Five Sound Questions to Stephen Gallagher

I found out about Stephen Gallagher while visiting Social Sound Design, where he was asking questions quite similar to my Five Sound Questions. A good reason to aks him to participate in this series. So I did, and here you can read his answers. 

 

Stephen is a composer, music and sound editor for feature films, commercials, documentaries, short films, theatre, dance and television, working in New Zealand. He already has quite a list of projects on his name. Visit his website to learn more about them: www.stephengallagher.co.nz

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

I used to have an old hand held game that I got in Tokyo when I was 4 years old . It was a baseball game and when you pulled this little blue lever it made a sound like a small race car speeding past you. I loved it! I don’t know quite why but that sound always has stayed with me.

 

Just thinking of it now conjures up vivid images of my childhood in Tokyo. It was an amazing place for a little kid from New Zealand to spend a few years. The city was, and still is,  full of fascinating sounds. I guess I could go further and say that living there has had a profound effect on the way I feel about sound in general.

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

It really depends on where I am, what I am doing and what is happening around me. I remember that my composition lecturer, Jack Body, began his courses with a small exercise about listening to the world around you; He divided the class up into pairs. One in each pair was blindfolded and was then guided around the campus by his/her partner for a half hour. Then you swapped around. It was amazing.

Click to read more ...

Five Sound Questions to Zimoun

Does Zimoun need an introduction? Many of you probably have seen some of his work before, and if not, please watch the overview video on top of this post and be amazed by all the wonderful installations this Swiss artist created. I am very happy to include him in the Five Sound Questions series!

To learn more about Zimoun and his work please visit his website: www.zimoun.ch

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

I was very often playing around with an old analog radio and was very intrigued by the somehow cosmic sounds in between the channels.

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

Sometimes I listen very careful, and sometimes I don’t listen at all.

I like a good balance between both. And both is very refreshing somehow. 

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

Well… there might be many places and situations… but sitting in the middle of a desert and listening to this amazing silence is one of the most beautiful listening experiences I’ve ever made.

4. How could we make sound improve our lives?

To pay attention to what we hear (and not hear) might be the right start I think…

5. What sound would you like to wake up to?

I enjoy a lot the very tiny click sounds which our very old heating system is producing when the radiator is getting warm. Very beautiful and always different.

Also read the answers of other artists in the Five Sound Questions section.

Five Sound Questions to Miriam Lohan

This week’s Five Sound Questions are answered by Miriam Lohan. Coming from the world of theatre and live art she is drawn to sound recently. In one project Miriam created a composition for harp from noting positions and weight of apples falling from a tree. 

 

Last year I participated in her ‘Twitter orchestra’ in which specific words in tweets lead to predefined sonic results. The word ‘thinking’, for instance, resulted in the winding up of a music box and a smiley in the songs of a blackbird. Interesting ideas! Read more about her work on her blog Murmuration.

 

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

Other people; their footsteps, breathing, clothing - I could identify people by these and I liked knowing who was around, and how they were - there’s a lot of information in a footstep. I like being quiet when I’m on my own, and I remember deliberately making myself as quiet as possible, so I could concentrate on something or make mischief without getting caught. So it surprised me that others make sound for company when they’re on their own. 

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

Peripherally, or from a distant, quieter place. I prefer panorama - panophony! - to detail and listening like this, tuning in and out as needed, keeps me grounded when I’m thinking or daydreaming. I don’t wear headphones outside of work because I can’t navigate through the world properly without hearing it, and mismatched sound and vision make me nervous. I love the sound of a school playground or a party from a distance, but find it hard to cope with several streams of voices close up - though I think this is more to do with trying to process the streams semantically. 

Click to read more ...

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?

Click to read more ...

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. 

Click to read more ...

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.  

Click to read more ...

Five Sound Questions to Yuri Suzuki

One of the first projects featured on Everyday Listening was Yuri Suzuki’s Prepared Turntable, a wonderfully simple but clever idea. In the ‘Design’ section of his website you will find many other great sound art projects.

Yuri Suzuki, born in Tokyo and currently living in London, is product designer and electronic musician. Sound art is not the only thing he does. Check out the Breakfast Machine he created with Masa Kimura for instance, quite a remarkable installation!

It is great to see how normal, simple things can be transformed into a piece of art, or with some small modifications gain completely new functionality. These are his answers to the Five Sound Questions:

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

I really love this music clip when I was child, maybe my all interest came from this video. I almost saw this video every night: Herbie Hancock - Rockit 

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

I extremely hate big noise, like shouting and so on. In the same time, I love big sound. And I love silence as well, but it makes me nervous.

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

I really like the sound of silence in mid night, the noise always comes from big cities like Tokyo, New York and London.

4. How could we make sound improve our lives?

This is one of my big topics of creation. My “Re-design soundscape” series came from this question. This is one project from the series:

Click to read more ...

Five Sound Questions to Alyce Santoro

As you might have read on this website before, Alyce Santoro is the creator of the Sonic Fabric, made of old cassette tapes. Be sure to check out her website and read more about her inspiring projects: www.alycesantoro.com

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

The rhythmic slapping of rigging against the masts of sailboats.

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

For me it seems that listening requires not only the ears, but also a heightened awareness of other very subtle sensations/feelings in the body that cannot easily be described by the ordinary five senses.

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

The place where I live - in the mountains near the Big Bend National Park in far west Texas - has the most peculiar and alluring sonic quality - it’s very difficult to describe. Perhaps I could say the “silence” here is lush and harmonious.

4. How could we make sound improve our lives?

If we could all fully realize the profound effect of sound on the very cells of which we are composed - if we all had an understanding that, on a quantum level we are all literally made of sound - we could more effectively harness the power of sound for healing on a personal and planetary level.

5. What sound would you like to wake up to?

Aside from waking up here in the strange “silence” of the high desert, I love to awake to the sounds of the lapping of waves against the hull of my sailboat, and the slapping of rigging against the mast.

Also read the answers of other artists in the Five Sound Questions section.

Five Sound Questions to Jack Pavlik

I am thrilled to announce the first artist featured in this new series on Everyday Listening: Jack Pavlik. I wrote about his artwork the Storm in the early days of this website, may 2009. He creates wonderful kinetic sound sculptures.

In his installations we hear the natural sound of the material, mostly bands of metal, mechanically played. It is like these things come to live, to sing their songs to us. Visit Jack’s Vimeo page for some great examples.  

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

I grew up in the northern United States, I remember during the winter when it was bitterly cold, sounds had a more harder than normal piercing feel, as if the sound was frozen and hitting you like a piece of ice.

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

I am actually very sensitive to sound, I am often tuning things down and blocking sounds out.  When a sound interests me I close my eyes and try to focus on different parts of the sound. If it is an oscillating sound I will try and count beats or cycles and look for repetition.

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

Sarajevo. It is a place that has the mix of church bells and the ezan, or call to prayer. During different times of the year there are different intersections between these two distinct sounds as the church bells are fixed to time and the time of the ezan is set by positions of the sun. Also in the city you are never far away from the sound of running water from the natural springs in the city.

4. How could we make sound improve our lives?

This might sound strange coming from a sound artist, but I would like a quieter world. I think often less is more in sound art; the most important part of sound compositions is the space or silence in between the component sounds.

5. What sound would you like to wake up to?

Waking up is always best with the sound of coffee being made, maybe also with the sound of bacon and eggs and someone telling me it is ready?

Also read the answers of other artists in the Five Sound Questions section.

Starting next week: Five Sound Questions

Next week I will start a new, weekly series on Everyday Listening: ‘Five sound questions’. I will ask various sound artists, sound designers and other sound professionals to answer these five questions about sound:

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

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

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

4. How could we make sound improve our lives?

5. What sound would you like to wake up to?

I am eager to learn the answers to these questions from all these talented people. If you are working with sound professionally and you would like to participate in this series, please let me know. Just send me a little info about you and your work and a link to your website or blog.