Table Music

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Any sound can be music if you listen to it the right (or wrong) way. Living in the Farm to Table living/learning community at the University of Vermont, I am constantly surrounded by musical people (who knew so many wonderful people could love both food AND music!?). In this podcast, I have collected 10 sounds from my daily life which I consider to be music. We begin with the noises I wake up to, such as the box fan in my window, and progress through my daily life until the last things I hear before going to bed. Additionally, you may notice that the music in my life starts out as an individual experience each morning, and slowly builds to include our whole community by the end of the night. Each and every sound can be found within the Farm to Table house. Some of these noises are indeed actual songs that can be played, but others are fragments of noise which inspire me to create and connect to other people.

  1. Box fan – Each morning, before my alarm even goes off, my brain registers the sound of the fan in the window of my room. The sound is constant, and always in the background of my daily life.
  2. Book Pages – Books are a huge part of my life, whether I am reading them for class or just for fun, I have always loved the sound of crisp pages turning.
  3. Pencils drumming – A tick similar to tapping a foot, I often tap my pencil in my room while thinking of an idea (or sometimes out of boredom).
  4. Feet on the Stairs – Every person has a unique, distinct walk. The acoustics of the stairwell outside our suites carry the pounding of feet up three floors, so we always know when people are home.
  5. The Laugh – One of the members of my suite has an amazing, deep, bubbling laugh. Whenever I hear it, I can’t help but smile.
  6. Food Song – While hiking with five other people from my house this past weekend, I was introduced to a song by one of the other members. He taught us this song which he sang while in high school, and we sang it before our lunch at the top of the mountain. Later that evening, we taught it to the parents of one of the other members.
  7. Eating – Oftentimes I come back to my room to find my beautiful roommate spread out on the floor, eating pretzels or other snacks.
  8. Percussion Jam –Spontaneous jam sessions often happen on the third floor of A Mid, such as this percussion circle from a week or so ago. One person started with a beat, and slowly everyone else (about 20 people) added in their own rhythm until we were all clapping, stomping, and shaking trashcans as one.
  9. Night Music –Nightly music adventures make our community ever stronger. Sitting around in a circle, singing and playing music together allows us to bond as a community. We are no longer each our individual selves trying to do the best we can, but parts of the whole machine that work to achieve a common goal.
  10. Deep breathing/absence of sound – After everyone goes to sleep, this quietness seeps through the suite like a blanket, quieting our minds until we wake up to the sounds of a new day.

The way we perceive sound, and thus music, is highly individual. However, the act of hearing is also a cultural phenomenon. As explained in “BANG (a beginning),” our culture and language greatly influence how we hear. In the article, Schwartz states that “just as noise is what we make of certain sounds, the meanings we assign to noise are no less consequential than the meanings we assign to other sounds” (Schwartz, 28). In that case, I consider all of the noises in my podcast to be music, so therefore they are. Additionally, my observation of Farm to Table as a whole has helped me find each individual’s own voice. As Barthes states in his article “The Grain of the Voice,” “the voice is not personal… it is not original… and at the same time it is individual” (Barthes, 182). This is the essence of Farm to Table. Though we all come into the house with our own voice and personality, there is a constant give and take between us and the music we create together. To me, it seems that at the end of the night our voices all together make up one singular new grain.

Picking 10 sounds that exemplify my life with Farm to Table caused me to thing about many things, but most importantly it made me realize that sound is a communal experience. In choosing which noises to include on the list, I was required to ruminate on what I personally consider music, and why. I have decided that, for me at least, music does not need to have an established rhythm or melody, but just something that strikes a chord in my heart, and brings me back to a specific place or time. These 10 sounds will forever remind me of Farm to Table, a place that I have come to call home.

 

Bibliography:

Bathes, Roland. “The Grain of the Voice.” In Image, Music, Text, translated by Stephen Heath, 179–89. Noonday Press, 1977.

Schwartz, Hillel. “BANG (a Beginning).” In Making Noise: From Babel to the Big Bang & beyond, 18–36. Brooklyn, NY: Zone Books, 2011.

Meaning in Everyday Sounds Podcast

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Paying attention to everyday sounds rather than moving through life with closed ears can provide significant insight to many aspects of life. It can allow a deeper observation and understanding of cultural norms, as well as give us insight into the workings of our own bodies and minds. An individual or culture can be observed in its most true nature by their preference of the types of sounds as well as the overall amount of sound in their life.

The gap between the sensation or auditory stimuli that the body takes in, and the perception of that stimuli the mind receives is known as the mind-body gap, and was illustrated in the Hudspeth reading. Two of the sounds I recorded of my everyday life serve as examples, or proof, of this dichotomy. The first, is a sound recording of eating lunch in the grundle. The background noise consisting of many private conversations can be heard as one overwhelming drone of sound, or the mind can choose to hone in on a specific aspect of that drone. If the mind were to focus on a single conversation, the noise of the others would cause only certain pieces of that conversation to be actually sensed by the body. However, the gap between sensation and perception would allow the mind to perceive the full conversation because the mind would be able to fill in any small gaps in the incoming stimuli. The other example of this effect is a sound recording of dinner at a nice restaraunt. At a first listen, the noise of plates being set down and utensils clinking can be heard over the background noise of people having conversations. However, if the mind is attuned to a specific background conversation, the mind can fill in most of the gaps that are not actually sensed, and make sense of the conversation. The mind-body gap, or the disconnect between sensation and perception is a vitally important phenomenon in sound studies as well as any psychological science.

The next four sounds are reflective of the differences in sound preference between collectivist and individualist culture. Individualist cultures tend to like progressive absence of sound in certain aspects of life whereas collectivist cultures tend to prefer a widening presence of noise. Although the U.S. is a highly individualist nation, many of my sound preferences reflect collectivist culture(I am uncomfortable in situations with little to no noise). One of the recordings is the sound of my pencil scratching on paper over the sound of classical music playing in the background to ease the mental tension of a near soundless environment. The next is the sound of my fan blowing at night, in order to make me comfortable enough to sleep. Similarly, the next is the sound of music inside my headphones in the gym, in order to keep me motivated. Lastly, the sound recording of the UVM symphony orchestra tuning is symbolic of a collectivist culture as well as a collectivist sound.

The seventh sound is a recording of a part of Eminem’s “Music Box”. For me, this verse exemplifies the “grain of the voice”, as discussed in Barthes’ article. The sharp, guttural tones made by mucus membranes and teeth in addition to the lungs are what make his words snap in your ears.

Two of the sound clips reflect ideas portrayed in the Schwartz reading. One of the clips is the sound of my longboard rolling over pavement, and the other is of my Keurig brewing a cup of coffee. The Schwartz explained how different sounds are regarded in drastically different ways in different cultures. The example he used was how the song of the cicadas was appreciated by certain greek philosophers because of how cicadas were regarded in their society, whereas others in different cultures despised the sound. These two sound clips exemplify sounds that I appreciate deeply because of their meaning in my culture and life.

The final sound clip is of an mp3 track being played in the shower. This reflects the ideas brought up in the Sterne article on mp3’s. The mp3 has a low level quality that would not be pleasant to the human ear, however the perceptive powers of the ear are able to supplement the track to make it detailed. The sound of the water over the track deteriorates the already sub-par quality of an mp3 track, however my ears are able to enhance the audio to a satisfactory level through perception.

In conclusion, the insight from the sounds we perceive in everyday life can provide great insight about the inner values of certain cultures as well as the workings of our own bodies.

My Grain: Swans – Helpless Child

Swans, the most skilled group of sound gods to ever rock the face of the Earth, and my favorite band, display one of their many grains in their song, Helpless Child. It is an emotionally engaging epic from their 1996 2 disc album, Soundtracks for the Blind, an impressive collection of live recordings and collaborations. Soundtracks for the Blind is my favorite Swans album, and Helpless Child is my favorite song on the album. I find myself discovering new sounds in the atmosphere of this song almost every time I listen to it. When you have 16 minutes, turn off all the lights, and listen to Helpless Child with the highest quality sound system to which you have access (I must emphasize the importance of this). Also, the louder you listen to this song, the better it is; all of Swans’ music is created to be listened to very loudly. Listen closely to how Michael Gira’s voice is complemented by the surreal instrumentals. I urge you to keep listening once the lyrical portion of the song is over: the meat of the song is in the instrumental layering.

My Grain

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 (:

The Grain (Thoughts from Class)

Hey Guys!

Today’s discussion made me think a lot about this band from my small home state Rhode Island called Brown Bird. A few people mentioned artists who did some of their best work while in the hospital near the end of their lives, and how the grain is often stronger in those people. This song is from Brown Bird’s most recent (and final) album, and I think that it exemplifies the quality of the grain being strengthened under stress. It seems to me that people who are dealing with things in their lives such as severe sickness are able to pour all they have left into their art.

For some background on the band, Brown Bird is made up of a couple who have been playing together since around 2003. A few years ago, David Lamb was diagnosed with Leukemia, and as a last project he and his partner recorded this last album “Axis Mundi.” The album was released after his death. In my opinion, the music is already emotional without knowing their background, but the knowledge of the situation under which the album was recorded makes it easier to hear the grain.

Anyway, here’s their song “Tortured Boy.” I hope you like the grain.

Pop music today

If anyone is familiar with Bo Burnham I’m sure you know where I’m going with this!  He is a comedian from Mass that explains pop music perfectly. When we were talking about pop music today in class I couldn’t help but think of this video.

Andrew Bird

Hey everyone.
I found something cool and interesting kind of relating to our class so I thought I would post something on the blog.
A composer named Andrew Bird is a musician that specializes in playing string instruments. His latest album Echolocations: Canyons focuses around natural forming acoustic spaces. He wrote an entire album based on the way sound moves through canyons. I found it interesting that this artist chose a location and thought about how the sound moved in relation to the environment before starting to actually compose music. He let his environment kind of due it for him. Below is a quote from Bird explaining a little about this process. Also attached is a quick “trailer” to him album as well as a song from it. I hope you check it out it’s dope.

“Ever since I was a child I would test different spaces with my voice or whistle or violin. Whatever sound you make it’s like a giant limb that can reach beyond your fingers and grope the corners of the room.  Now when I’m on tour playing a different theater every night we “tune” the room hunting down the bass traps and the standing waves to give the listener the most even and wide spectrum sound. There are certain frequencies that resonate while others are lifeless. Sometimes the room refuses to yield and I have to consider playing different songs that will work in that room. It’s a challenge but I enjoy the moments when I must yield to the environment. So I thought it would be interesting to take all this outside where the reflections off the landscape are triggering countless inferences and steering the conversation.”

Trailer:

The Canyon Wants To Hear C Sharp:

Edison’s Talking Dolls

In “The Sounds Around Us,” by Lawrence English, we learned about Ludwig Koch’s recording of a Common Sharma using a wax cylinder recorder. English describes this as the first “field recording” and says that it is significant in that it represents a transformation of how sound was perceived and remembered.

talkingdollPerhaps surprisingly, the first recordings made and distributed for the purposes of home entertainment were not recordings of music. Instead they were recordings of the voices of little girls reciting nursery rhymes and prayers. These recordings were then inserted into talking dolls and sold as toys. The toy was a flop and quickly disappeared from the market. The few dolls that remain in existence have been mute for some time, as their owners were reluctant to damage the wax cylinders that allowed the dolls to speak by playing them. Researchers recently developed a means for contemporary listeners to hear these voices.

When you listen, you will probably not be surprised that the toy was not successful. However, the dolls are notable in that they were the first instance in which sound recording was envisioned as a way to capture musical performances and to repeat them for entertainment purposes. In doing so, the music recording industry transformed the way in which music was experienced and created.

Read more about the talking dolls and listen to their voices in a New York Times article from May 2015.

Hearing vibrations

In “Introduction: Hearing Vibrations,” Shelley Trower examines the development of scholarly, scientific, and popular writings about sound as vibration. She is particularly interested in how attempts to detect, analyze and control sound as vibration lead to new developments in a variety of scientific fields, including psychology, neurology, physiology, as well as practices that used vibration as a means of establishing the objective basis of their ideas such as spiritualism. For Trower, these writings about vibration opened up new modes of understanding the relationship between mind and body, between internal thoughts, feelings and emotions on the one hand, and external materialities including bodies and objects on the other.

The following videos exemplify some of Trower’s points. The top two  are referred to in the text. The bottom two are an example of how vibration exists between and through objects, and always has the potential to be transformed into sound. Continue reading →