Slowing Down

While the sun shines abundantly and temperatures rise to unknown heights, the Everyday Listening visitor will notice a decrease in posts. While this year I will not be a full month away from the internet and there might be an interesting project or fact to share with you, the coming weeks will be quieter than usual.

Please keep sending me your suggestions, projects, review requests, and there will be enough interesting things to talk about for the new season! Have a great summer and enjoy some quiet time as well. Leave the city, take a hike, play an instrument, listen.

 

In the meantime, in case you missed them, some good posts from the past weeks:    

 

Piano Migrations Installation - a wonderful sound and video installation

 

Denoising Field Recordings - listen to the sound of noise reduction

 

Five Sound Questions to Ray Lee - this series keeps getting better

Photo by: Rukakuusamo

Green Sound Soundwave Festival San Francisco

Inflorescence 2010 sound and performance installation - June 17, Soundwave Festival

The Soundwave Festival, organized every two years by ME’DE.ATE will have the theme ‘Green Sound’ this year and will take place from June 6 till August 13, 2010 in San Francisco. The festival combines sound art and sound installations with innovative performances, experimental, classical and popular music. 

With the Greeen Sound theme the festival will explore the natural world and environmental issues, together with over 75 artists and musicians. Looking at the list of artists it is nice to see Alyce Santoro, who was one of the first to answer the Five Sound Questions, is one of them. 

Click to read more ...

Another Sound: Midlake

The second edition of Another Sound on Anothersomething is now online. This time I wrote a little piece about Midlake. I recently visited one of their live shows, but I already fell in love with their music quite some time ago. Click through to read the whole story on Anothersomething: Another Sound - Midlake.

It is great to have the opportunity to write for Anothersomething. On Everyday Listening I like to still my hunger for innovative, thought provoking or just inspiring sound-related projects, but it is fun to write about music in a different way as well. A big thank you to Joachim for this!

Click to read more ...

Another Sound on Anothersomething

I am very happy to announce the first edition of Another Sound, a recurring feature on Joachim Baan’s great blog Anothersomething. Joachim is a very inspiring person and on Anothersomething he shares his passion with the world. In his own words: “We don’t fall for just anything. We are attracted to the quality, aesthetic and sophistication of something. A unique, incomparable and extraordinary something.” And from now on Anothersomething has its own music and sound related section called Another Sound, written by me. 

The first edition of Another Sound features Efterklang and their new album Magic Chairs. I love the way Efterklang changes their musical style without changing their way of showing their true passion for music. Please read the whole article here and let me know what you think: Another Sound on Anothersomething.

Subscribe to the Everyday Listening Newsletter

You might have noticed the new field in the right sidebar of Everyday Listening labeled Monthly Newsletter, where you can fill in and submit your email address.

As the name suggests, here you can subscribe to the new Everyday Listening Newsletter which I will be sending out once a month. In the newsletter you will find the highlights of the month, a selection of featured posts and other news about the site. So in case you do not have the time to visit us every day, you will never miss the most interesting stuff. 

I am starting this as an experiment to find out if people like a service like this. I think it is a good way to encourage readers to stay in touch. Later on I might change the frequency of the newsletters, but I will announce this beforehand, and I promise I will never give away or sell your email addresses to anyone else. I hate spam just as much as you do!

As easy as it is to subscribe to the newsletter (just enter you email address and confirm by clicking the link in the email sent to you), if you decide you rather check the website manually now and then or you prefer using an RSS subscription, it is just as easy to unsubscribe by clicking the link at the bottom of each email. 

So I hereby invite you to subscribe to the new newsletter, to stay in touch, and tell me what you think!

150 Years of Music Technology - Competition

We have listened to the first sound ever recorded this week, and today, april 9th 2010 it is exactly 150 years ago this sound was recorded. For some, like the people from First Sounds, a good moment for a celebration! 

This year from the 1st till the 4th of May the Linux Audio Conference 2010 (LAC) takes place in Utrecht, the Netherlands, and one of the special events on this conference will be a composition competition, in collaboration with First Sounds. 

Here is a description from the LAC newsletter:

The original 150-year old “Au Claire de la Lune” sample, found here can be used as a starting point. There is also a free Tonehammer sample package which can be used.

For the composition process, the use of Linux and/or open source applications is strongly encouraged and appreciated. The composition must be accompanied by a (short) description of the work and the use of software and technology.

Submissions can be sent to lac [at] linuxaudio [dot] org, before the 26th of April. Or you can hand in your submission on the first day of the festival. 

I am happy to announce that I will be part of the jury for this competition. I am looking forward to hearing all creative contributions! Read more about the Linux Audio conference on the LAC website: lac.linuxaudio.org/2010/

Best of One Year of Everyday Listening

Today it is exactly one year ago since the first post on Everyday Listening. Oh, how time flies! 132 posts later it feels like I am only just getting into this. I would like to thank all the people who visited, subscribed, came back, commented, sent me tips and collaborated. Here’s to an inspiring sonic future! 

To celebrate the first birthday of Everyday Listening I selected some of my favorite posts of the last year. As you might have noticed I like to serve a mix of inspiring links and movies, interviews, some longer articles and news. Some great new collaborations are in the pipeline, stay tuned and keep visiting the site! :)

1. Soundwalkers
   A great documentary on we use sound to navigate our way through the world.


2. Soundclusters 2
   Fascinating music making robots.


3. Mexico City: Coyoacán 
   The Places category has not been updated lately, but it is wonderful to listen to another place in the world and go on a sonic journey. Lately I have been uploading short bits of sound using AudioBoo on my Posterous page.  

Click to read more ...

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

What is your favorite sound?

My friends from Creative Heroes created this nice little commenting/polling system: the AnswerGarden. So here is my first AnswerGarden question to you: what is your favorite sound? Fill in your own answer or click on an existing one and hit 'submit'!