Some examples of voice as textural sound…Continue Reading Voice and Texture
A recorder in your pocket – using your phone to record sound
Sometimes you don’t have access to a quality recording device and you want to capture something quickly. Most of us own a recorder that we have with us at all times — a smart phone. …Continue Reading A recorder in your pocket – using your phone to record sound
Adobe Audition Video Tutorials
Getting Started About the interface – a quick tour (5:17)Getting to know the windows and pallettes in Audition Previewing your audio files in Audition (5:31)At the simplest level, Audition is a great tool to quickly find and listen to audio on your hard drive! Multitrack – Set up & Edits Creating a new mulitrack project…Continue Reading Adobe Audition Video Tutorials
Voice and Narrative
A variety of examples of voice in experimental sound works…Continue Reading Voice and Narrative
Free Plug ins
There are a bunch of free plug ins out there that you can use within programs like Adobe Audition. Some of them are either BAD or they do many of the things you can ALREADY do in Audition or in whatever editor you are using. Below are a few that I recommend Important!Remember that when…Continue Reading Free Plug ins
Standalone Sound Apps
There are some tools that you can download and operate like a little sound generator or synthesizer right on your computer. This is sound software that you can use without a DAW like Audition, Logic, Ableton, etc. They are great for creating textures, atmospheric sounds, and little surprises out of your sound material. A word…Continue Reading Standalone Sound Apps
Sound tools you can use right in your browser
There are some web-based electronic instruments out there like drum machines and synths that you can use right inside your web browser. Some of them allow you to record your output others do not. The good the bad and the uglyFor each tool I’ve included a list of pros and cons and some notes about…Continue Reading Sound tools you can use right in your browser
GEAR
This post shares some of the gear that you can check out from the new school and some gear that I have that you can reserve. New School Gear There are a variety of sound-related items you can checkout at the New School.Visit the EQC site for details about their equipment. You’ll notice that there’s…Continue Reading GEAR
Sound and Texture
A post about the textural qualities of sound…Continue Reading Sound and Texture
Piezos, Machines and the sound of stuff
This is a huge batch of Instagram posts (videos mainly) that feature amplified objects or mechanical solutions to sound -making View this post on Instagram A post shared by Powland (@powland.pt) View this post on Instagram A post shared by Zimoun (@studiozimoun) View this post on Instagram A post shared by @robotmammal View this post…Continue Reading Piezos, Machines and the sound of stuff
Slow it Dowwwwwn
“What is the most important element of music? The element of time.” The composer John Cage reminds us that sound and music do not exist without time, in fact a sound must be a certain length of time for us to even be able to perceive it. But what about the speed of a sound?…Continue Reading Slow it Dowwwwwn
Book the Voice Over Booth
There is no quieter place to record audio on campus (or in most places you might have access to) than the voice over booth at Arnhold Hall. This is an acoustically isolated space that is an excellent location to record vocals, foley, an instrument, a conversation, etc. How do you reserve the space? First, go…Continue Reading Book the Voice Over Booth
Royalty free music – Creative Commons
Are you looking for some music to add to a project that is safe for you to use? That respects copyright? There are some resources out there, for example The Free Music Archive is an online repository for music that uses the Creative Commons Copyright, a standardized way for artists to grant copyright permissions to…Continue Reading Royalty free music – Creative Commons
Psychoacoustics – An introduction
Ultimately, all sound that we perceive is psychoacoustic. As soon as sound passes through the ears, it stops being a physical phenomena and becomes a matter of perception. What we hear is almost by rule different from what is actually sounding, due to the peculiarities and limitations of our hearing. And what we hear can largely differ from what we think we are listening to, due to the many tricks that perception plays on our awareness….Continue Reading Psychoacoustics – An introduction
Camille Norment – Plexus
A video of the artist Camille Norment in conversation with musician, author, and curator David Toop about Camille Norment: Plexus, her exhibition at Dia Chelsea in 2022. Toop has long engaged with Norment’s practice. He contributed to the Camille Norment: Rapture (2015), and is a contributor to Plexus’s accompanying publication from Dia….Continue Reading Camille Norment – Plexus
AI, Siri and Deep fakes
The voice is often viewed as a primal connection to who we are. What does it mean when suddenly is is separated from our bodies and “performed” by a device? Being Siri Voice as Ecology: Voice Donation, Materiality, Identity Voice and Deepfakes Voice Cloning…Continue Reading AI, Siri and Deep fakes
ASMR as Art?
Here are a few links to pieces that focus on ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response). ASMR is a neurological condition in which people feel physical sensation (tingling) through other sensory stimuli like sounds. The rise of popularity of ASMR videos in social media likely doesn’t signal a surge in cases of folks who experience this…Continue Reading ASMR as Art?
What is a Sound bath?
According to the sound bath practitioner Sara Auster: A Sound Bath is a deeply-immersive, full-body listening experience that intentionally uses sound to invite gentle yet powerful therapeutic and restorative processes to nurture your mind and body. Sound Bath by Guadalupe Maravilla Here is a LINK to Maravilla’s project at Creative Time. Sound File of Maravilla’s…Continue Reading What is a Sound bath?
What Should a Nine-Thousand-Pound Electric Vehicle Sound Like?
Here’s an article in the New Yorker about the challenges of vehicles that hardly make any sounds. “E.V.s are virtually silent, so acoustic designers are creating alerts for them. A symphony—or a cacophony—of car noise could be coming to city streets.” LINK New Yorker ↗…Continue Reading What Should a Nine-Thousand-Pound Electric Vehicle Sound Like?
La Prairie and Maotik – Perfume, sound & the multisensory
La Prairie celebrates the launch of its Skin Caviar Nighttime Oil with a digital installation offering an entrancing trip into the twilight zone at Art Basel and Frieze London…Continue Reading La Prairie and Maotik – Perfume, sound & the multisensory
Sonos – The Brilliant Sound Environment
For three days in New York City an immersive multi-room sensory experience designed by the studio Dave & Gabe for Sonos in partnership with Google Assistant invited visitors to delve into interactive installations of sound, music, and light to explain the properties and experience of sound….Continue Reading Sonos – The Brilliant Sound Environment
Scientific innovations harness noise and acoustics for healing
Today, the role of sound in science extends beyond the range of audible frequencies: Ultrasonic and other silent acoustic waves have made their way into researchers’ repertoire, helping them push the boundaries of conventional medicine and research.
In examples from four Stanford labs, scientists are investigating the full spectrum, harnessing the nuances of noise and the power of acoustics to generate inventive, if not unexpected, technologies that show just how potent the combination of sound and science can be….Continue Reading Scientific innovations harness noise and acoustics for healing
Planeta Abuelx – Guadalupe Maravilla
Through Totemic Sculptures and Sound Art, Guadalupe Maravilla Explores the Therapeutic Power of Indigenous Ritual. Maravilla works across painting, sculpture, and sound-based performances all veiled with autobiography, whether informed by the Mayan architecture and stone totems that surrounded him as a child or his cancer diagnosis as a young adult. His pieces are predominately therapeutic and rooted in Indigenous ritual and mythology,…Continue Reading Planeta Abuelx – Guadalupe Maravilla
Top Secret by Rimini Protokoll
A locative audio work that explores the idea of surveillance within the context of the museum.
What do states keep secret? What secrets do other states attempt to uncover with their intelligence services? How is this information passed on, compiled, evaluated? When can state secrets become valuable currency? The value of every piece of information changes at the very moment it is shared with someone else: when does it become worthless?…Continue Reading Top Secret by Rimini Protokoll
Island Songs – Nyey
A radio work and immersive sound installation that explores the emergence in 1963 of the earths newest land mass – a small island off the coast of iceland.
In 1963, off the coast of Iceland, an island has emerged after an underwater volcanic eruption, a rare event that occurs on average twice a century. It was given the name Surtsey, after Surtr, the fire giant of Norse mythology….Continue Reading Island Songs – Nyey
Elevator Pitch – Christine Sun Kim
Elevator Pitch is inspired by Kim’s childhood memories of crowding elevators with her Deaf friends, and shouting so loudly that they could feel the vibrations of each others’ voices. Meanwhile, elevators are often known to hearing people as sites of “awkward silence,” thus the concept of this installation challenges when and where various people have a voice. Born Deaf herself, Kim approaches Elevator Pitch by investigating how Deaf communities of New Orleans experience a city so deeply defined by music, and by highlighting how Deaf people are vital to this culture of sound….Continue Reading Elevator Pitch – Christine Sun Kim
Samson Young – Nocturne
a sound performance, conceived around and in reaction to a series of night bombing videos that the artist has collected on youtube, which are edited into a video that is stripped away of all sounds. These footages originate from a variety of sources including news reports, archival footages, and video captured and uploaded by amateurs. Throughout the performance, the performer watches this silent video on a monitor, and attempts to accurately restore its soundtrack of explosions, gunshots and debris, by playing a live foley set using a series of regular household objects. …Continue Reading Samson Young – Nocturne
Steel-Fonics – Ricardo Iammuri Robinson
The STEEL-FONICS attempts to shed light on a hidden contribution to Pittsburgh’s industrial past. In this culture, African Americans are typecast dancing, singing or marching against a backdrop of poverty, crime or packed arenas in order to be recognized. This installation employs the power of stereotype and reimagines a creative collective of black industrial steel workers called The STEEL-FONICS. The African American contribution to the enormous expansion of the American steel industry has been all but invisible. This exhibition is a new kind of labor strike against historical omission….Continue Reading Steel-Fonics – Ricardo Iammuri Robinson
Dear Architects: Sound Matters
This post is adapted from a NY Times article by Michael Kimmelman that uses text and media to share the different ways that we experience sound in the built environment….Continue Reading Dear Architects: Sound Matters
Quarantine / Isolation Concerts
The COVID lockdown did not shut down the desire to share sound with the world. While the pandemic closed concert and exhibition venues worldwide, undoubtedly damaging many artists financial prospects, it has not kept them from sharing their work. Numerous venues have created platforms for sharing adventurous sound – some of them free, some of them requiring a donation to help the performing artists….Continue Reading Quarantine / Isolation Concerts
Pandemic Projects – Quarantine related sound work
The global Covid pandemic has changed our listening, this is particularly true for those of us living in urban and industrialized areas. What do we hear when the trucks are not rumbling down our street? What do we pay attention to when people are tucked away in their homes and not out on the street in their vehicles? This might mean a heightened awareness of nature, particularly birds, it also might highlight the man-made sounds that were once so prevalent that we simply ignored them — when the trucks are less frequent suddenly we pay attention to them….Continue Reading Pandemic Projects – Quarantine related sound work
Raven Chacon
Originally from the Navajo Nation, Raven Chacon is a composer of chamber music, a performer of experimental noise music, and an installation artist. He performs regularly as a solo artist as well as with numerous ensembles in the Southwest and beyond. He is also a member of the Indigenous art collective Postcommodity, with who he recently premiered the two-mile-long land art/border intervention, Repellent Fence….Continue Reading Raven Chacon
Kevin Beasley – A view of a landscape
Kevin Beasley engages with the legacy of the American South through an installation that centers on a cotton gin motor from Maplesville, Alabama. In operation from 1940 to 1973, the motor powered the gins that separated cotton seeds from fiber. Here, the New York-based artist uses it to generate sound as if it were a musical instrument, creating space for visual and aural contemplation. …Continue Reading Kevin Beasley – A view of a landscape
Onyx Ashanti
Onyx Ashanti is a Berlin-based artist who fuses electronic, free-jazz, and science fiction, creating live performances with instruments he invented. …Continue Reading Onyx Ashanti
Trevor Wishart – Red Bird: A Political Prisoner’s Dream
“Red Bird” (1977) is a 45-minute piece of musique concrète in four movements. Made for the most part of bird sounds, body sounds, and selected mouthed words, it weaves an intricate network of symbols. Completed in 1977, it was made with traditional electro-acoustic techniques. …Continue Reading Trevor Wishart – Red Bird: A Political Prisoner’s Dream
Soundwalk Collective – Oscillation
Soundwalk Collective was given unprecedented access to the halls of the emblematic nightclub Berghain / Panoramabar in Berlin.
A re-incarnation of the legendary Ostgut club, the focal point of Berlin’s techno subculture, the Berghain building is a former East German power plant that is remarkable for its enormous dimensions, 18m high dance floor and minimalist constitution of steel, glass and concrete….Continue Reading Soundwalk Collective – Oscillation
Sound and Plants
Believe it or not, there’s a long history of plants and sound.
Here’s an article in the great art blog Hyperallergic that talks about the exhibition Sonic Succulents: Plant Sounds and Vibrations by Adrienne Adar at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden…Continue Reading Sound and Plants
Musical Instrument types
An incomplete list of different types of musical instruments. There are many sub categories that could be formed beyond this simple list….Continue Reading Musical Instrument types
Oceans of Noise
Wildlife recordist Chris Watson begins a three-part journey into the sonic environment of the ocean, celebrating the sounds and songs of marine life and investigating the threat of noise pollution…Continue Reading Oceans of Noise
Experience the “Sonic Medicine” Treating a Santa Monica Community
Two Postcommodity members, along with composer Guillermo Galindo, are partnering with members of a fast-gentrifying Santa Monica neighborhood to produce a sound-based artwork of contested histories….Continue Reading Experience the “Sonic Medicine” Treating a Santa Monica Community