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#36. Denmark, Copenhagen. Accordion on the street. Snow and cold wind.
March 2012
18 posts
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#35. India, Jaipur, Temple of Ganesh. Waiting for celebration. People entering the temple rang bells located above the doorway. When the celebration has begun finally , I was stunned by view of a giant orange elephant, which has been uncovered - it was statue of Ganesha. Then I watched praying people, and realised that practically this elephant is not different from a crucified man, a fat smiling bloke sitting in lotus pose, or a meteor in a concrete black cube. It is the same level of abstraction and a similar, sincere and naive faith of believers.
“The problem with modern man is that we have forgotten the language of silence, we have forgotten the way of the heart. We have completely forgotten that there is a life which can be lived through the heart. We are too much hung up in the head, and because we are too much in the head we cannot make any sense out of love. It becomes more and more problematic.”
—Osho
Alan Lomax Field Recordings from Ireland →
research.culturalequity.org
St. Patrick’s Day is today folks!
Original field recordings of Irish musicians and singers captured and credited by Alan Lomax as he traveled through Ireland. Free to stream from the Association for Cultural Equality website. THIS is genuine, unpolished Irish folk music. This is an invaluable resource and look into musical culture.
“Quiet is related to openness in the sense that the quieter it gets — as your listening area increases — your ability to hear reflections from farther away increases. The implication of that is that you get an immense sense of openness, of the landscape reflecting back to you, right? You can go out there, and you stand on a mountaintop, and it’s so quiet that you get this sense of space that’s unbelievable. The reflections are coming to you from afar. All of a sudden your perception is being affected by a larger area. Which is different from when you’re in your car. Why, when you’re in your car, do you feel like you are your car? It’s ’cause the car envelops you, it wraps you up in that sound of itself. Sound has everything to do with place. What is beautiful about this place?”
—http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/magazine/is-silence-going-extinct.html?_r=1
Is Silence Going Extinct? →
nytimes.com
…What’s more, other experiments showed, much as the M.I.T. study did, that noise affected the way visitors saw landscapes: when volunteers viewed photos of natural vistas while listening to helicopters on tape, they rated the scenes less picturesque than they did under quieter conditions…
…scientists were about to realize the damage society’s widening sonic footprint could do to natural ecosystems. In 2003, a Dutch team studying a common songbird, the great tit, reported in Nature that males of the species shifted their calls to a higher frequency in cities, where low-frequency human noise masked their normal song range. Further proof that urban sounds cause wild creatures to adjust their vocal styles quickly followed. Nightingales sing louder in louder environments. Robins — usually diurnal singers — switch to nighttime in areas that are chaotic by day..
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Bear with Cubs, Denali National Park (Davyd Betchkal)
To restore ecosystems to acoustic health, researchers must determine, to the last raindrop, what compositions nature would play without us.
Minute of Listening
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Marc Weidenbaum writes:
Before reading anything else, before reading any further, or clicking on a link, give this a listen. Just hit play and listen. And don’t dig in too deep. Hold off on listening for tone, or for dynamics, for narrative or processing. In essence, hold off on any of the kind of interpretive listening that this site is about on a daily basis. Instead, just listen and just focus on one task. The task is to try to identify the sound:
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#34, UK, Wales. A small stream in Brecon Beacons National Park.
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Dagneux, le Petit Chatel, train, bells and discussion about how to get rid of anxyolitics.
PCM-M10 internal microphones.
I like recordings which consist of the whole spectrum of sound. It gives you a small history and full vibration of place
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#33. Singapore, Buddha Tooth Relic Temple in Chinatown district. Summer 2011.
The Field Reporter →
thefieldreporter.wordpress.com
Reviews on the field of field recording based music and sound works.
“Everything
of importance
has been said before
by somebody who did
not discover
it.” —Alfred North Whitehead (via eloquentandhonest)
of importance
has been said before
by somebody who did
not discover
it.” —Alfred North Whitehead (via eloquentandhonest)
