May Listening Lounge Highlights!
We gathered at Rene and Kate’s place in Mt. Ranier, MD.
Introductions
The prompt was (1) a particularly good or memorable sound from a vacation or trip, and (2) a personal audio goal.
Rene
1) A steam train on a recent trip to Savannah, which had lots of great sounds including its whistle and a loud turntable, which blew out the levels on the recording he made.
2) Rene's audio goal is for Clyde (their dog) to bark a bit less.
Sarah
1) From a trip to the Smoky Mountains, the sound of an active mill—water turning the wheel, the millstones grinding.
2) Sarah is working on a mixtape, and wants to learn a bit more about audio so she can try some new techniques.
Teague
1) A piano rehearsal heard behind a big wooden door in an atmospheric Oxford quad.
2) It has been a while since Teague has made an edited audio piece, and he would like to make one soon.
Bond
1) Hearing Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now” while walking through a London Christmas display, and thinking about how cultural associations with songs differ even though the song remains the same.
2) Bond’s goal, in his job working in satellite radio, is to help people discover music that is meaningful to them and preserve older music in people’s lives.
Ann
1) The whispering corners at the Temple of Heaven in Beijing. They allow two people speaking softly to hear each other across a room, and she was surprised they worked as well as they did.
2) Ann’s goal is to take on a personal audio project, outside the podcast production she does at work.
Kate
1) Hearing waves lap at the side of a boat at the dock on the Mississippi, when she was growing up in Iowa.
2) Kate’s audio goal is that Rene and Clyde (again, their dog) achieve their respective audio goals.
Listening
Bond played a song by the band AJR called “Don’t Throw Out My Legos,” about the emotional challenges of moving on to different life stages, which is particularly meaningful to him at the moment because he is considering whether to accept an offer to move to LA for work. We talked about some unique aspects of the track’s production, including its contrast between straightforward singing in the verses and complex layered production in the chorus.
Teague played a few clips of ambient street noise from Istanbul. We talked about the ability of sound to evoke the feeling of a place, and how the iPhone provides pretty reasonable recording quality.
Ann, in response to the Istanbul sounds, played audio (from a news clip) of a recent spontaneous protest in Istanbul. The protest, in which people leaned out their windows across the city banging on pans or other objects, was in response to the President Erdogan’s nullification of municipal elections. We discussed how the sound was somewhat otherworldly, and we would not have necessarily been able to discern was was making it without having been told.
Sarah shared a track she recently made, “Pokey Hokey.” While she has been making music for a while, this was the first one that she mixed entirely by herself. She said she is trying to work sounds into her tracks, in the style of of trap music, and we discussed the ones she had included in this song.
Rene shared a first edit of an oral history interview he did with fellow DCLL member Bohdan, and asked for feedback. We discussed ways to make parts of the narrative fit together, and agreed that even the first cut gave a really compelling story. We also discussed the pros and cons of adding narration.
Introductions
The prompt was (1) a particularly good or memorable sound from a vacation or trip, and (2) a personal audio goal.
Rene
1) A steam train on a recent trip to Savannah, which had lots of great sounds including its whistle and a loud turntable, which blew out the levels on the recording he made.
2) Rene's audio goal is for Clyde (their dog) to bark a bit less.
Sarah
1) From a trip to the Smoky Mountains, the sound of an active mill—water turning the wheel, the millstones grinding.
2) Sarah is working on a mixtape, and wants to learn a bit more about audio so she can try some new techniques.
Teague
1) A piano rehearsal heard behind a big wooden door in an atmospheric Oxford quad.
2) It has been a while since Teague has made an edited audio piece, and he would like to make one soon.
Bond
1) Hearing Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now” while walking through a London Christmas display, and thinking about how cultural associations with songs differ even though the song remains the same.
2) Bond’s goal, in his job working in satellite radio, is to help people discover music that is meaningful to them and preserve older music in people’s lives.
Ann
1) The whispering corners at the Temple of Heaven in Beijing. They allow two people speaking softly to hear each other across a room, and she was surprised they worked as well as they did.
2) Ann’s goal is to take on a personal audio project, outside the podcast production she does at work.
Kate
1) Hearing waves lap at the side of a boat at the dock on the Mississippi, when she was growing up in Iowa.
2) Kate’s audio goal is that Rene and Clyde (again, their dog) achieve their respective audio goals.
Listening
Bond played a song by the band AJR called “Don’t Throw Out My Legos,” about the emotional challenges of moving on to different life stages, which is particularly meaningful to him at the moment because he is considering whether to accept an offer to move to LA for work. We talked about some unique aspects of the track’s production, including its contrast between straightforward singing in the verses and complex layered production in the chorus.
Teague played a few clips of ambient street noise from Istanbul. We talked about the ability of sound to evoke the feeling of a place, and how the iPhone provides pretty reasonable recording quality.
Ann, in response to the Istanbul sounds, played audio (from a news clip) of a recent spontaneous protest in Istanbul. The protest, in which people leaned out their windows across the city banging on pans or other objects, was in response to the President Erdogan’s nullification of municipal elections. We discussed how the sound was somewhat otherworldly, and we would not have necessarily been able to discern was was making it without having been told.
Sarah shared a track she recently made, “Pokey Hokey.” While she has been making music for a while, this was the first one that she mixed entirely by herself. She said she is trying to work sounds into her tracks, in the style of of trap music, and we discussed the ones she had included in this song.
Rene shared a first edit of an oral history interview he did with fellow DCLL member Bohdan, and asked for feedback. We discussed ways to make parts of the narrative fit together, and agreed that even the first cut gave a really compelling story. We also discussed the pros and cons of adding narration.
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