TEN QUESTIONS TO A LISTENER Copeland
"Reality itself has begun to be considered a type of writing that must be decoded, even when the photographed images were compared to the top with writing."
Susan Sonntag, About Photography
The purpose of this exercise is to facilitate the discovery of new meanings in sounds that are normally taken for granted.
1. Find a place, indoors or outdoors, public or private, with an interesting set of sounds. Sit there and listen only for 30 minutes or more.
2. When you start listening to try to focus and pay attention to all the sounds that occur around them, no matter how are familiar or mundane.
3. Try to collect in memory and recall as many of these sounds. After several minutes, focus your attention on just one sound. Try to select a sound that you think you will hear frequently.
4. For the rest of the listening session will be aimed primarily its focus to this particular sound.
5. Once you have selected your sound may begin to answer the following question sequence. Spend a minimum of 90 seconds for each question. You can write the answers in a list. Spend more time on those questions that relate more appropriately with their sound.
TEN QUESTIONS 1. From memory, what would you say to describe your sound? What is the most distinctive feature?
2. During what time of day or week is normally hear the sound in this place?
3. From the moment you reached the place, how often he heard the sound? "Would you measure the frequency in minutes, seconds or milliseconds? Does your regularly follows a recognizable pattern?
4. How are complements (or rejected) their sound with other sounds in your environment?
5. What are the objects in their environment that identifies their sound directly or indirectly? Does your environment objects and surfaces that help to illuminate their sound or hide?
6. What are the social, geographical or physical conduct of its environment that its sound could represent symbolically?
7. Do you often find your sound in other environments? How are these environments similar to the one you are now?
8. Is your sound associated with some memories of his past?
9. How does your sound changed from the time you arrived?
10. In general, what is the contribution of this sound to your experience in this environment? Do you have any influence on the mood or character of things around you? Musical Review
In the context of music acousmatic composers often fail to consider the social background or imaginary sounds they use. The dominant tradition of musical abstraction, in fact, encourages the destruction of all social referentiality. Through exercises like this are expected to acousmatic composers to develop a broader awareness of the sounds available to a field recorder. The microphones, after all, should not remain immune to capture the social context surrounding the desired sound source.
