FEB 29 | Sound and Self

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Read Before Class

Discussion led by: N/A

• “To Let Alpha be Itself”, interview with Alvin Lucier, from Reflections
• “Münster Walk” and other excerpts, Janet Cardiff, from PS1 retrospective catalog

Optional:

• “The Phonograph’s Horned Mouth”, Charles Grivel, from Wireless Imagination

In Class

• What does the separation of body and voice do to our concept of the self? How do we deal with the transformation of our experience into artifacts? How does sound affect the body?
• Discuss Janet Cardiff and Lucier’s “Music for Solo Performer”
• Introduction to binaural mics
• Learn signal-processing fundamentals in Pro Tools (EQ, compression/expansion, delay effects, noise reduction)

Screening

• Janet Cardiff “Muenster Walk” (from PS1 Catalog CD)
• Alvin Lucier “Music for Solo Performer” video (from OHM+ DVD)

Further Research

• The “Speech Songs” of computer music pioneer Charles Dodge, created in the Bell Labs speech synthesis lab in the 1960s.
• Pictures and sounds of the Bell Labs Voder, debuted at the 1939 World’s Fair, created by Homer Dudley.
• Regarding compression, see the Wikipedia page on The Loudness War (the trend to compress albums in the mastering stage, solely to increase volume rather than enhance the music). A very high-profile casualty is the Metallica album “Death Magnetic” which was so compressed and distorted that people complained, especially when they discovered better-sounding tracks inside the Guitar Hero video game! Here’s a YouTube video comparing the CD and Guitar Hero versions.