Rios, Fernando . “Bolero Trios, Mestizo Panpipe Ensembles, and Bolivia’s 1952 Revolution: Urban La Paz Musicians and the Nationalist Revolutionary Movement.” University of Illinois Press 54, no. 2(2010): 282–316.
Turino, Thomas. Moving Away From Silence. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993.
There are so many sounds that pass you by every single day, but do you hear them? Having this be my first year at the University of Vermont, I hear a lot of sounds in my new everyday life here. As I listen back on them, it’s interesting to really hear things that I don’t really pay much attention to. It’s like when Schafer mentions in, “Open Ears”, that we don’t have lids for our ears, but we don’t hear every single thing either. In my podcast, I focus on the mundane sounds of my life here at UVM. And although they are mundane noises, some of them were not apart of my life prior to coming to UVM. The sounds in this take you through a day in my life here, allowing you to almost picture it with each sound that happens.
I start my podcast off with the sound of my alarm going off. It starts the majority of my mornings here, and with that, I found it fitting to start my podcast off with it. Next, I follow my morning routine with walking to the bathroom and taking a shower. After that, I started recording more of my morning. The next sound is walking downstairs in my dorm’s stairwell. This sound frequents my day, as I travel up and down these stairs multiple times in one day. Walking down the stairwell you can hear other residents of the building. Although this is now a norm for me, its quite different from my average life back home. Walking down the stairs at my apartment consists of silence except for my feet stomping down the stairs. Now, it consists of my feet stomping down the stairs and the noises of people’s conversations. After I walk downstairs, I walk over to my bike and ride it to my classes. I ride my bike everywhere and it is my main source of transportation on and off campus. Next in my morning, I usually stop and get coffee at Henderson’s, which has become my new home. Coffee is the reason I can get through my long days here at UVM. The next sound is the swirling of iced coffee, which is what I get whenever I buy coffee, no matter the temperature outside. The sound of the iced coffee is something that I hear almost everyday. After coffee, I start my classes. My favorite class this semester, so far is music theory, so I recorded a small part of the lecture. Once I’m finished with my classes for the day I walk back to my dorm to do my homework. The sounds of people walking past me as I walk back to my room after classes are something that is in constant background of my new reality here at UVM. Its something that I realized I tune out. After listening back on it, there are a lot of sounds that are around me that I never really realized that are there. Listening through the microphone from my phone made me realize how much more there is to listen to and allowed me to listen with new ears like what English says in their article called, “The Sounds Around Us”. In it, English says that microphones don’t have the capability to tune things out like human ears do, so it gives you a new aural experience. Once I’m back in my room, I start doing homework while listening to music, which explains my next sound which is me typing and my music playing on in the background. After a long day of classes and studying, my day ends with dinner in the dining halls with my friends and that is also what is the last sound on my podcast. Although things like these sounds are apart of my everyday life, some of them are still new to me and my new world here at UVM.
Work Cited:
English, Lawerence. “The Sounds around Us: An Introduction to Field Recording.” (2015)
I Of The Storm – Of Monsters and Men – Beneath The Skin
To me, the grain is all about being able to feel the passion of the artist(s) and having there be substance in a song. I feel that finding ‘the grain’ in music is very important and is a wonderful experience. Although everyone has different opinions about what the grain is to them, this song is just one of the many examples of songs that I feel have the grain.
Of Monsters And Men is one of my very favorite bands and have been listening to them since they released their first album a few years ago. This song, ‘I Of The Storm’ is off of their second and latest album and is definitely one of my favorites. Although the majority of their songs, to me, feature the grain, this one definitely stands out to me a lot. This song starts off calm but then dips into a dramatic feel in the chorus that builds you up and then slowly brings you back down. When listening to this song, I feel the highs and lows from the singers voices and the instruments playing. If you like this song, I would also highly recommend listening to these other songs by them: From Finner, Yellow Light, Lakehouse, Crystals, Empire and We Sink. I also recommend listening to this song as loud as you can to get the full effect (:
