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.
How to Read an Academic Article
Caveat: no single style works for everyone!
Klein’s basic steps for skimming, scanning, processing…
I. Read the abstract (if provided)
II. Read the introduction.
III. Read the conclusion.
IV. Skim the middle, looking at section titles, tables, figures, etc.—try to get a feel for the style and flow of the article.
a. Is it methodological, conceptual, theoretical (verbal or mathematical), empirical, or something else?
b. Is it primarily a survey, a novel theoretical contribution, an empirical application of an existing theory or technique, a critique, or something else?
V. Go back and read the whole thing quickly, skipping equations, most figures and tables.
VI. Go back and read the whole thing carefully, focusing on the sections or areas that seem most important.Once you’ve grasped the basic argument the author is trying to make, critique it!
I. Ask if the argument makes sense. Is it internally consistent? Well supported by argument or evidence? (This skill takes some experience to develop!)
II. Compare the article to others you’ve read on the same or a closely related subject. (If this is the first paper you’ve read in a particular subject area, find some more and skim them. Introductions and conclusions are key.) Compare and contrast. Are the arguments consistent, contradictory, orthogonal?
III. Use Google Scholar, the Social Sciences Citation Index, publisher web pages, and other resources to find articles that cite the article you’re reading. See what they say about it. See if it’s mentioned on blogs, groups, etc.
IV. Check out a reference work, e.g. a survey article from the Journal of Economic Literature, a Handbook or Encyclopedia article, or a similar source, to see how this article fits in the broader context of its subject area.
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
- İlhan Mimaroğlu | interlude - night and snow Beaux Arts String Quartet & Janis Siegel ‎ String Quartet No. 4 “Like There’s Tomorrow” from the movie “The Turin Horse” at 1982.
- MimaroÄźlu Documentary
- Ä°lhan MimaroÄźlu - MĂĽzik Tarihi Book about the history of world music in Turkish.
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
- İris Eryılmaz → Sound of the City (Hatay soundscape)
- Asya Korkmaz → Disappearing Sound: A Sound Worth Saving (Aygaz Melodisi), Most Unpleasant Sound (Construction)
- Esra Yücetürk → Composed with sound (Ses kayıtları)
- Bera Doğan → Best Imagined Sound (Babel), Unpleasant Sound (Taxi)
- Zeynep Özer → Best Imagined Sound (Space), Best Natural Sound (Sea Shell)
Week 4
Screening: Patch Notes: Hélène Vogelsinger
- Live Coding
- The Secrets of Sound
Watch List
First Techno (Kraftwerk, 1970)
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.
Meet the Sonic Artist Making Music with Plants: Sound Builders (Imogen Heap, 2014)
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
Meet the Techno-Collagist Who Turns Lasers and Human Limbs into Instruments: Sound Builders
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
Sounds of the Nightmare Machine (Mark Korven)
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
Joint Breakcore Live Coding Performance
Joint live coding performance as Sync Union (Laila Kamil & Niklas Kleemann) using Tidal Cycles in the Troop Editor. In preparation, the track was composed, and it’s sections arranged on paper. Watch the performance:
sound Ä°lhan MimaroÄźlu
sound kineticsculpture soundsculpture
sound electroacoustic graphicNotation
sound soundsculpture performance ambientBox
#sound #piezoCustom Sound Design Objects
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.