Field Recording

Recording one:
mp3
.wav
Run Time: One minute 27 seconds
4pm
10/17
location
This recording was taken on the side of the road, after I heard church bells coming from somewhere in the general vicinity. The microphones were placed as far a part as they could go horizontally in order to catch the swell and flow of traffic.

Recording two:
mp3
.wav
Run Time: One minute 6 seconds
9pm
10/23
location
This recording is of a courtyard water fountain. One microphone was at the base of the bubbler and the other where the trajectory re-hit the water.

Recording three:
mp3
.wav
Run time: 30 seconds
11pm
10/19
location
This recording was taken outside a bar with one microphone inside a cigarette receptacle and the other outside and closer to the ground.

Rough 1 (for wednesday)

Draft 1

Drift Strategy

Via sidewalk ::
If the last step when coming to an intersection happens to be on a crack then turn left, if not, right. If there are no cracks to step on continue straight.

Via not sidewalk ::
If following a gravel/dirt path take the first offshoot that comes up on the right. If on grass follow the natural path of leaves, in that wherever the most grass is peaking through, go there. If there's a squirrel, follow it. Two squirrels, don't. Ignore rabbits.

Essay 1

A hi-fi soundscape and lo-fi soundscape provide two very distinct and different experiences to the listener. A hi-fi soundscape “…is one in which discrete sounds can be heard clearly because of the low ambient noise level” (Schafer 43). For example, if one finds themselves in the country. The perfect example, and one of my favorite memories, took place while I was walking in a county park around a quarry. I had turned my recorder on to record something else, and after realizing I had turned it on too late to catch the sound, I was about to put it away when out of the silence came the voice of a little boy in the playground across the quarry shouting “Hello! Can anybody hear me?” It was absolutely the most beautiful and haunting thing I’d heard. What made it so beautiful is that it took place in a hi-fi system. The surrounding quiet allowed the lone sound to dominate the sound space, floating it’s way through without competition. A lo-fi soundscape is that of a space over-populated with sounds. Often a city or a crowded room, any space in which a multitude of sounds are fighting for attention. I do think to use such sharp phrasing as “All perspective is lost” and “…there is no distance; there is only presence” (Schafer 43), is perhaps over stating. Certainly, comparatively, there is far less ability to identify location (including direction and distance) within a lo-fi system as opposed to a hi-fi system. However I think, within a lo-fi system, the ear can find varying sounds, and I believe it is not necessarily a complete loss of perspective, but more of a disorienting process in which the listener has to work harder to find that perspective. Schafer does go on to mention that for a sound to absolutely stand out in a lo-fi space it must continuously amplify above the surrounding sonic chaos. Continuing in that vein, I have distinct sound memories of a siren cutting through all the ambient noise of a New York City street, making it’s way into, through, and out of a soundscape, with a very clear sense of distance and relative increasing or decreasing volume.  

Schafer uses a beautiful sense of visual language to describe certain sounds of his childhood, those being the sounds of living on a farm, from butter churning to animal noises to the stomping of snow boots. To describe a sound is to describe its shape, its color, texture, size, volume etc. Schafer demonstrates this with his use of such terms as “…slopping cream…” “…swoosh and bang of the screen door…” “…sudden crack as a nail sprang from a board…” and  “…deep pedal tones…” (Schafer 48). He created a world for the sound, and the reader, to exist in, therefore leaving room for rich textures that bring the sounds to life. His careful use of language brings about a melancholy feeling for the reader, leading one to assume that these everyday sounds from his youth were an important back-scape of his growing up. In examining my own childhood I would describe the damp green fuzz of a woods walk after rain. The soft crinkle of wet gravel in time with the rhythm of my step, a lone (and perhaps projected lonely) birdcall carefully slicing through heavy air, the disappearing of oscillating road noise and passing cars on slippery concrete the further engulfed in trees I became; all of these mixed in between a slight shiver to every sound despite the humid atmosphere.

Found Sound Project

With the final draft of this project I was interested in forcing the ear into different levels of a metaphoric sonic ocean. Starting in a clear if not somewhat piercing above layer before being forced into a perhaps tumultuous top sea and then settling in a bottom dark layer, which I saw as being equally clear as the top, just denser in it's pressure. I suppose it could also be a metaphoric wind/turbulence map instead of an ocean.

Click here for project link
Click here, here, and here for project notes link (I attached pictures of the notes because I wasn't sure how to translate the drawn diagrams into type)