🧠 Teaching

COD 412 Sound In New Media

12 min read

Articles

This section includes selected articles from sound literature and research to provide students overall framework in terms of sound as a theory and practice. The section organized in a unordered list of sources. There is no linear flow for the selected articles and project documents. Rather the list provides set of themes, contexts and knowledge related to sound and experimental showcases of music.

Weekly Resources

Week 1

Example projects:
Mosspillow A pillow help you to sleep with sounds of nature.

Week 2


Online VST instrument Cardboard Synth. You can connect your MIDI device and control the online synth.

Week 3

Screening: Field Recording
Reading: Sound Art: Origins, development and ambiguities.
Overtone Singing POLYPHONIC OVERTONE SINGING - by Anna-Maria Hefele
Music Concrete Recipe: Music Technology Foundations

Ä°lhan MimaroÄźlu

Tools


PaulXStretch PaulXStretch is designed for radical transformation of sounds. It is NOT suitable for subtle time or pitch correction. Ambient music and sound design are probably the most suitable use cases. It can turn any audio into hours or days of ambient soundscape, in an amazingly smooth and beautiful way.
Video walkthrough, link

MyNoise.net Online soundscape tool helps you to generate soundscapes for variety of spaces.

Imaginary Soundscapes Listen to the soundscape of places. Google maps based online tool allows you to navigate to different places of the world and listen to their soundscapes recorded by volunteer people who works with sound.

Free VST Tools Youtube video presents free vst tools that can be useful for your sound projects.

Soundscape Projects

  • Ä°ris Eryılmaz → Sound of the City (Hatay soundscape)
  • Asya Korkmaz → Disappearing Sound: A Sound Worth Saving (Aygaz Melodisi), Most Unpleasant Sound (Construction)
  • Esra YĂĽcetĂĽrk → Composed with sound (Ses kayıtları)
  • Bera DoÄźan → Best Imagined Sound (Babel), Unpleasant Sound (Taxi)
  • Zeynep Ă–zer → Best Imagined Sound (Space), Best Natural Sound (Sea Shell)

Week 4

Assignment
Read the attached document (Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen, Michel Chion). The ebook is available on OZU as well, if you want to skim the whole content. 

Record 2 different sound samples for each category mentioned in the book. Keep the recording lengths between 5-20 seconds long. So you must upload 6 sound samples in total.
piezzo speaker
sound box

Reading: COD412_Three_listening_Modes.pdf

Week 5

  • Who is Michel Chion?
  • What are the listening modes? Why do they matter?
  • Examples of Causal, Semantic and Reduced Listening discussion.

In class Showcase
-rightSolresol musical language called Langue Universelle developed by Jean-François Sudre in the 19th century.








Screening: Patch Notes: Hélène Vogelsinger

Week 6 - Live Coding Overview

History of Live Coding
In class practice

Week 7 - Acoustic Ecology

Doğayı dinlemek: Ağaçların sesini duyabilir miyiz? I “Burada hayat var” - YouTube

Week 8 - Holiday

Week 9 - Soundscape Ecology

Soundscape Ecology Project: Campus Soundscapes

Project Overview

In this assignment, you will explore soundscape ecology, the study of how sounds shape our environment. You will record a 30-second (minimum) audio clip from a location on campus, document its context, and analyze the soundscape using key acoustic ecology concepts.

Assignment Requirements
1. Field Recording (30+ seconds)
  • Record a minimum of 30 seconds of uninterrupted sound on campus.
  • Use a smartphone (voice memo app) or a professional recorder (Zoom, Tascam, etc.).
  • Avoid excessive wind noise or handling sounds.
2. Documentation (Submit with Recording)
  • Date & time of recording
  • Exact location (GPS coordinates or descriptive landmark)
  • Photo of the recording spot (showing the environment)
  • Short description of the setting (e.g., “Near the shuttle area, midday with light foot/vehicle traffic”)
3. Soundscape Analysis

Categorize the sounds in your recording using R. Murray Schafer’s soundscape taxonomy:

  • Biophonic (biological sources: birds, insects, animals)
  • Geophonic (natural non-living sources: wind, water, rain)
  • Anthropophonic (human-made sounds: voices, machines, footsteps)
  • Soundmark (unique sound that identifies a place, e.g., a campus bell)
  • Keynote Sound (background sound that defines the space, e.g., distant traffic)
  • Sound Signal (foreground sounds that demand attention, e.g., a shout, siren)

Write a 250-500 word analysis addressing:

  • Which categories dominate your recording?
  • How do these sounds shape the identity of the space?
  • What does this soundscape reveal about human-nature interactions on campus?

Submission Format

  • Audio file (.mp3, .wav, or .aiff)
  • Documentation sheet (PDF with photo, location, date/time, description)
  • Written analysis (PDF or embedded in documentation)

Week 10 - Final Project Notes

İris Yılmazer: Rhino - Audiovisual
Bera DoÄźan: Wearables
Zeynep Ă–zer: Acoustic/Soundscape Ecology based musical composition.
Okan Bilici: Live-coding Performance - Live Guitar
Esra YĂĽcetĂĽrk: TD - Pointcloud - Mekan MĂĽziÄźi - Sonic Pi
Asya Korkmaz:

Watch List

Early Electronic Music

Iannis Xenakis

sound electroacoustic graphicNotation

#### Ä°lhan MimaroÄźlu MimaroÄźlu is one of the precursor composers of contemporary music in TĂĽrkiye. His experimental musical compositions affected several contemporary sound artists and musicians.

Kraftwerk: The Emergence of Techno

This concert at the "carussel of the youth" from 1970 is the earliest existing concert video of these electronic pioneers. The band was just created this year and could be seen in the original setup.

New Musical Interface

In this episode of Sound Builders, we went to Los Angeles, to meet with Mileece. She's a sonic artist and environmental designer who's developed the technology to give silent seedlings a portal to their own sonic expression. Channeling a plant's sentience into an instrument is no obvious feat. Mileece's background as an audiophile and programmer dovetailed to turn a garden into an organic medium for music. She pulls this off by attaching electrodes to leafy limbs, which conduct the bio-electric emissions coming off living plants. The micro-voltage then gets sucked into her self-authored software, turning data into ambient melodies and harmonic frequencies. It's simply not enough for these green little squirts to just spit out noise. All this generative organic electronic music must sound beautiful, too. As a renewable energy ambassador, Mileece's larger goal behind her plant music is to enhance our relationship with nature. And if plant music can have a pleasing aesthetic articulation then hopefully we all can give a greater damn about our environment. While some may see the paradox in an organic medium generating electronic music, Mileece does not. She sees this as a symbiotic relationship, a vital one, and one that hints to a larger relationship she's been trying to unify, which is that between humans and nature. #interactive #sound #performance #instrument After spending the last month feather dusting episodes from season one of Sound Builders, we're positively tickled to bring to you a fresh batch of sonic-bending episodes. In this latest installment of Sound Builders we meet today's sonic artists who are pushing the audio experience to a whole new level by harnessing sound and technology to create their own instruments. Hosting this time around is singer, artist and frequent Blood Orange collaborator Samantha Urbani. In episode one, we go to Bushwick to meet with Brooklyn-based, interactive sound artist Adriano Clemente. He's a DJ, hacker, gamer and music producer but to sum things up, we've dubbed him a techno-collagist. It's the most accurate description for Adriano, since he uses a multitude of existing technology and custom parts whose official purposes are hardly designed for making music. We see this firsthand when our host Samantha had her arm turned into an analog instrument. With a medical sensor strapped to her forearm, Adriano was able to turn her muscle contractions into data to perform and compose music through the rarely explored art of biofeedback. Adriano goes on to explore the relationship between body, sensors and sound by showing us how a piezo contact microphone can be used to transform any piece of backyard junk into a percussive and melodic instrument. Some people call it physical modeling synthesis but we just call it pretty much amazing. Adriano's objective is clear: to create a new kinesthetic approach to sound design that totally flips our notion that music is made from a traditional instrument or from interfacing with your mouse, keyboard and screen. This kind of research in tactile, computer music embodiment is not only important for reimagining our conventional vision of an instrument, but also for cutting in half the frustration from wanting to perform in front of millions but having no idea how to play a single note. #interactive #sound #performance What happens when a horror movie composer and a guitar maker join forces? They create the world’s most disturbing musical instrument. Affectionately known as "The Apprehension Engine," this one-of-a-kind instrument was commissioned by movie composer Mark Korven. Korven wanted to create spooky noises in a more acoustic and original way—but the right instrument didn't exist. So his friend, guitar maker Tony Duggan-Smith, went deep into his workshop and assembled what has to be the spookiest instrument on Earth. #sound #soundsculpture #instrument

Live Coding

Live coding, in short, is the act of programming computers in real-time to produce music, visuals, or both of them together as a tool for creative expression.

Joint live coding performance as Sync Union (Laila Kamil & Niklas Kleemann) using Tidal Cycles in the [Troop Editor](https://tidalcycles.org/docs/configuration/multiuser-tidal/#troop). In preparation, the track was composed, and it's sections arranged on paper. Watch the performance:

livecoding tutorial sound

Sound Art

sound soundsculpture

sound kineticsculpture soundsculpture

sound soundsculpture

Custom Sound Design Objects

sound soundsculpture performance ambientBox

#sound #piezo #fabric

DIY - Plate Reverb

Fabric-based

Blank


Amplified Pillow Speaker

A fabric speaker made into a pillow with embroidery inside has a modified amplification module from a store-bought device. This lets you easily connect an MP3 player to play your favorite tunes. Although it’s not as loud as regular speakers, it’s cozy enough for you to lay your head on and relax.

## Assignment Pool ### Live Coding and Silence Reading: Music and The New Audio Culture - Intro, John Cage - Future of Music: Credo. Reading: John Cage – The Moral Value of Silence Assignment 1: Write an essay about John Cage's conceptual 4'33'' sound art piece. Assignment 2: Download and install Sonic Pi, bring headphones for the next class.

Live Coding with Sonic Pi

Week 5 Content (Three Listening Modes)

Links

  1. [Solresol] musical language called Langue Universelle developed by Jean-François Sudre in the 19th century.
  2. Every noise A web page for exploring music genres with an experimental UI.
  3. Kuntay SeferoÄźlu Instruments - Portfolio Review
  4. Unusual Musical Instruments
  5. Chord Progression Cheat Sheet This is the source if you want to play around with notes according to classical western harmony. 

Assignment

  1. Download and install Sonic Pi from https://sonic-pi.net/.
  2. Open the application and familiarize yourself with the interface:
    • Code Editor: Where you write your code.
    • Log Window: Displays feedback and errors.
    • Help System: Provides documentation and examples.
  3. Go to the website and review examples. There are also tons of tutorials on YouTube.
  4. Create a basic melody with live coding using Sonic Pi. 
  5. Submit your code as a txt file.
  6. This assignment does not measure the musical quality or tonality. And this is not a programming class. Your primary focus should be on exploring the limits of sound through the use of modern technological tools. So do not stress out. Just try to make something sound good to you.

COD 412 Final Projects Collection

2018-2019
2019-2020
2020-2021
2021-2022
2022-2023
2023-2024

Graph View