Melody for Harriet Tubman

"I looked at my hands, to see if I was the same person now I was free. There was such glory over everything, the sun came like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven."

— Harriet Tubman

MP3 File

Casting from Class

Demonstrating podcasting for CM and ZA in class.

MP3 File

New Focus

To help with the practice of composing sound art, TH, a teacher of mine at my graduate program, asked me to spend fifteen minutes each day concentrating on making sound, and to bring her a composition every week, that came out of my experimenting. This blog documents my daily sound-making.

As is likely clear from the lack of new posts since late September, I didn't keep up my regimen of daily performances. I'm still working out my artistic process, and I feel better about my position this semester than I did last semester, but I'm still not all that far along on any of my pieces, and I need to get better organized and develop production schedules (this is more of NB's idea than TH's this time around).

So, I'm going to re-purpose this blog as an organizational tool. I'll post descriptions of projects I'm planning — all of the projects I'm planning — schedules for finishing them, and post updates when I think I need to in order to keep myself sane. I'll be posting text, and also sending in reminders to myself from my cell phone through audioblog.

This site will stay the same, in that it is the clearinghouse for my creative process, but it's mission has changed, as has my identity as an artist.

To help me develop and finish the electronic artworks on which I'm working, I've decided to keep a blog as a means of aggregating information, notes, reminders, and deadlines, pertaining to my projects in one place. This blog is a document of my creative process. This blog is for me, but you are welcome to share it.

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.