A short interview with Joel Chadabe, composer, founder Ear to the Earth, President of EMF (Electronic Music Foundation)

Ear to the Earth

In two months Alan Lomax’s field recording archive will be available to stream in its entirety for free. Currently all 15,000 recordings can be heard as 45 second snippets here, but from March will be available in full. Files also include session and recording notes, full lists of performers, locations, and dates.

The project is run by the Global Jukebox label, part of the Association for Cultural Equity, who deal with the digitisation of Lomax’s archive. Global Jukebox also curate compilations for release digitally and in physical format (including on LP through Mississippi Records).

Via The Wire

New episode from the Nature Series 5 by BBC Radio 4.

Wildlife sound recordist Chris Watson travels to India, to capture the sounds of the forest and the spine tingling roar of a Bengal Tiger.

Chris is leading a team of wildlife sound recordists on this quest. They travel to Corbett National Park which was established in 1936 as Asia’s first National Park. It stretches over some 1300 sq km. in the foothills of the Himalayas in the state of Uttarakhand.

The park is named after the legendary hunter, naturalist and author Edward James Corbett, better known as ‘Jim Corbett’. Author of ‘Man-Eaters of Kumaon’, Corbett spent many years killing tigers and leopards before concern about their future and that of their habitat, led him to playing a key role in establishing the National Park.

Today the Park is home to a rich and diverse range of wildlife including over 100 Bengal tigers. To help them, the team have several local guides; who are not only skilled in the art of tracking tigers; knowing what signs to look for; like scats on the ground, scratch marks on the trees, and perhaps most importantly, knowing how to listen to the forest and use the alarm calls of other animals such as the peacocks and samba deer to help track the tigers. It might sound easy enough but as Chris and the team discover, it’s far more difficult than it sounds.

In their search for tigers, they play a game of ‘Grandmother’s footsteps’ with a pair of elephants, encounter crocodiles in a river, are puzzled by something that sounds like rain but isn’t, and record the unusual barks of Hanaman Langurs in the forest. As for recording the roar of a tiger, they need skill, patience and, a bit of good luck.

Listen

Next episode: Painting with Sound

Frank Bry, known as The Recordist, has published a fantastic post on his blog talking about snowstorms, including sounds, videos, and some great tips.

The third week of January 2012 proved to be a goldmine for snow sound effects here on the ranch. The typical North Idaho winter finally arrived bringing with it lots of snow, wind and freezing temperatures.

The week started with a bunch of snow falling along with some very cold temperatures. As the winter storm progressed and the weather systems above were battling it out for supremacy, the wind came. Not a soft blowing winter wind but some strong sustained blizzard like winds with gusts up to 65 MPH.

The Recordist

“Suoni dal confine” a new project curated by Leandro Pisano wants to describe those transformations and transitions that traditional soundscape has gone through in the last years. In order to do that we merge together different level of arts (live performances, installations, talks and conference) and we move away from a simplistic and nostalgic interpretation of the soundscape itself. By reading the boundaries of a territory, we focus more on its acoustic symbology, considering it not anymore as a de-limited element but rather as an interaction and a system of relationships among ever shifting part: “border areas are spaces of dynamism, of conflict, of contradiction and mediation in which the apparent incoherence and extraneousness of certain sounds become the peculiar novelty” (Enrico Coniglio).

“Suoni dal confine” comes into being with an event at Spazio Thetis (Fondazione Thetis) in Venezia, on 20th of May 2011, featuring Enrico Coniglio and Yasuhiro Morinaga. An Ufficio Bifolco production. This movie was produced during 2011 by Ufficio Bifolco (ufficiobifolco.it). Film editing, camera work and postproduction: Antonello Carbone. Subtitles ENG/ITA: Anna Palmer

Spanish sound artists Edu Comelles and Juanjo Palacios have launched LEA Editions, a new project of the Audiotalaia and Audition Records family.

LEA Editions is a catalogue of online releases available through La Escucha Atenta Blog (born from the hand of Juanjo Palacios). This catalogue of phonographic productions rises as a sound complement to the divulgation labour done by La Escucha Atenta. Also, LEA Editions aims to present in a digital format works based on field recordings and soundscapism.

LEA Editions pretends to be a sound mirror for the projects being presented on La Escucha Atenta. Also we seek to offer a platform of diffusion and production of field recording works by emergent artists.

This phonographic catalogue it is coordinated and curated by Juanjo Palacios and Edu Comelles. Also this project is tided to a joint of various digital projects such as Audiotalaia, Audition Records, and obviously La Escucha Atenta Blog.

LEA Editions

Over time we’ve gathered a collection of sounds from around the world. In an exploration of this immense, continuously changing and growing archive of sound spores, Kinokophone welcome field recordists, phonographers and listeners to join us for Kinokophonography. Kinokophonography is an evening of sharing sound recordings, exploring the experience of listening and discussing what these recordings and the process of making them can bring to life. Send along a few favorites from your catalogue of recordings to play or just come to listen.

The next Kinokophonography event will take place at the Aomori Contemporary Art Centre in Aomori City, Japan on 3rd of March 2012 13:30-15:00.

Open call for submissions (Submit your recording by the 19th of February 2012).

First: a BIG thank you to all the contributors, this wouldn’t have been possible without the sounds!

Considering these sounds were recorded at the end of the year and the result is a mash up of these sounds, I think it would be best to make these the Sounds of December.

How did this work?

The Max/MSP patch works by playing random files in a random sequence and from random points within the files. If left by itself it can play these files back in this random order to create a never-ending soundscape. Although, there are a few controls to help design the way it sounds:

• Play length of each file (Eg.: If it’s set at 4000ms, it would play back a sound for 4000ms and then crossfade into the next sound)
• Fade length – crossfade length (from 0ms to 1ms less than the play length)
• Speed/pitch: Vari-speed playback control
• Reverse
• Random type: Urn (random without repeats), Drunk (Randomised but ‘drunken’), Random (random with unpredictable repeats), Counter (sequential playback)

The outputs were connected to a channel strip type interface, from which the signal was sent (parallel) to a reverb and delay plugin.

What you hear below are sounds that were contributed (thank you again!) and then generated and ‘performed’ using the above mentioned controls with a MIDI controller. I recorded a few takes and this was the one I preferred the most. I’ve also included a screengrab of the patch at work, for the curious.

Have a great sounding year ahead!

Thanks to:
Eckhard Kuchenbecker
Echo Collective
Hrishikesh Dani
Chris Nealy
Angel Perez Grandi
Jaydea Lopez
Ana Roman
Péter Terner
Anna Papaioannou

Year End Sonic-Mash on Soundcloud

Year End Sonic-Mash on Vimeo.

While preparing in Lisbon the work Penumbra, commissioned by Serralves Foundation, and that sadly became the lost great album of Grzinich and Raposo, one sunny and windy afternoon we climbed the metal stairs to the roof and prepared a small set-up of piezos and wires. this is a short and quick video edit.

There’s a new episode of BBC Radio 4′s nature series 5, this time featuring sounds of Pollardstown Fen, Ireland, recorded by Tom Lawerence, truly inspiring sound recordist who sadly died during the last year. Several of these sounds can also be heard in the fantastic Gruenrekorder 087 CD: Watter Beetles of Pollardstown Fen.

For over a year, sound recordist Tom Lawrence has been capturing the sounds of Pollardstown Fen in Ireland. These are no ordinary sounds, but the sounds of a hidden world; an underwater world, where an orchestra of creatures create an extraordinary and vibrant music. Above the water’s surface, grasshoppers and crickets stridulate; that is, they rub one part of their body across another to produce ‘those fiddling tunes so evocative of summer’. Below the surface, something similar happens as water beetles, water scorpions, great diving beetles, water boatmen and lesser water boatmen and hundreds of other species produce sounds day and night at over 2Khz, reaching 99 decibels in some cases – the equivalent of sitting in the front row of an orchestra “Tapping, knocking, hammering, drumming, clicking, creaking, cracking, croaking, buzzing, fuzzing, bleeping, winding, reeling, revving, puttering, pattering, humming, pulsing, squealing, shrieking…. the insects reveal themselves”. Writer and narrator Paul Evans meets Tom Lawrence and takes a journey into the Fen to hear these sounds for himself. Tom leads the way. His friend, Jim Schofield joins them, bringing with him a boat (an inflatable boat that they first have to pump up), and then the three men ‘wobble’ along reed-lined drains into the Fen. It’s a journey of revelations; not only does Paul encounter the underwater orchestra, but also Old Ireland and with it a magical adventure; They find a snake, haul up a bag of treasure, climb the steps of a Famine Tower, experience vertigo as they stand with their heads in the clouds high above the quarried land, watch Peregrines swipe through the air like sharp knives, and learn the story of a hanged man, his lost love and a vixen who wanders amongst the reeds, her piercing cry echoing through the darkness.

Listen

Via Touch

Next Episode: The Ghost Roost, with recordist Chris Watson and sound designer Thor McIntyre Burnie.