learning the ropes

* Listen Close – Listen to a discrete repeatable sound. Listen for the detail in the sound.

I couldn’t find any good close-up sounds to listen to at the library, so I went back to ITP. I wanted to listen to something other than the relentless clacking of keyboards, shuffling feet on creaking hardwood floors, or mobile phone conversations. I wanted to listen to something simple, yet complex.

First stop — the Equipment Room. (thanks, Andrew, for humoring my request for a piece of equipment that made an interesting sound) . I left with a Panasonic CT-1030M pro video monitor and the goal of capturing in words the experience of listening to it turn on. When I checked it out of the ER, I had been hoping for the metallic, fuzzy honk of the de-Gaussing circuit on my home Dell monitor. The Panasonic had no soul.

I returned the tv monitor and sat down by the Deer Park water cooler next to the men’s room. This is the sound of water flowing from the spigot into a disposable plastic drinking cup.

There is a filtered, hollow sound as water drops into the empty cup. Air bubbles spatter as they burst at the surface of the water. The valve hisses slightly while it is open. When my head is against the base of the water cooler, I hear a hard muted reflection of the plastic valve as it opens and closes at my touch.

I pour water from the cooler into a stainless steel thermos and note the metallic “spang” of the water in the deeper cavity. As the water rises, one set of frequencies increases while another decreases. I enjoy the sound of the metal thermos as I flick it with my finger tip. “Bloing” “Buwoing” The frequency changes as I move the thermos around and the water within it sloshes back and forth.

Fashion by Georg Simmel, The American Journal of Sociology, Vol 62, No. 6 (may, 1957), pp. 541-558

Georg Simmel explores at great length the dynamics of fashion, commenting on the affect of class distinction and economic progress on the transitory nature of the sociological phenomenon.

Quotes that stood out:

Thus fashion represents nothing more than one of the many forms of life by the aid of which we seek to combine in uniform spheres of activity the tendency towards social equalization with the desire for individual differentiation and change.

- I was struck by the consequence of this — as well as the point Simmel makes later in his essay, which is that it is impossible to avoid the influence of fashion. Even by attempting to ignore fashion, I still participate in it in the negative.

[Fashion] has overstepped the bounds of its original domain, which comprised only personal externals, and has acquired an increasing influence over taste, over theoretical convictions, and even over the moral foundations of life.

- I think this has increased beyond what Simmel observed in 1957. The television and more recently the internet have accelerated this consumeristic trend.

* Listen Far – spend 5 minutes in an undistracted setting. Park bench, your apartment, or a street corner. Listen. Listen to the faintest sound you can hear. Now try to listen beyond that sound.

Bobst Library, Second Floor — seated at a table facing away from the central lobby. My ears are toward the reference area where students are typing.

Immediately above my head, the HVAC system rumbles.

I hear the electronic ding of the lobby elevator out in the central lobby. It reverberates briefly against the smooth tiled surface of the lobby floor. I am seated in a carpeted area, so the sounds immediately around me are muffled.

A door slams (”guuuhm”) in the distance and its echo lingers in the lobby area.

I hear light female footsteps, the sharp attack of boot heels against the tile ringed with bright reverberation. They approach and become slightly muffled on carpet. They come up the stairs located behind me then continue further up until my listening is interrupted by someone whistling a melody out in the lobby. I presume it’s the lobby by the reverberation.

As I look over my left shoulder, I see a young woman typing at a Macintosh computer. I can hear the faint mechanical clacking of the keys from her keyboard even at a distance of 50 feet. I wonder if I can hear anything beyond the sounds of her typing. Can I hear her shift in her chair?

She doesn’t move.

I wonder what my experience would be like if I could hear the whirring of the hard drive in the computer in front of her.

A pen falls (”taakkkk”) onto the surface of a desk in front of me and my focus changes.

I’m aware of the difference in frequency responses between my right and left ears. Last semester, a large mass of wax built up inside my right ear. It’s starting to happen again. The high frequencies are not as bright in my right ear as they are in my left. It’s time to start using the Murine again to loosen the wax.

A sneeze echoes from the lobby.

How deafening the world would be if louder if I could hear the hard drives spinning — the rustle of clothing — the scratch of pen or pencil against paper… What if the lowest frequencies were perceptable — the atoms in the objects at rest: books, maybe still echoing with the sound of the typesetting equipment that deposited the ink upon their pages.

Then I would be listening deeply and I would understand.

Our first reading assignment was Quantum Listening by Pauline Oliveros.

I have to admit that the structure (or apparent lack of) made it very difficult for me to read. I had a very hard time following her train of thought. Thanks to Rob Faludi’s BlogBlender, I discovered Gian Pablo’s reaction to it which encourages me to read it in a different way. Despite having played music for years, I had not considered reading an essay as music before.

Some of the themes she discussed with respect to deep listening reminded me of Aaron Copland’s What to Listen for in Music and also of Barry Green’s The Inner Game of Music

I wondered what she meant by “practice practice”, though.

Two things about her essay resonated with me.
1: the desire to create music collaboratively with people who don’t have formal musical training. To this end, I may try out to work out a “simple set of rules” by which we can do this in my Living Art class.
2: when I was in college and worked in a recording studio, I began to experience a deeper listening than I had ever done before. Part of my job was to verify that transfers we made from digital audio tapes (DATs) into ProTools didn’t contain glitches. I listened to the recordings very intently through headphones and through the process, I began to hear details I hadn’t experienced before. I developed a deeper sense of appreciation for clarity and fidelity in recordings.
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