. Student also demonstrated an appropriate, clear, and memorable solution to the given problem. Level of finish and technical craft achieved.
I can’t say anything this song doesn’t say brilliantly. Comedian Adam Buxton takes on the Radiohead remix contest with his own entry, which cuts through the hype brings a bit of wit to TV incidental music and remixing alike. And, really, how often do you get to say “Radiohead” and “rap” in the same sentence? Take my mechanical rights, please!
See, there, I said something. It wasn’t very good. Just so listen to the song and thank me later, okay?
See also Adam Buxton’s sketch for BBC3’s Rush Hour which cleans up NWA to “Help Da Police.”Thanks, Jaymis!
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. It’s peculiar character too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessing mine; as he who lights a taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.
Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson, August 13, 1813
Post title by Flavor Flav of Public Enemy on the track “Caught, Can We Get a Witness” on the Album “It Takes a Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back”
Live DJ-ing takes a step further into the 21st Century with this invention which lets DJ’s view, cut, grab, loop and mix tracks by doing live waveform editing on a twin touchscreen “turntable.” Invented by UK student Scott Hobbs as part of his innovative product design course, ATTIGO is about the same size as a conventional deck set-up, but has all the flexibility of digital track storage: choosing new tracks without all that swapping of vinyl. Check out the video to see it in action.
The digital basis of the system could allow for some pretty interesting new sounds at the hands of an expert DJ, even as it waves bye-bye to the tactile feedback that you get from the old-fashioned technique, moving a record under a needle.
It exists as a single working prototype for now, but Scott is going to try and commercialize it.
I just read an article on the composer John Luther Adams in the most recent New Yorker. His work is another instance where sound, music, and art are intersecting in our current cultural climate. I was extremely taken by Adams’ piece “The Place Where You Go To Listen” which is currently on view at the Museum of the North in Fairbanks, Alaska. In this site specific installation,
“information from seismological, meteorological, and geomagnetic stations in various parts of Alaska is fed into a computer and transformed into an intricate, vibrantly colored field of electronic sound”.
The installation consists of five glass panels which change color depending on the time of day and the season (the image above shows the installation at noon in the summer). The sounds emmanating from the installation also depend greatly on the weather, season, the movement of the earth, and the aurora borealis. Patterns of bass can be heard during very small earthquakes and
“shimmering sounds in the extreme registers—the Aurora Bells—are tied to the fluctuations in the magnetic field that cause the Northern Lights”.
I have never had much of an interest in visiting Alaska, but I certainly do now. I couldn’t find video or audio of this piece on the web. Let me know if you stumble across something.(quotes taken from the New Yorker article)
I’ve been going over the works and artists in this year’s whitney biennial and I was pleased to discover that one of my favorite djs, DJ Olive, is included (this is his second biennial).
“Using a room sized white tent furnished with cots, DJ Olive (Gregor Asch) creates an environment of deep ambient sounds with his most recent composition from the Sleeping Pill series, Triage. The artist encourages visitors to quietly listen to his work, providing a respite from the external chaos of the city. “(taken from the Whitney Biennial Site)
I’m really intrigued by the importance that sound now has in contemporary art. It would have been hard to imagine the whitney biennial including the work of a “dj” with only a minimal art background just a few years ago (DJ Olive has collaborated with sound art pioneer Christian Marclay in the past). I own DJ Olive’s ambient cd releases, buoy and sleep, so I have a sense of what Triage might sound like.
I can’t help but wonder about the “installation” aspect of the piece. I have a hard time imagining the average visitor to the whitney actually laying down and enjoying the sound. The tent and the cots become more about the idea of rest and healing than to be actually used for such. DJ Olive’s sleeping pill events seem to more effective in achieving his goals.
My friend, Noah Black, wrote a beautiful review of this great album. He kindly agreed to let me post it here. Enjoy.
While they may be electronic musicians, Boards of Canada’s music is unlike the kind of sound that you hear being pumped out of massive sound systems at raves. Instead of heading for the overcrowded electronic genres like house or trance, Boards of Canada sets its sights on loftier goals, the ambient electronic, or intelligent dance music style. Instead of providing a driving bass line for people to dance to, ambient music sets up an atmosphere, often with long notes, lasting for minutes, that simply change in tone. As one drone fades out, another one takes its place. On top of this, there are electronically altered pianos and flutes, drum machine beats, both relaxed and intense, and often sampled voices from a wide variety of sources. The music is, in a sense, an Impressionist painting.
I just read an article on the composer John Luther Adams in the most recent New Yorker. His work is another instance where sound, music, and art are intersecting in our current cultural climate. I was extremely taken by Adams’ piece “The Place Where You Go To Listen” which is currently on view at the Museum of the North in Fairbanks, Alaska. In this site specific installation,
