Five Sound Questions to Stephen Cornford

This week’s five sound questions are answered by Stephen Cornford. On Everyday Listening we have seen his Three Piece and many of his art works have a similar character. Stephen is a sculptor using existing objects and sound as his source of inspiration. He transforms objects into instruments and instruments into installations, creating wonderful, evocative soundscapes. 

Visit Stephen Cornford’s website at www.scrawn.co.uk

1. What sound from your childhood made the most impression on you?

Honestly, probably the sound of my parents arguing downstairs. I am slightly suspicious of the biographical style that says, for example, La Monte Young developed a fascination with sustained tones from listening to the wind whistle through the slats of his childhood home. I was a late comer to the world of sound, mostly things clattered by me and I never developed much fascination with how they sounded. Having said that I do remember one particular music lesson at school where the teacher played a bass note on the piano with the pedal down and asked us to raise our hands when we couldn’t hear it anymore and I remember most of the class had their hands up and I could still hear this note gradually dying away. I think the richness of that note made an impression on me.

2. How do you listen to the world around you?

This varies so much from moment to moment. There was a time a few years ago when I used to make a lot of field recordings, and my ears were so switched on every time I left the house. To be honest it was exhausting and it started to annoy people that were close to me. I realised that you can’t live your whole life in an urban environment listening to everything so closely.

Now there are occasional times when that focus returns, but for the most part I choose to listen more casually. In the last few months I have started commuting a lot, and for the first time since I was a teenager I listen to music on the move. I used to expressly not do this because I found the world interesting enough aurally, but when the sounds just remind you of the routine drudgery of doing the same journey there’s no fun in it. 

I also listen to the world around me socially, other people fascinate me and so I often find myself habitually eavesdropping – but maybe that’s listening to the world anti socially?

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Soundaroid: Polaroid Camera Capturing Sound

The Soundaroid is a weird thing: it works like a Polaroid camera but instead of capturing the an image, it captures sound. After one minute of recording the device, created by Wei-Hao Chang, spits out a piece of paper just like a Polaroid camera, but instead of a photograph, a visual representation of the sound you just recorded becomes visible.  

To be honest the result is not great, but what I like about the Soundaroid is how it tickles the imagination. We know we can not capture sound instantly like a photograph captures a moment, but what would it look like if we could? As if being able to hear sounds is not magical enough, somehow we like to make things visible even if they are not. We have already seen examples of sound sculptures here, here and here.

Everyday Listening now on Alltop

I am happy to announce Everyday Listening is now featured on Alltop. Alltop is Guy Kawasaki’s ‘virtual magazine rack’, gathering the best stories online. It is like an RSS reader with the best content already chosen for you. You just have to click on the subject of your choice.

Everyday Listening can be found at audio.alltop.com.

Cardboard Record Player

I love ideas that transform something we all know into something new. Like this cardboard record player by GGRP. The cardboard sleeve of the record can be transformed into a record player. You will have to spin the record around with a pencil, and the music’s vibrations are amplified by the cardboard. 

This thing has been picked up by many blogs all over the net, but I just find it too cool not to share it with you here. The cardboard record player is not only a gadget that draws a lot of attention for its inventiveness, it also is a good example of a way to make a physical record attractive again in this era of digital music.

Via Inhabitat

Song review: Ben Frost - Híbakúsja

It is time for something new. Every now and then I would like to write a review of a song. Not a whole album, just one song. In these reviews I will focus on the feeling those songs give as opposed to rating them for their quality, so you could say they will be very subjective.

For one person a certain sound might be completely annoying while for another the same sound might bring back beautiful childhood memories. I hope you will enjoy reading my reviews, and they will make you curious of what it will sound like and what images it will bring up in your own mind. We start off with Híbakúsja by Ben Frost: 

A strange, modified piano starts playing a sequence while the brass section blows haunting tones over the repeating notes. Dark winds surround the stage as something takes over the melodic elements. After a while I realize it might be a huge double bass as I recognize the rambling of the strings when they are played too loud. But instead of a gentle jazz combo this sounds more like a massive sea monster playing the moorings of the ships in a harbor.

The texture of the sounds is beautiful and round unlike the digitally distorted sounds Frost tends to use a lot - and yes, we hear those later on in Híbakúsja as well, hard panned left and right. While this is all happening the monster keeps breathing and hissing and only loosens its grip about a minute and a half before the end of the song, when a quiet string section lays down its soft tones in the background and the rattling comes to an end. 

Híbakúsja is the fourth track on Ben Frosts latest album By the Throat.

ElectroSmog Festival

The ElectroSmog festival takes place this weekend in various places all over the globe with as main ‘hub’ the Balie in Amsterdam. It is a festival about sustainable immobility and it explores a way to a more sustainable lifestyle using local resources, while at the same time being more connected to the rest of the world, using new technologies and networks. 

An interesting subject, but it does not have anything to do with sound. I show you the leader because the last few days I have been busy creating the soundtrack for it, so this time you get a glimpse of some of my own work for a change. The visuals are made by Jeroen Joosse, and I tried to create sounds that fit them as tightly as possible. 

5 Questions to Olle Cornéer and Martin Lübcke

Bacterial OrchestraOlle Cornéer and Martin Lübcke from Sweden work together on their sound installations and performances as a team. That is why this time the Five Sound Questions are answered by two people at once. 

We have seen their work on Everyday Listening before. They are the creators of the Bacterial Orchestra, and the wonderful Harvest, in which a traditional music ensemble plays the cropland of Sweden. 

Martin Lübcke is a musician and a computer consultant and Olle Cornéer is a DJ/producer of electronic music. These are their answers to the Five Sound Questions:

1. What sound from your childhood made the most impression on you?

Martin: The snare drum sound that occurs when you slam the lid to a plastic toilet.
Olle: The first time I pressed down C-E-G on our black piano. So beautiful.

2. How do you listen to the world around you?

Martin: Very actively. I always try to analyze sounds to find out if I like the particular sound for it’s association - or for it’s timbre.
Olle: Sometimes I don’t listen at all. It’s just the everyday life. And sometimes I listen to it like the orchestra it is. Strange how you can switch between those two modes.

3. Which place in the world do you favor for its sound?

Martin: The forest, stairs, churches, dry places with rain.
Olle: New places, for example cities I visit. Because they force me to start listen to them, since I’m away from the normal. Sometimes I even add a soundtrack - some specific music in my headphones - to alter the experience. 

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Social Sound Design

Before Andrew from { sound + design } sent me a message about his new Social Sound Design site I had already found the link to this new project, somewhere on the web. The site is fairly new and already has a lot of questions and answers on it. So what exactly is Social Sound Design? 

In short it is a Q&A site for everything that has something to do with sound design, completely operated by the users themselves. Sound designers, field recordists and sound artists can post a question and other users can submit an answer, tag questions, vote answers up or down and comment on them. 

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Brick-Up

After looking at the Sew-O-Phone and the Vacumonium, there is another work by Dennis de Bel I would like to share with you. This is the Brick-Up, a concrete pick-up. I do not know if the concrete body improves the sound, but it does look great!

As Dennis de Bel writes on his website, the Brick-Up can be part of a concrete pavement and become a real ‘stratenspeler’ (Dutch for ‘street player’). I think it is better off inside the house though. A maximum of ten Brick-Ups is custom made on request. 

Five Sound Questions to Verónica Mota

Portrait by Kiril Bikov

Verónica Mota is a sound artist born in Mexico, now based in Berlin. As an artist she operates under the name Cubop. Follow this link to her MySpace page to listen to some examples of her work.  

Next to composing experimental music Verónica works as a sound designer, film editor and sound recordist for film. Listening to her work is like being transported to a dream world, it is like visiting a surrealistic place inside the artists mind where memories live and fantasies take shape. Visit Verónica’s blog to learn more about her and her work.

These are Verónica Mota’s inspiring answers to the Five Sound Questions:

1. What sound from your childhood made the most impression on you?

There are two impressive sounds I keep from my childhood. The first one was the long moan of a pig dying while its blood came out of its neck. My grandfather (R.I.P) ran a business as a butcher so each time I spent the weekend over there I experienced the pig’s death through a high frequency sound which was pretty strong and traumatic.

 

The second one was in my home town Mexico City. At night I used to listen to a really surrealistic and powerful sound. At the begining I didn’t know what it was. I though it was my imagination. At some point my father mentioned that one of our neighbors, who was actually running a pretty well visited photo print shop, had a lion up on the roof of a five floor building! This animal lived in captivity so it cried for freedom at night producing an amazing noise hard to forget.

  

Both sounds touched my soul deeply as a child because of the cruelty to animals going on behind them, but also because of their power and authenticity.  

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