Music of Sound

Detritus 176

tim — Wed, 16 May 2012 19:20:53 +0000

> The Sound of Snow & Ice is a fascinating BBC radio doco about Jyväskylä School for the Visually Impaired, where kids learn to use sound to navigate….

thanks for the tip Michael!

Detritus 175

tim — Tue, 15 May 2012 02:50:01 +0000

FUTURE SELF brought together a media artist collective, rAndom International, a choreographer, Wayne McGregor, and composer Max Richter in a unique project at MADE

> The hypnagogic is the ultimate paradigm-busting tool, zzzzzzzzz….

> Sound waves 57 octaves lower than middle-C are rumbling away from a supermassive black hole in the Perseus cluster, apparently…

> wow! a bell so huge it sank the ship they tried to transport it with!
(& its remained underwater ever since)

> If you are in LA you should check out Sonos Studio – an “acoustically-designed gallery” which currently is host to a touch-activated sound installation by Luke Fischbeck – read more here

> Love this resin incased headphone amp

> Can music learn from the slow food movement?

> George Lucas vs his rich neighbours (using the force for good?)

CG birds for Mothers Day? Nicely done – Happy Mothers Day to mothers everywhere!
(& nicely done sound effects/foley too by uncredited people?)

Scattered Light 043

tim — Sun, 13 May 2012 07:32:07 +0000

Shot just south of Raglan on 16th Feb 2008

Detritus 174

tim — Fri, 11 May 2012 22:09:43 +0000

“Taxi Driver” by Disney – genius by Bryan Boyce

> Interesting developments at soundcloud and also an interesting discussion of its growth & having to deal with the inevitable copyright issues… – I personally think issuing take down notices or removing content is not the smartest way to handle a situation of music being uploaded to a streaming site, one of the few videos I have ever uploaded with unlicensed music (this one: Auckland to Wellington: an 8 hour trip in 5 minutes) I received an email a while ago saying something like “we noticed you using track X which is owned by artist Y…” but rather than mute it, or make me take it down & replace the music, they simply added a ‘BUY THIS TRACK’ button. Which turns an everyone loses scenario (take down) into the potential for the artist to gain from anyone who likes the music track (But if they didn’t want their music associated with the video at all then a take down would be fair enough)

> This could well be the best UK city stealth mobile recording rig yet! (Except its in the USofA!?) (thanks for the tip Tom!)

> Quite beautiful wifi speaker

Carsten Nicolai’s unidisplay exhibited at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal till June 17th

Scattered Light 042

tim — Thu, 10 May 2012 09:15:09 +0000

shot in Tokomaru Bay, East Cape on 12th May, 2007

imagine how proud the first owner of this car was….
and the lives lived in it

Imaginary Landscapes

tim — Thu, 10 May 2012 09:02:55 +0000

A 40-minute documentary on Brian Eno from 1989, directed by Duncan Ward and Gabriella Cardazzo

Detritus 173

tim — Wed, 09 May 2012 19:21:04 +0000

This project by Kouichi Okamoto is genius! 504 musical box movements which each play only a single note… imagine spatially what it must sound like in real life!!

> More on Neil Young, high(er) definition sound and mind melding with chickens (actually, I made up that last bit)

> For anyone who rides a bike in traffic, meet The Hornster – a 178-decibel problem solver!

#imaginary_DJ_meme? #oh_dear

Detritus 172

tim — Mon, 07 May 2012 19:53:56 +0000

> “The goal is not ‘perfect’ acoustics, but rather variable acoustics for different applications….” – check out this mechanical ceiling that can be tweaked in real time (thanks for tip Steve)

> Call for sound memories – must be hand written and sent via snail mail for this installation

thanks for the tip Rene

> Serious question: when was the last time you did something that scared you? I can’t remember my last time but I do now know the next time as I’ve agreed to do a local pecha kucha – my subject: Music in the key of sea. Thankfully I still have 2 months to prepare for it…

It all sounds like a squeaky gate

tim — Sat, 05 May 2012 05:14:19 +0000

The title of this post made me laugh – it is one of the straw men arguments described in The Guardian in an article about the Five Myths of Contemporary Classical Music – its worth a read & I only use the straw man description not because I necessarily disagree with anything they say, but rather that in my case at least its a slightly pointless debate. In my youth I had no real interest in classical music – contemporary or not, and its only as I grew older & a little more open minded that I started to appreciate the different styles & approaches and slowly found individual composers that appealed to my sensibilities. You can lead a horse to water etc just as you can load as much music on someones iPod as you like, but they will only actually engage with it as and when they are ready to. And as with anything outside the mainstream, many aren’t – you only need to turn on a TV set to appreciate that an awful lot of the mainstream media is absolute mid rotting dreck….

But the flip side to that concept is that for every Bjork fan who hates classical music, little do they know that eg Arvo Part has obviously been a big influence on her as a composer. So even if the sheeple aren’t ready to investigate such high brow music (and may never be) they may well already be enjoying its influence… And of course film scores are also a means by which classical, orchestral and even otherwise avante garde music is snuck into their waking lives. In fact for anyone who does not have any direct interest in classical music, their most likely exposure to orchestral music will likely be via film scores…

So theres no conclusion, other than that I do like me a squeaky gate – whether its actually just a squeaky gate, or its a description of a piece of music that made me smile….

Also linked from that Guardian article is another Contemporary classics: what are the composers’ favourite works?

And lastly, from the comments to my previous post about slowed down bird recordings, sincere thanks to Lee for the tip of this incredibly beautiful piece of music:

Slow Motion Blackbird – realized By Chris Hughes based on Steve Reich’s Slow Motion Sound, the original score reads: “Gradually slow down a recorded sound without altering its pitch or timbre”

Slowing down life

tim — Fri, 04 May 2012 05:34:58 +0000

This is the most beautiful piece of music that I have heard all week!

Aren’t both the melody/intervals and the tonality simply gorgeous?
I didn’t make it, I recorded it & slowed it down to quarter real speed, denoised it a bit & cut some of the blank space out between phrases….

This is the original recording:

And another bit of recordings from similar location – Karamea on the West Coast of the South Island, from January 2011… first at real speed then slowed way down….

Its fascinating on a few different counts: first the complexity of the phrasing but almost weirder is the decay – the slap delay/verb tail which you just do not notice at real speed….