First Bush/Kerry Presidential Debate

I spent a few hours today making a video/audio recording of the Presidential Debates, which I'll be using for a video project, and sending the audio to a high school experimental music class for dissection. Other than that, no sound-making to report.

What's more, I will be away this weekend (Friday through Sunday) in Newbury, Vermont, at the New England Sacred Harp Convention, making plenty of sound, but without access to the internet. I'll report on that some time Monday.

Scissors, Desk, Desk Mat, Paper

I tried making sounds with a pair of scissors today. First I tried just opening and closing the scissors, which produced a very quiet sound, I soon placed the scissors on my desk (well, on my desk mat, which is on top of my desk), and began spinning the scissors around, which made a much louder sound. I could hear a deeper resonance to the sound when the scissors were further away from me, so i tried just rubbing the scissors over those two parts of the desk, and found that about six inches in from the edge, the sound gets deeper.

I was able to create quite a variety of sounds playing the scissors against the desk in various ways. I tried spinning them by putting my finger in the holes on the scissors a lot, seeing how slow I could spin, and what would happen sonically as the spinning transformed into moving my finger around in widening circles. I got a slightly different sound depending on which side of the scissors was facing down, and on in which of the two holes I put my finger.

I also ended up scraping the scissors back and forth in a variety of patterns, tapping the different parts of the scissors against the table, and eventually, slicing the air again, this time more firmly, which produced a more audible sound.

With just a minute left, I used the scissors to slice a piece of paper (an advertisement I had received in the mail). I tried slicing at different speeds and cutting the paper both by slicing, and by dragging the scissors through the paper, and was able to create a reasonable variety of sounds with respect to volume and timbre.

Meeting with TH and a First Composition

Sounding Wall

1. Stand in front of a wall in the room you are in, facing the wall.
2. Hold a sand dollar in one hand.
3. Beginning at an intersection of the floor and the wall within reach of where you are standing (if there is molding between the floor and the wall, begin at the intersection of the wall and the molding), trace any scratches, cracks, or dents in the wall with the sand dollar. Begin by tracing the marks nearest your start point and proceed up the wall, tracing all the marks that are within reach (without moving your feet). Stop when you have traced the highest mark you can reach.
4. Start by moving the sand dollar at any speed along the wall, and try to move the sand dollar slower and slower until it stops. When the sand dollar stops, wait for the duration of a cycle of breath, and begin again by moving the sand dollar at any speed.

Today TH and I talked about the sound I've made this week. Generally I've been making quiet and subtle sounds. We talked about that, and about using close mics or contact microphones to amplify the sounds. TH mentioned that I should consider, when working on my weekly pieces, the possibility of writing for the instrumentalists in the program. I could write for shakuhachi for TH, accordian or conch for PO, percussion for MT, or even the metal cello for SW. TH performed Sounding Wall, but selected an object of her own to replace the sand dollar.

Afterwards TH mentioned about the possibility of building a wall with contact microphones embedded within it, and setting up a table with objects so that people could explore the wall in an installation setting. We also talked about using fabric, plexiglass, flooring, or other surfaces instead of a wall. TH imagined the wall up against the actual wall of the gallery. I, however, imagined it portruding into the room, so that both sides were visible and playable.

If this continues to sound like a good idea, I'm going to make a small (say 2' by 1') test wall some time next week. Meanwhile, I'm going to keep continue my fifteen minute sound-making exercises.

The Sacred Harp

I made sound today by opening and closing, and by flipping the pages of, the book, The Sacred Harp. I began by flipping back and forth through the book, running my fingers along the pages as I did so, letting the book fall in chunks of pages, or holding pages back so that they fell through a few at a time. I trired shutting the book at different speeds, and then seeing how it would fall open.

I then tried turning the pages slowly, running the pages across each othe as I turned them. This created some new sounds. Mostly, though, taking this more measured approach caused me to notice particular tunes I know, such that I would then hear them in my head. The mixture of sounds in my head, and sounds that entered my head was interesting, but it mostly just distracted me from playing the book, and I didn't find much interesting timbrally over the course of the fifteen minutes.

I thought that I would find a lot of sound to make in a book. I might try again with a different book, perhaps one with firmer pages (and no songs in it!).

Tomorrow (Wednesday) is my first meeting with TH since I began doing this, and it looks like my ideas for the sand dollar pieces are still the best. I'll am going to come up with something specific, probably just a solo piece, tomorrow morning.

Computer Keyboard, Fingernails

Today I tried making sound by playing the keys of my laptop with my fingers and fingernails. I wasn't really able to make as wide a variety of sounds as I'd expected by typing alone, I resorted to running my fingernails along the cracks between rows of keys, and to holding my fingers in different orientations as a means of expanding the range of sounds I could produce.

The prime factors determining what sort of sound I got seemed to be whether my fingernails came in contact with the keys, and how hard I typed. Just now, as I type, I'm struck that the rythm, cadence, timbres, and patterns of the sounds I'm producing are more interesting, though perhaps less varied than what I was able to achieve.

I began today after writing a few paragraphs about a (series of) piece(s) I'm developing inspired by Parsons Way in Kennebunkport, Maine. I kept the document open and as I played the keyboard, my experimentation left its mark beneath my writings. This might be fertile ground for exploration. While I type, the sound of my fingers on the keys is an incidental, yet interesting and aesthetically pleasing (to my ears anyway) alternative mapping of my exercise. While I play, the collection of characters I produce is an incidental, yet interesting and aesthetically pleasing (to my eyes anyway) alternative mapping of my exercise.

Two Glass Jelly Jars, Fingernails, Ears, Computer Keyboard

I have about 8 glass jelly jars that I use as glasses. Six of the eight were the glasses that my family used as I was growing up. I took them with me when I first had my own kitchen. The jars are scratched and nicked around the edges. I started by running my fingernails across these scratched edges, and quickly brought the jar to my left ear to better hear the sound of the scratching. I first brought the side of the glass to my ear but soon shifted it to cover my ear with the opening. I could hear the canonical "ocean" sound and the fingernail sound was substantially amplified. I began tapping my fingernails against the base of the glass and soon found a few particular frequencies that seemed to recur with most taps. I noticed that I could change the mix of frequencies by varying the intensity of my tapping, or by changing where on the base of the cup I tapped. I experimented with volume as well, tapping softer and harder, faster and slower, and varying the number of fingers I used.

I soon began tapping on the side of the jar as well, and tried using both hands at once — one on the side of the glass, the other on the base — creating a more textural sound than a series of impulses. I tried my best to hold the cup in position, so as not to pull it away from my ear. Doing this completely changed the pitches from the tapping and overwhelmed the more subtle timbral variations of the tapping sounds. I discovered that I could create a duller, deeper sound by tapping the bottom edges of the glass, which seemed to transfer the force of my tap through the cup to the side of my head.

For a few seconds I tried contrasting the sounds of my fingernails clicking against the glass in my left ear to the sounds of my fingernails clicking against my computer keyboard in my right ear. I liked the contrast, but then went back to exploring more continuous tapping against the glass. I came back to the keyboard after about a minute but found that the sounds didn't seem to mix well anymore. It seemed, though, that there were a number of different possibilities for playing the computer keyboard, so I decided to try that again on a subsequent day.

After I felt I had explored enough of the subtleties of the timbral variety I could produce tapping the glass with my fingernails, I changed back to scratching and rubbing and found that I no longer noticed the ocean-like sound. I pulled the glass slowly away from my ear and brought it back, and while I could hear what sounded like a moving band pass filter over quiet noise as I moved the glass around near my ear, I could hardly hear anything while the cup was right on my ear. I picked up a second jelly jar and moved it toward my right ear, and found that I could hear the filtered noise through my right ear louder. Then I tried slowly removing both glasses at the same time.

The sound was spectacular in stereo. I tried a few times bringing the glasses in and then out, slower each time, and tried holding the glasses at particular distances near my ear to listen to the different filters. I tried making sounds with my mouth, speaking, breathing, and listened to the way the cups in different positions filtered the sounds I made — accentuating a few sounds, and dampening others. In particular some consonants, such as "s," "c," and "t" were quite accentuated. This sort of filtering made the air feel thick and viscous, and I started saying and whispering the words "viscous" and "viscosity" while holding the cups near and to my ears.

I then tried walking around the apartment, seeing how the cups filtered the different noise-producing objects in the apartment, such as my computer, the refridgerator, and my air purifier. The computer produed the most sound that passed through the glasses' filter. With that my fifteen minutes were up.

Sand Dollar, Fingers and Fingernails, Stones from Parsons Cove, My Dressing Room Wall

I wanted to start my first day by trying to make sound with a sand dollar. I started by running my fingers and fingernails over the sand dollar, tapping it, trying things like that. The sound was very quiet and mostly homogenous. By holding the sand dollar near my ear, I could hear it better, it was a pretty sound, but I also suspect that much of the sound was actually my fingernail being vibrated by the bumps on the sand dollar's surface. The perimeter of the sand dollar did sound higher than the center.

To try to take my fingernail out of the sound, I tried running the sand dollar along the stones I collected from Parsons Cove in Kennebunkport, Maine. There were more possibilities for heterogeneity here. I tried rubbing the stones with the front and back sides of the sand dollar, running the sand dollar over the surface of the stone, turning the sand dollar on its side and wheeling it across the stones (and from stone to stone), lightly tapping the sand dollar on the stones, and letting go of the sand dollar while it lay on one of the stones so that it would rattle for a second. All of these activities produced different sounds. Everything was still pretty quiet, and wheeling, tapping, and letting go of the sand dollar were barely audible. Playing with different stones produced different sounds. I tried tapping the stones, and found that each stone had a different pitch, which explained the different sounds. In general, it seems like the sand dollar produces more sound by resonating other obejcts than by resonating itself.

I tried briefly running the sand dollar over glass surfaces (the glass in front of the framed page from LN's thesis that I have, and the glass jars containing many of my other sand dollars), but wasn't interested in the barely audible sound this produced.

I moved to my dressing room and closed the door. The dressing room doesn't have anything electronic or mechanical in it that produces noise. I tried playing the sand dollar with my fingers again, and then pressed the sand dollar against the plaster wall of the dressing room and tried running it along the surface of the wall. This produced a louder sound than anything yet and provided me with a variety of possibilites. I tried slowing moving the sand dollar slower and slower, seeing how slow I could move it without it stopping or jerking. I tried coordinating my movement with indents and scratches on the wall. I tried moving the sand dollar as far as I could along the wall without standing up, as far as I could reach with my arms. I experimented making patterns on the wall, moving the sand dollar faster and slower, using both sides of the sand dollar (the flat side was much easier), and pressing harder or softer against the wall. There were enough things to think about that I decided this could be the source of the piece I bring to TH on Wednesday. I could create a piece about:

1. tracing all the dents, indentations, and scratches in the wall within one's reach without moving one's feet
2. running the sand dollar across the wall faster, and then slower, harder, and then softer, for time intervals, or in concert with breathing, or
3. I could compose a duet asking each performer to gradually slow the speed of their sand dollar until it stopped, and then wait for the other performer.

We'll see, there must be better ideas for a duet, but I'll think about it if this still seems like the best idea in a few days.

Playing with the sand dollar and stones from Parsons Cove made me think about how doing the same thing might sound if the stones were amplified. I can't do "Listening to the Ocean through Five Stone Portals" until next summer, most likely, but I might be able to do some interesting tests between now and then, and perhaps use performance series, such as the Tuesday series on 4th Street, as opportunities to try things out. I can't make contact microphones this weekend, but I might try to do that next weekend (or more likely the weekend after that, because next weekend is the New England Sacred Harp Convention in Newbury, VT) for TH.

While I was playing, I felt like I wasn't getting anything out of the exercise, but I do feel a little better after writing about it, and I'm sure as I continue to focus on making sound every day, the cumulative effect will be more palpable.