Today is World Listening Day, a day of awareness intended to support our collective attention to the sonic world in which we live -- and the implications and consequences of doing so. Much of the impact humans have on the world is best accessed through sound and so our tendency to ignore sound, an outcome of living in increasingly noisy urban environments, isolates us from that impact.
Pauline Oliveros told the story many times about the first time she recorded her environment, the sounds of her backyard from her bedroom window. She said she was shocked by all the things she heard in the recording that she hadn't noticed just listening. That's an artifact of recording -- and one of the reasons why I love field recording -- the recorder doesn't sort and prioritize sound the way the human perceptual apparatus does. When we then listen to a recording, it does a kind of end run around that apparatus; it helps us simultaneously focus our attention and expand it.
As an example and exercise, listen to these few minutes of my studio:
What did you hear? Maybe the first thing you noticed was the sound of the ceiling fan humming above my desk. My clothes swishing against the faux leather of my chair. The click and clatter of my mouse and keyboard. My unconscious ahemming and breathing. Distant thumps of my wife as she moves about downstairs. Maybe a very distant lawnmower. Some of these sounds I heard as they happened; many I discovered upon listening to the recording.
Take a moment today to sit and listen. It doesn't matter where you are or what is happening, just notice the sounds that go on around you. Let your ear wander, allow your attention to be pulled in whatever directions it may be. Notice what you notice. Listen. Your world, your environment, your community all can benefit from it.
Saturday, July 18, 2020
Wednesday, July 1, 2020
That Moment When You Earthquake-Proof a Bridge and It Becomes a Giant Aeolian Harp
I first learned about the Golden Gate Bridge's eerie hum from an early June blog post by Marc Weidenbaum, who included video in his post recording the sound from his backyard. I was immediately fascinated by its shimmering drone and sought recordings of and background on it across the Internet. Apparently, the noise was an unintended (but anticipated) consequence of wind blowing through the newly renovated walkway/bike path railings, done as part of an ongoing earthquake-proofing of the landmark prompted by the 1989 Loma Prieta tremblor.
However it got there, I loved it. Indeed, I'm fascinated by the sounds that bridges make (and, for that matter, just by bridges in general), although my attempts to record and make use of/music with those sounds have mostly not gone very well so far (but watch this space). In any case, I saved audio of the Golden Gate wherever I could find it and eventually began to analyze it with the intent of creating something musical from it. This is the result:
If you listen to the recordings linked above, you'll probably quickly discern that this is not a recording of the Golden Gate, rather, it's the result of my deconstruction and reconstruction of its pitches, timbres, rhythms, etc. using digital music resources. My aim was to recreate the song of the bridge closely, but not exactly, taking some small liberties to make it a little more musical; it doesn't need much, to my ears, being already almost the definition of ambient music.
Surprisingly, this was not terribly complicated. My ear training being very rusty, I guessed (incorrectly) that the frequencies had some simple overtone relationship and, therefore, (correctly) started with simple sine waves, thinking additive synthesis would be a useful starting point. It turned out that the pitches are oddly near to standard scale pitches: G3, A3 (A440-ish), B3, A4, C5, and D5. Although I didn't dig very deeply, I found no evidence that the bridge rail designers did this purposely, so I found it astonishing that the notes were so consistently diatonic -- right off the white keys of the piano.
After that, most of the work was setting up randomized LFOs to create the shimmeriness of the pitches' relationships, then adding a relatively high-frequency (132ms), high feedback (86%), low saturation (35%) delay and finally a little bit of reverb (Valhalla VintageVerb tuned to huge halls but with the tail dialed way back) to knit the thing together and give it the sense of scale and distance you hear from the bridge.
The work is intended as an ambient piece, to be either listened to directly or left as atmospheric sound. I found myself drawn to expressly meditative mindsets as I felt through the shape and direction I wanted, so it could fit in that context as well. Of course, to the extent that I simply mimicked an existing sound, I can take only very limited credit for creativity; however, as a self-expression, it resonates (sic) deeply.
I'm as pleased with this as maybe anything I've done. It captures/recreates a sound I am endlessly in love with: a held tone or drone with overtones (or, as in this case, scale steps) that unpredictably jump in or fade out, creating an aural sensation equivalent to watching the light of the morning sun sparkle over rippling water. I've struggled to produce that kind of sound acoustically (although I'm learning -- again, watch this space) as well as electronically; combine that with what I've learned about the structure of such sounds and this outcome feels especially satisfying.
However it got there, I loved it. Indeed, I'm fascinated by the sounds that bridges make (and, for that matter, just by bridges in general), although my attempts to record and make use of/music with those sounds have mostly not gone very well so far (but watch this space). In any case, I saved audio of the Golden Gate wherever I could find it and eventually began to analyze it with the intent of creating something musical from it. This is the result:
If you listen to the recordings linked above, you'll probably quickly discern that this is not a recording of the Golden Gate, rather, it's the result of my deconstruction and reconstruction of its pitches, timbres, rhythms, etc. using digital music resources. My aim was to recreate the song of the bridge closely, but not exactly, taking some small liberties to make it a little more musical; it doesn't need much, to my ears, being already almost the definition of ambient music.
Surprisingly, this was not terribly complicated. My ear training being very rusty, I guessed (incorrectly) that the frequencies had some simple overtone relationship and, therefore, (correctly) started with simple sine waves, thinking additive synthesis would be a useful starting point. It turned out that the pitches are oddly near to standard scale pitches: G3, A3 (A440-ish), B3, A4, C5, and D5. Although I didn't dig very deeply, I found no evidence that the bridge rail designers did this purposely, so I found it astonishing that the notes were so consistently diatonic -- right off the white keys of the piano.
After that, most of the work was setting up randomized LFOs to create the shimmeriness of the pitches' relationships, then adding a relatively high-frequency (132ms), high feedback (86%), low saturation (35%) delay and finally a little bit of reverb (Valhalla VintageVerb tuned to huge halls but with the tail dialed way back) to knit the thing together and give it the sense of scale and distance you hear from the bridge.
The work is intended as an ambient piece, to be either listened to directly or left as atmospheric sound. I found myself drawn to expressly meditative mindsets as I felt through the shape and direction I wanted, so it could fit in that context as well. Of course, to the extent that I simply mimicked an existing sound, I can take only very limited credit for creativity; however, as a self-expression, it resonates (sic) deeply.
I'm as pleased with this as maybe anything I've done. It captures/recreates a sound I am endlessly in love with: a held tone or drone with overtones (or, as in this case, scale steps) that unpredictably jump in or fade out, creating an aural sensation equivalent to watching the light of the morning sun sparkle over rippling water. I've struggled to produce that kind of sound acoustically (although I'm learning -- again, watch this space) as well as electronically; combine that with what I've learned about the structure of such sounds and this outcome feels especially satisfying.
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