Introducing Mark IJzerman

I started Everyday Listening on March 31 (my birthday) 2009. I’ve loved working on it, and it brought me in contact with amazing designers, and people who are truly passionate about sound and making the world more concious of its importance.

Lately I haven’t been posting a lot though. Those who follow me know I’ve been asked to move from Amsterdam to California to engage in new andventures in Silicon Valley which I’m very excited about! See my LinkedIn profile to get an idea. 

Over the past four and a half years Everyday Listening has become known in its niche, and I still love it and really want it to continue. I’m happy to announce I found Mark IJzerman willing to help me out. Mark was one of my students and later colleagues at HKU University of the of Arts Utrecht, and has a similar eye and ear for the projects you typically find on Everyday Listening. I hope you will all keep visiting the site and keep sending in your projects. Mark, the floor is yours!

Keep listening,

Hugo

DrumTime & the perfect metronome sound

Most sound designers probably won’t get very excited when they’re asked to create a metronome sound. No sticking microphones onto fancy cars to record their roaring engines, no impressive out-of-this-world explosions. But I guarantee you, that metronome sound will reach the listeners ears many times more than those sound effects! After I started selling minimalist ringtones over 1.5 year  ago, I started focusing my sound design on simplicity and effectiveness. From that perspective, creating the perfect metronome sound for the newly released app DrumTime offers a nice challenge. 

DrumTime is a Mac App created by Siemen and Felix of badRabbit, a small startup located in Amsterdam. It connects to MIDI enabled percussion devices (electronic drum kits, drum modules), analyzes a drummer’s input and gives visual cues about the timing. The metronome is flexible - it can be set to every beat, or less if the drummer is getting more confident and needs less guidance. 

The design of a metronome sound to be used with drums only comes with a few requirements to keep in mind: 

• There should be the least interference with the sound of the drums as possible. The sound should not get masked by whatever the drummer is playing;
• This means a broad spectrum has to be present in the sound - a drum kit covers a large part of the sonic spectrum and its sounds contain a fair amount of noise;
• That said, the sound should still be pleasant to listen to during an extended practice session. So it’s all about finding the right balance between loud, clear and present on one hand and subtle and pleasant on the other;
• There should also be a clearly distinguishable tone in the sound, so the first beat can be indicated with a higher pitch. This might not sound like a problem, but while focusing on the other requirements it is easy to forget about the tonal aspect of it. 

With this in mind I started working on some examples which could be tested in the app. After a pre-selection three sounds were chosen, of which finally one proved to work best during ‘field trials’ with drummers. I received feedback like “good frequency spread but muffled, it lacks tone. Hurts a bit when played loudly”, or “during the sound the glass tone sweeps down a bit, it sounds wacky to us”. After some more testing it was the wacky one which got revised and made it to the app. You can get an impression of it in the introductory video below, and you can read more about the app on the DrumTime website.

Cleartones Organic

After launching the Cleartones minimalist ringtones project since more than a year ago I have been thinking about how to take it to the next level. One type of sound people always seem to like is that of clean bells, gentle chimes and things alike. So I decided to record a large amount of percussive instruments that would fit the concept of Cleartones: minimalist, simple, elegant, and select the best ones for a new set of Cleartones: Cleartones Organic.

Percussionist Marijn Korff de Gidts has a huge amount of instruments in his studio. From ‘standard’ inventory like glockenspiel and woodblock to a complete Indonesian gamelan. Enough sources of beautiful ringing sound. I am very pleased with the result, and apparently I am not the only one!

Again, people recognize the need for a product like Cleartones. David Report, Cult of Mac, Brett Terpstra and my friend Joachim Baan all understand why I started this project, and I’m very happy they do. I like how Brett describes them: “I’ve listened to them all, and there’s not one that would make me want to punch somebody in a grocery checkout line.” 

TRACK - A fine weekend in Ghent

Here’s a little preview of all the nice things I encountered while visiting Belgium for a weekend of artistic surprises. From May till September 16th TRACK - a contemporary city conversation adds a little spice to the already beautiful city of Ghent. 

An huge structure of old swimming pools, mobile homes and other junk. detitled, 2012 by Peter Buggenhout

Of course my main interest was to see what sound-related projects were there, but I was impressed by the other contemporary art forms as well. Expect to be surprised by large, intense works of art, all telling their own story. 

This heap of concrete doesn’t mean anything…. until we know it resembles the exact amount of concrete used in the building in the background. De betonberg, 2012 by Lara Almarcegui

It brings visitors to places he/she would never have discovered otherwise. An old abandoned boxing school next to an old industrial site, an empty monumental directors residence, or some psychiatric center. TRACK encourages and enables you to explore the secret corners and the rough edges of the city. A very pleasant experience!

Due to a camera which was left in Belgium (but will be back next week, hopefully, as it contains a lot of photos and movies), I’ll save more detailed information about the sound-related projects of TRACK for later - so stay tuned! 

Qompendium x Cleartones

The Cleartones project is still going strong! In a collaboration with Qompendium I created a gift for our visitors: a pair of special Qompendium x Cleartones ringtones. One is the letter “Q” in melodic Morse code. The other consists of a clear sound to grab the attention combined with a hidden message - the word QOMPENDIUM in Morse code, on a very low volume.

To complete the pack the nice folks at Qompendium created a set of 10 wallpapers to accompany the ringtones on your phone. iPhone and Andoid compatible. You’ll find the download link on the Cleartones website. Enjoy!

Musical Stars

I am happy to find out people actually notice it when I don’t post any new items for some time. Mark sent me a friendly reminder and he also suggested I’d mention these ‘Musical Stars’. No, I am not talking about the singing-and-acting type. There actually exists something called asteroseismology, the study of star sounds.

Stars oscillate on a - very - low frequency, which has to be pitched up many times to be heard by us humans. Scientists use the Kepler Space Telescope to measure these oscillations, and by the frequency they can tell the size of the stars. They combine this with the study of planets in the zone around the star where the temperature allows water to be liquid. Will this eventually lead us to the discovery of extraterrestrial life? 

Cleartones Notifications

Last year I launched Cleartones, a set of minimalist ring tones which will not make you look stupid when your phone rings. I’ve been using the Cleartone called ‘Persistent’ for a while now, and received phone calls during meetings and even while teaching a lesson. In both cases no one commented or even turned their head because my phone rang. A good sign for me that the Cleartones concept is working.

Since the release of iOS 5 iPhone users are finally able to set custom tones for text messages, emails and other notifications. So I created Cleartones Notifications, minimalist, simple notification sounds for your iPhone or Android smart phone. Have a look at the Cleartones website for available options. You can also try some of them for free by paying with a tweet.

Thanks to Joachim Baan for supporting Cleartones and providing this beautiful image!

Happy new year!

To all visitors of Everyday Listening, may your 2012 be wonderful!

Ode to the North

My brother Michiel takes part in the Fjällräven Polar competition. His goal: a trip to the Norwegian and Swedish north, navigating a dog sled trough 330 kilometers of snow. He would be thankful for your vote, so please consider clicking the vote button on the Fjällräven Polar website. 

For his promotional movie (he’s a motion graphics designer) I initially created some frozen sounds using the wonderful Spectral Dronemaker from the Soundmagic Spectral plug-in suite by Michael Norris. But Michiel found them a bit too haunting and wanted to put the emphasis on the beauty and timelessness of his photo’s, so used some simple sine waves instead. 

Sonic Business Cards

Richard Eigner was the man behind Denoising Field Recordings. He is also part of the electronic Music duo Ritornell. Katarina Hölzl designed some wonderful new business cards for them. By giving someone their business card they now give away a tangible piece of their music. Sadly, not everyone has that nice custom built wooden music box at home to play the cards. It’s a lovely idea though.