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Most of the time we don’t stop to hear the textures of the sounds around us. It can be difficult to slow down and let the colour of the sounds around wash over us. Its also an interesting artistic exercise to explore the expressiveness of found sounds like a sculpter might utilise a found object.
In Aug 2020 Applied Creativity invited participants to engage with a series of two online workshops participants will come together on zoom to build and customise their own unique percussive musical instrument, and then experiment with it sonically in a collaborative online space. The idea was that participants would make a basic recording of a soundscape performance or an abstract sound design for a short film. These workshops were designed for anyone who enjoys handmaking unusual stuff, people who might be interested in training the sensitivity of their ear and anybody who has been missing coming together with other people and being creative. No specific making or musical experience required.
In a face to face workshop its recommended that a 3rd workshop be added to allow participants to learn about and build their own contact microphones. It is not recommended that this be done in a remote/online workshop as this would require equipment (soldering iron, hand tools, etc ) and the micro size of the components are not well suited to zoom (you'd need a usb microscope as a webcam for this). Documentation for the building of Contact Microphone and PreAmp can be found here.
Less than a Skills development workshop these sessions were designed in the format of a masterclass. To allow participants to:
Participants will require a computer
It is also preferable for all participants to have a stand-alone-Webcam.
It also turned out to be useful to have a smart phone with a audio recording app.
The workshop participants were sent out a kit with everything else the need to construct their Soundbox instrument
have wintergatan marble machine video welcome participants as they arrive
* Intro to hands-on workshops in Zoom (10 min)
By now many of us have started to get used to participating in meetings and talks via streaming and conference call platforms. It would easy to think that now we've had some experience with these we'll know what to do in an online workshop. But the behaviours seen and etiquette performed in a successful talk or or business meeting is probably different to a successful social learning activity or collaborative workshop. Its easy to fall back into be a passive spectator on these platforms but we are interested in enhancing engagement and exploring the platform as a site for remote collaboration - i'd rather be in the room with you all but the fact that these platforms could open up the opportunity for us to collaborate remotely is really exciting and worth exploring. So Lets talk about what might make for a positive online workshop experience.
Lots of people are refering to these as ZORMS
and consider what you'd do in a face to face situation.
* Media Consent and IP issues (5 min)
Copyright and Media consent principles were not developed with this kind of activity or the Zoom platform in mind. (an online application for live recording of you and your individual and collaborative original creative works in your own home).
Normally in a face to face workshop we'd ask you to sign a paper form giving us consent to take and publish photo, film or sound recording documentation of you participating in the activity.
But thats also complicated when we are also creating/ recording individual and maybe collaborative artistic works for which you'll have artistic rights. So right now i'd like to negotiate consent for the collaborative works. We'd like to be able to share what you made at the end of the workshop (probably in a blogpost) so right now i'd like to record each of you giving your consent to record/ capture a recording of your participation and any artistic contributions, i'd like to be able to publish your contributions for the purposes of documenting/ publishing the the outcomes of the workshop and promoting other workshops like this in the future.
A third intellectual property issue connected to this is that we'll be making use of open source/ creative commons license video content in our 2nd workshop. Now as this workshop is an educational or learning setting, we could claim a fair use of any material open source or copyrighted - Fair use clauses under the Australian copyright act allows use for the purposes of:
but outside of the workshop if you want to start creating derivative works - making and publishing soundscapes for other people's video content you'll need to get permission or publish the work under a creative commons licence.
In this workshop i'll be channeling Mick from 20 odd years ago in the early nooties when i was spirited young live performance creator from Toowoomba completing my honours degree, and commencing work as a community arts worker - serious stuff. Around this time I was:
it was all very serious and wanky but a through line through all these things was playing with sound.
When i saw Koka’s Soundtrack Box No. 1 and the Sounds of the Nightmare Machine video it awakened something in me.
So this workshop is a bit different to alot of our others. Its might be considered a bit esoteric. Alot of people would say its not something that will get you a job. But lets not get into that. Lets talk about what its trying to be… So Goals for us in this workshops series are to focus on
Denis Leary said it best when commenting on the catalysts for the creative urge to make (in this case constructing a bong). “They say marijuana leads to other drugs! No it doesn't! It leads to f@*$n' carpentry! ”
So I hope this is what you are here for - Lets find out.
How many sounds can you make? Whats the cliche? What's novel sound?
* Demo & Assemble Box (10 min)
BOX ASSEMBLY Lets put it together first without glueing anything
Step 1 - Layout all parts like in the diagram ( this layout is on the back of the parts list that came with your kit.)
Theres a diagram of this on your parts sheet.
Step 2 - Add the back to the base
Step 3 - Add the Left Side to the base
Step 4 - Add the Right Side to the base
Step 5 - Add the Centre Front / Mezzanine front
Step 6 - Add the Front
Step 7 - Add the Top
Step 8 - Add the Mezzanine Top
3D view of assembled box hit the explode icon and manipulate the slider to see the parts come together.
Step 9 - We want to be able to fit our other parts and experiment so we'll only want to glue some parts at this stage. SO NO GLUE ON TOPS OR THE BOTTOM AND NO GLUE ON THE PARTS THAT TOUCH THEM.
The easiest way to do this is to remove one part at a time and glue it. Use a rubber band or two to hold it together while you are working
Break Play more videos while people catch up or get a drink.
Saying “explore and document a sonic vocabulary” is a very loaded sentence that needs to be unpacked and assumes some principles of shared understandings- So let reiterate -
but being proficient and communicating in this way, requires a composer to possess a vocabulary of sounds the composer to speak to her audience.
And this will provide us with a vocabulary or pallet of sounds for the performances we'll make in the 2nd week of the series.
Theres lots of ways people describe a sound:
Eg “ an earthy brown thudd” or “uplifting, bright, chirpy tinkles over a metallic thrum” to describe the sound of running a plectrum over a compression spring under tension.
I made an interactive word cloud of about 600 concepts you could possibly use to describe a sound
Participants might feel uncomfortable when asked to go off into “breakout” rooms in pairs and could just sit there in silence. Participants would need to be encouraged to engage in this way -its actually no different from a face to face workshop situation and would hopefully understand that this is a big part of the point of the workshop.
If numbers of participants are low then facilitator could consider doing the exercise “around the circle”
Contact Microphones (5 min)
Consider whether we want to work as individuals, small teams or a mix of both
Connecting your contact Mic and a Brief intro to Audacity Selecting the Contact Mic as a source monitoring in Audacity !
If you are interested in a more indepth intro to Audacity you can find more info on the wiki Audacity
coming soon
Select a video clip, individually or in small groups, https://vimeo.com/groups/660321
and upload to google drive.
You may like to consider some of the principles of sound design for film detailed in list of film sound terminology, particularyMichel Cheon's concepts of:
Audiovisual Contract - an agreement to forget that sound is coming from loudspeakers and picture from screen
Empathetic Sound - music or sound effects whose mood matches the mood of the action
Anempathetic Sound - music or sound effects that seems to exhibit conspicuous indifference to what is going on in the film's plot
Temporalization - influence of sound on the perception of time in the image
Acousmêtre- a kind of invisible voice-character with mysterious powers
Synchresis - the mental fusion between a sound and a visual when these occur at exactly the same time
Share and Discuss recordings
Reflect on the workshop.
Possible questions to discuss
On the whole the kit seemed successful and provided everything required to inspire people and get them started in their sonic exploration. Some participants seemed impressed with the range of things that could be done with simple materials and were enthusiastic about trying out the sonic potential of the odds and sods around them in their house (kinda the point). Just as I had erred on the use of cardboard construction of the box participants feedback that they would have preferred a timber sound box (though this could have doubled the cost of the kit)
Incidentally costs for this workshop (buying in bulk and with some lead time to buy from cheaper vendors ) would be as follows
Soundscape Box Kit
Total - $6.00
PLUS $6/8 for Postage/ Delivery by a courier
The modular design of the box was well received though the
The easy experiences i'd had running Contact Microphone workshops in the past (before the wide spread use of TRRS cables and Plug and Play Mic filtering) was serious disadvantage to the development of this workshop. I thought i'd just plug in a simple Piezo like i always had. I honestly didn't leave it till the last minute - i started conscientiously working on the development 4 months in advance of the first workshop but a mix of setbacks and the difficulties of developing during the pandemic (development either at home without tools or intermittently when i got access to the lab and without face-to-face feedback from colleagues) a finished prototype for the circuit was not completed until 3 business days before what was supposed to be the final workshop of the series. I even seriously considered whether we could run the workshops without the Contact Mic but reflection after the first workshop, enforced for me the centrality that the contact mic should play in this workshop.
Contact Mic & Preamp
Total ~$10.00
The Second Workshop
On a personal note
SONIC STIMULIS
Sounds of the Nightmare Machine Apprehension Engine
Bradford Reed and his pencilina in SOHO
Western classification of musical instruments
Autonomous sensory meridian response
DESCRIBE SOUNDS
Wikipedia List of onomatopoeias
words used to describe music and instruments
204 words that describe colours
List of Words describing feelings
CONTACT MICROPHONES
https://makezine.com/2011/12/20/collins-lab-diy-contact-mic/
https://makezine.com/projects/make-38-cameras-and-av/piezo-contact-mic/
https://www.cablechick.com.au/blog/understanding-trrs-and-audio-jacks/
https://sound.stackexchange.com/questions/687/diy-contact-microphone
Using Contact Microphones Right
The First Rule of Contact Mic Club
https://www.cnet.com/how-to/hear-hidden-sounds-with-a-diy-microphone/
https://diyvideostudio.com/connecting-external-microphone-for-iphone-video-recording/
OPEN SOURCE VIDEO CONTENT
by Mick Byrne
On 16 July 2020 Andrei Marberley and past music technology intern/ facilitator Matt Davis participated in an abridged trial of the 1st workshop in the series over Zoom. In preparation for this a kit with most parts was sent out. This session has a limited max time of 90 min. Phil Gullberg also attend most of the session in order to capture photographs of the session.
The Feedback session was started by explaining that both Cardboard and Plywood version of box were sent out in order for Matt and Andrei to give feedback on which box was preferable (the Cardboard next to nothing to produce and plywood about $15 to produce).
Also explained the difficulty that we have had getting the contact microphone to interface with contemporary laptops and smartphones, but that we would try not to get bogged down in this with our limited time.
The wiring on TRRS or 4 Pole 3.5mm jack/plugs is different for different devices. For the purposes of the workshop it makes sense for participants to be able to plug their Contact microphone into the PC or mac they are using to access zoom. But the usability of the contact mic is enhanced if it is portable and they can plug it into their smartphone. (also smartphone compatibility gives us an important plan B if the PC/ MAC connection does not work - a plan being important factor in delivering remote/online workshops.
https://www.cablechick.com.au/blog/understanding-trrs-and-audio-jacks/
We have also learnt (suspect) that the addition of a preamp guards against contemporary applications like Zoom and smartphone audio recorders treat the weak signal of an un amplified contact mic as electronic Noise and filtering out effectively ignoring the signal. Collin's contact mic and 9v Preamp on MAKEzine.com
Youtube video of Collin's Lab contact mic / 9v Preamp
Data shet for the MPF 102 tranistor used in the preamp circuit
- compare medical and artistic approaches
Stand-alone-Webcam to mute or not to mute- this isn the question