Feb 6 Lounge, Jan highlights

Come on out for a night of listening
DCLL's February Listening Lounge
When: Feb 6th, 7:30pm
Where: Amy's Place
(email for details)
How: Petworth metro is closest
What do I bring? : Yourself. Also feel free to bring food, drinks or friends to share. If you'd like to bring audio - we'd love it. Please limit clips/excerpts to 6 minutes or shorter. 
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January Lounge Highlights Need extra motivation to attend February's lounge? Check out the notes from last month's lounge courtesy of James.
Attendees introduced themselves and described one sound that they found particularly loathsome.

• Rene – first timer at DCLL. Whining sounds of a car that always goes up hill outside his house. AND when a smoke alarm is about to die 
• Simon – first timer at DCLL. Whole food’s outdoor noise from a broken speaker
• Kate – first timer. Fire alarm in her apartment building
• Ian –  Locks on the door to his house.
• Steve – was in Chicago right across from Trump Tower on election night. In celebration, they sent two helicopters up in the air that hovered there all night.
• Anna – first timer. Kelly Anne Conway
• Liz – first timer. Broken doors to a CVS in Toronto. She even has it on her phone, which she played for us later. (It was truly horrible)
• Teague – birds nesting in the eve of his house outside his window w SIX starlings
• Anne – 2nd timer. Beeping sound at work from an unknown source that never seems to stop.
• Suzanne – glass scratching across earthen ware or ceramics
• Deb – her 2 year old son’s sound when he is denied somethin .
• Colleen – sirens in DC, echoing off all the buildings
• Mickey – Donald Trump’s voice which he actually has to pull sometimes into his podcast
• James – the words “President Trump”.

Listening:

• Liz: works in sculpture and incorporating sound into her work. She played …
  • Sound from a mountain top in Spain. Herd of large cows w bells around their neck. 
  • Day of the Dead
    • An LED storefront in Mexico w bits of USA pop music overlaid w store music
    • Street band celebrating dead people
  • And then… The infamous Toronto CVS Doors: truly a horrible sound. Like dolphins being slaughtered* (*author's note).
• Mickey: His nephew talking on tape but being drowned out by his uncle. Punctuations of chewy toys. This sparked much talk of secret recordings of family members. Including Deb being tricked into saying Banana B--ch over and over to her older sister. As well as Rene accidentally recording himself by pocket dialing a friend for 4 minutes
• Coleen: an EDM song’s loop w multi layers. “She Just Likes to Fight” by Four Tet. Emotional piece with different loops trying to overcome each other. Steve notes: but it’s more like a love song. And this to him did not sound like real EDM because you could hear the instruments. Ian: Fore Tet is a founder of Detroit House and so the fact that it sounds so harmonious is a nice aspect. 
• Ian: Was happy that this time we’re playing sounds so that he can play sounds, (versus earlier lounges where more stories were shared). These are seals from Antarctica and called Weddell Seals, which are 6 feet long and “broadcast across the bay”. This actually stuns their prey when hunting. It was very haunting and other-worldy.
• Deb: At U St market, where her friend sells pies! A sound scape of the transactions w happy customers. As well as sidewalk bands providing ambience. Deb says it was good practice even for interviewing people on the street as well as narrating. Mickey noted: enjoyed how it zoomed out and exposed more of the world around the pies. 
• This sparked an interesting debate about how allowed or proper it is to surreptitiously record people. 
• James: played a short called “$%#^'ing Matt Dillon”, a drunken story from a friend at a party who recounted how she had… yes, made sweet sweet love with Matt Dillon once.
• Simon: played a traveling orchestral harpist. Deb: “What type of party was that?” It was one where there were comedians and musicians but a definite mix of genres. Consensus was this was a very unusual type of sensual versus tactile type of harp playing. Many shouts out to the harpist at the Willard.

Other discussion points:

• Musician Jeremy Messersmith – “Paper Moon” was made so that anyone can use it in their pieces!!!
  • Ian points out that many Sound Cloud users/composers (his friends!!) WANT to score podcasts. So reach out and ask.
  • Girl Talk albums – can use their music for free
• Question about interviewing people from Deb as she has to do interviews w vets for an upcoming project. Schwartzing was discussed – the technique where you lie down w eyes closed in the dark. What ways do we know about to get good interviews?
  • Steve: start off w easy stuff – e.g., what did you do today?
  • James: using improve techniques (channeling Lizzie’s advice)
  • Rene: standing shoulder to shoulder versus face-to-face, a la what umpires do in baseball!
  • Mickey: Transom’s website has lots of practical advice!
  • Suzanne: purposely incorrectly summarizing the other person so that they then correct you but very succinctly
  • Steve: asking simple questions that break down things into how they sounded, smelled, etc.
• Question from Rene about interviewing. How do you transition from the everyday informal interview to an official interview?
  • Mickey: some people start recording as soon as they walk in and tell the person later. This way there’s no transition.(e.g. Reply All and RadioLab)
    • Studs Terkel would pretend to not know how to work the recorder. Would that work today?