SOUND EXPERIMENT

“When you’re beating a drum, you can hear when the boom comes the teeniest bit too late or the teeniest bit too early, because your whole attention is focused on the razor edge between silence and noise…

when you beat a drum you create NOW, when silence becomes a sound so enormous and alive it feels like you are breathing in the clouds and the sky, and your heart is the rain and thunder.”

Ruth Ozeki in A Tale for the Time Bein

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hls3Tp7JS8E

Esslinger PP Video

Sounds

  • For this project you will find and create sounds to use in a sound collage.
  • They don’t have to be drum like but developed toward sound and time as an element for your work.
  • You will use a digital audio recorder or your cell phone to gather these sounds and then create a sound collage
    • Make a list of topics (facts, idioms, myths, Adjectives, emotions, etc) you are interested in from personal sources, classes, the wider world.
    • List colors, rhythms, texture they remind you of. Use chance methods (like the card game) to extend those topics.

Finding Sounds: Carry the recorder or your cell phone ready to record sounds you come upon and explore the world around you.

  • Try to think of sounds that could relate directly and obliquely to your topic.
  • Capture sounds that have variation in tone, tempo, texture and rhythm.
  • Be able to identify the shape of time in your piece when you are finished having a clear beginning, middle and end. (you don’t have to pre-plan this, but respond to the sounds you find.)

Building your Composition in Premier Pro

  • Think of the sound as having a texture, a color, an emotion.
  • You can use transitions, jump cuts, simple filters (don’t overdo this).
  • You can use visual wave forms to cut the clips precisely.
  • Consider contrasting rhythms: whole notes in bass, quarter notes in alto.

IC Recorder

Recording

  • Side the Hold button down (located on the left side of the device)
  • There are four (4) folders to record y our sound on. A, B, C, & D. Select the folder you are using by pushing the horizontal button just above the words “PLAY/STOP “. (make sure you record the Recorder number and the file letter in your notebook)
  • Start recording press the button with the red dot (REC/PAUSE) in the stop mode. (that means nothing is playing) If recording is occurring, the red light is on.
    • Do not hold any button down. Press record to start and stop to stop.
    • When you press stop, what you recorded will automatically play. If you don’t want to hear it, just press stop again.
    • If you press the red button to record and then the red button to stop, it will just pause, and when you press the red button again, it will continue to record.
    • To Erase: Select the item you want to erase, press play, press erase two times (located on the right side of the recorder)

Reminders

  • Watch the noise.
  • Noise may be recorded if an object is touching or rubbing against the recorder during recording.
  • Minimal touching is helpful. Place the recorder on a soft surface to minimize the noise…banging, rubbing, etc.

Transferring files

  • Plug the device into the recorder
  • Find “My Computer” and open the file by clicking twice
  • Bring up “IC Recorder” by clicking twice.
  • Open “Voice” by clicking twice.
  • Open your folder “A, B, C, or D” by clicking twice.
  • Save your sounds on a jump drive by dragging and dropping.
  • Move your sounds into Windows movie maker by dragging and dropping. The sound is saved as an MP3.

ACTIVITY: SOUND EXPERIMENT

Create a 30 second sound experiment by mixing a minimum of 5 different sounds that you recorded in and out of school. You may NOT use canned sounds, they must be original recordings. Mix those sounds to create a new rhythmic event with a beginning, middle and end. Be reminded that if carry some small element throughout the whole composition, it will hold together and be more effective.

  1. Import Audio or music
  2. Drag media into the Audio/Music Track
  3. Mix the sounds by splitting the sounds and overlapping each sound. "SPLIT" is located on the right side of the screen, just below the preview window.
  4. Remember, beginning, middle and end.
  5. Remember 5 different original sounds.
  6. Remember, carry an element all the way through.
Getting Started with Premiere Pro