Author: Dereck De Abreu Coelho

Since my last field recording trip, I’ve decided to take some equipment out of LCC Kit Room.

I’ve borrowed a Sound Devices Mix Pre 6, a small Korg Contact Microphone and SOMA Ether electromagnetic microphone. As well as this I have recently purchased my own LOM Geofon which I haven’t even used yet! I want to also bring my Zoom H1n as the normal XY microphone instead of lugging a large shotgun microphone in a Rycote shield.

For this trip, I want to explore the woods in Epping Forest. I’ve been thinking about how I can create a piece of work that reflects my current research in my audio paper dissertation. I’m exploring the ideas around field recording as a tool for environmental change. I’ve been reading a lot of papers about environmental sound arts and the ways that field recordings are used to expose issues in our environment. I’m curious as to how I can perhaps use the recordings I find to bring issues to the forefront.

I’m hoping to see if there are any electromagnetic signals in the woods, noise pollution and the microtonal sounds that we miss every day. To try and bring back the sounds of nature within our cities, no matter how minute it is. I want to try to find the small sonic environments within a large soundscape.

I’m interested in finding the ideas that are present within minimalistic music, the idea that soundscapes can be minimalistic music, and the slow progression that occurs. The ever-changing soundscapes that perform for us.

After going to the Thames and recording some sounds I decided to mess around on Ableton without any direction and just see where things lead to. I went through my field recordings and starter layering sounds, pitching, and time stretching. Added a reverb send and started creating an atmosphere/drone sound.

I then added two synthesisers, one a really trebly low end ish long 1980s SciFi-sounding chord. After a higher-pitched lead line. It ended up sounding really cinematic, and it’s made me consider perhaps doing sound for something? A short animation? Also, it was very ambient, can I use field recordings in ambient music? Am I into ambient music? Does making this actually interest me? I’ve been considering if I prefer the actual practice of field recording, the meditative listening aspect to using them in art pieces. I need to research further into avenues around this.

Here is the outcome.

I didn’t go to much into it because I didn’t find much inspiration from doing this, I found this more a light exploration into using the field recordings.

I’m still not sure exactly what my first mock, prototype, or whatever it is will be for my portfolio hand-in. One of my ideas is still the production/musical left-field sample-based hip-hop project. I’ve decided to do a bit of research into the art theory behind sampling and music production. The analogue culture within the recording and the ethics of remixing work, what does it mean to remix-sample work and recontextualise it.

I read this short book about sampling What’s a Sampler? it was rather simple and I knew a lot of it but I decided to start at the very beginning. What is a sampler? I found it did have some interesting ideas, explaining the digital to analogue or vice verse concept. How a sampler records and translates audio into digital and how it allows manipulation. The processing involved in recording, aliasing, and the difficulty within memory.

I also found the bit rate to resolution explanation really useful and I do feel like a lot of the explanations within this were made to be broken. One specific section explained loops and extending sounds, and how to find the middle point of a waveform to create a loop that does clip or sounds unnatural. It also explains how to effectively perform instruments once sampled, and how to create a digital instrument through recording, typically by using root notes.

I think this has given me some ideas on what to do, perhaps create an instrument from the Thames rubbish and digitally sample it? I did have ideas on creating a trash instrument and this might be the outcome of it. Let’s see.

Since initially being commissioned for this build I updated my model from last year and designed it slightly differently. I also was receiving some issues with the impedance of the microphone at first. I went to a few blogs and got some advice to check it on a multimeter and then I managed to fix the issue by rewinding the copper cable wrapped around the microphone.

I spent a lot of time at the creative workshop lab soldering and creating the XLR cable from scratch through Neutrik components and Van Damme tour-grade XLR cable.

In making this one I also broke my old one by attempting to open it to see what I’d done wrong on the new one. I’ll be fixing my old one and using that to field record.

Here are some finished photos of the final product.

I’m going to fix my old Priezor DIY mic and field record with it. I also want to create the other LOM DIY Elektrosluch which is quite different to the Priezor, sonically and physically.

I’m not sure where creating these microphones are taking me but perhaps I’ll use these microphones on recordings and pieces, I don’t think I want the actual microphone to become my portfolio piece.

I found steve’s website and this is his bio

Steve Reich has been called “the most original musical thinker of our time” (The New Yorker) and “among the great composers of the century” (The New York Times). Starting in the 1960s, his pieces It’s Gonna Rain, Drumming, Music for 18 Musicians, Tehillim, Different Trains, and many others helped shift the aesthetic center of musical composition worldwide away from extreme complexity and towards rethinking pulsation and tonal attraction in new ways. He continues to influence younger generations of composers and mainstream musicians and artists all over the world.

Double Sextet won the Pulitzer Prize in 2009 and Different Trains, Music for 18 Musicians, and an album of his percussion works have all earned GRAMMY Awards. He received the Praemium Imperiale in Tokyo, the Polar Music Prize in Stockholm, the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale, the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge award in Madrid, the Debs Composer’s Chair at Carnegie Hall, and the Gold Medal in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has been named Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France, and awarded honorary doctorates by the Royal College of Music in London, the Juilliard School in New York, and the Liszt Academy in Budapest, among others.

One of the most frequently choreographed composers, several noted choreographers have created dances to his music, including Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, Jirí Kylián, Jerome Robbins, Justin Peck, Wayne McGregor, Benjamin Millepied, and Christopher Wheeldon.

Reich’s documentary video opera works—The Cave and Three Tales, done in collaboration with video artist Beryl Korot—opened new directions for music theater and have been performed on four continents. His work Quartet, for percussionist Colin Currie, sold out two consecutive concerts at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London shortly after tens of thousands at the Glastonbury Festival heard Jonny Greenwood (of Radiohead) perform Electric Counterpoint, followed by the London Sinfonietta performing his Music for 18 Musicians. “There’s just a handful of living composers who can legitimately claim to have altered the direction of musical history and Steve Reich is one of them,” The Guardian.

Steve seems like a really important figure within minimalism culture and music, I’m going to listen to a few of his works and read his essay “Music as a Gradual Process” and reflect on each piece. I want to learn more about his work and the ideas that he presents.

Come Out

This piece was based on a piece he was tasked to make for the Harlem Six who were six black youths arrested for murder. Reich was given 71 hours of content from tapes recorded during their arrest. He selected one four-second section where the youth says “I had to, like, open the bruise up, and let some of the bruise blood come out to show them”. Then the words “come out to show them” are looped at increasing speeds, two channels start on time and slowly go out of time and begin to phase. This piece reminds me of Jessica Ekomane’s work Figures / Ground where two bleeps come in and out of time until eventually, they are completely out of sync. Madlib uses this sample in the intro of his work on MADVILLIAN with the song America’s Most Blunted, this just adds to the creative genius that is Madlib knowing how he discovers all these samples and recontextualises them. I want to attempt a similar idea for both these pieces but with field recordings. Can I make field recordings come in and out of time and eventually start together? What does this mean when I use recordings from a specific area?

Steve also does this in his work It’s Gonna Rain, he creates two tape loops at slightly different speeds and allows them to phase to come in and out of time over a span of seventeen minutes. I really want to try this for myself. Perhaps in the context of other environmental sound artists and their uses of field recordings.

I also read Steve Reich’s essay Music as a Gradual Process

He makes interesting points towards the ideas of minimalism within music, that music shouldn’t be an instantaneous thing or at least he doesn’t enjoy that. The gradual process of composition or display can enhance the actual listening. As extended listening presents itself to more of an understanding and focus towards what is happening, and the gradual process of development means a lot more when you can anticipate its happenings. Here are some interesting quotes I’ve extracted from this.

I do not mean the process of composition, but rather pieces of music that are, literally, processes.
The distinctive thing about musical processes is that they determine all the note-to-note (sound-to-sound) details and the overall form simultaneously. (Think of a round or infinite canon.)
I am interested in perceptible processes. I want to be able to hear the process happening throughout the sounding music.

by running this material through this process I completely control all that results, but also that Iaccept all that results without changes.

That area of every gradual (completely controlled) musical process, where one hears the details of the sound moving out away from intentions, occurring for their own acoustic reasons, is it.
I begin to perceive these minute details when I can sustain close attention and a gradual process invites my sustained attention. By “gradual” | mean extremely gradual; a process happening so slowly and gradually that listening to it resembles watching a minute hand on a watch you can perceive it moving after you stay with it

I’m going to create something based on this reflective research. Tape loops and gradual compositions?

After looking towards the sound art pieces that I enjoy I started seeing the resemblance to what I consider minimalism. A lot of sound art can seem simple on the surface but the contextualization is what gives it great depth and at other times it’s just the idea behind it. When it comes to sound artwork I’ve thought a lot about where I set in this field, and I tend to find myself really latching onto listening and field recording. Ideas of being present and understanding our soundscapes. I’ve enjoyed more the philosophy of listening and the power of sound.

It’s got me thinking about what I want to do for my first draft portfolio piece, since I’m currently doing my dissertation draft, it’s influenced me towards what I’m actually into. I want to create something very minimal perhaps and have the research be the weight of the work. My project last year, Listening to the Thames, was very simple on the surface but for me, it was my intentions behind it that were beautiful. So I decided to read into minimalism and attempt to understand exactly what it means within work? I’m not sure if what I’m thinking actually coincides with the definition of minimalism.

I read a few pages/chapters of these two books just as an exploration of the topic.

Sion, P.ap, Gann, K. and Potter, K. (2016) The Ashgate Research Companion to minimalist and postminimalist music. London: Routledge.

Strickland, E. (2000) Minimalism: Origins. Indiana University Press.

Mainly The Ashgate Research Companion to minimalist and postminimalist music. This is what I found interesting, I found this one part that discussed how to define minimalistic music and it described that it was hard but often at least these types of characteristics were present in the pieces. But not all pieces had all the features present sometimes and mainly only one or two.

A few of these key terms, Harmonic stasis. Most minimalists enjoy only one chord or a few sets of notes. Key changes are not present and the same with the change of pitches.

Repetition, the continuous and slow progress within the pieces is key. In minimalistic music, there is rarely a piece that doesn’t progress and change slightly, as usually considered in the general consensus of what is minimalistic music. But in fact, it’s more the repetition and slow change within the pieces that give it this meditative state of listening.

Drones are a very obvious key piece of any minimalist piece as described here. And perhaps the most obvious, although the book makes an argument that there would be two sorts of minimalist music as some have drones predominantly and others don’t.

Gradual Process is the idea that each instrument will add its own splash of colour when needed. That complex polyrhythmic music doesn’t add anything extra sometimes. Each instrument comes in when needed and disappears when not. It’s there for a purpose and not just because.

A steady beat is another highly associated piece of minimalist music. Usually, the quaver note is used in a motoric fashion.

Static instrumentation is another, unlike more modern minimalistic music. Some older ensembles did the opposite of a gradual process and instead, all played together and continuously for extended periods of time.

All of these features are associated with certain works that we think of as classically minimalist, but there may be no works, or at least very few, that contains all of them.

Intuitively, though, one feels that all these techniques tended toward some similar state. First of all, the term: minimalism. Something seems minimal – or less than we expected. Less compared to what? To what we’re accustomed to hearing. We are used to hearing classical music, modernist music, jazz, pop, and when we hear minimalist music, we get less than we expect.

Sion, P.ap, Gann, K. and Potter, K. (2016) The Ashgate Research Companion to minimalist and postminimalist music. London: Routledge.

We all know that some of our happiest moments are when time seems to disappear. When listening to minimalist music, we begin, out of habit (unless minimalism is our accustomed repertoire), to listen for events that cue us in to what’s going on in the music, how long the piece is going to last, what scale its sections are arranged in and so forth. Minimalist music quite often denies us or delays these cues, irritating some listeners and giving others a freeing sensation that the passage of time, the articulated structure of the piece, need not be kept track of. Some of us feel happier.

Sion, P.ap, Gann, K. and Potter, K. (2016) The Ashgate Research Companion to minimalist and postminimalist music. London: Routledge.

I think these quotes really speak to me, perhaps even if it’s not quote-on-quote minimalism I agree with these ideas presented, I want to create a piece that gives me that feeling of extended time. That paying attention and listening isn’t key but letting go and allowing the sounds and the piece to affect you in a certain way.

Steve Reich is heavily discussed as one of the earliest artists in minimalism within this book and I want to do a bit of research on him.

My dissertation project is currently really inspiring my ideas towards my own portfolio. I had originally thought about making an abstract piece of ‘music’ but it doesn’t really connect well with me. This is something I can always do and still do. I have been very much reading into environmental sound arts and the practices and practitioners within this field.

Dawn Scarfe and her project Bivvy Broadcasts really connected well with me and interested me. In the previous hand-in, I had thought about going to the woods and recording sounds with an old tape recorder to think about how a medium can change my way of recording if the manual process changes the listening on location.

I looked into Bivvy Broadcasts and found it really captivating, to be alone in nature with complete exposure, unlike a tent you are completely exposed to the elements. To set up a radio from 11pm to 7am when the dawn chorus begins. While listeners sit at home and tune in and listen to the sounds is something I might try.

This photo speaks volumes to me, the composition, the isolation the fear and the surrendering to nature. It really to me makes sense to reconnect with it. To just be amongst it in a simple way, a bivvy. For Dawn, this was part of a residency she had at Forestry Commission England.

She describes it like this,

Live nocturnal broadcasts from forests

11pm till 7am

Dawn is in a forest somewhere in England, streaming live ambient sound through the night while trying to sleep in a bivvy.

Her guerilla-style broadcasts are set up after dark using a small microphone and tenuous 4G connection.

By listening you can help keep vigil over her situation.

I’m still at an early stage and I really am considering at the first stage of my portfolio ideas to simply research artists and attempt their works, then to consider my own ideas from these themes, researches and practices.

I also found her pocket guide on bivvy broadcasts, and it explained a bit more about it. Almost a manifesto.

I feel that perhaps I can do the same but in a different location, or one in London. I was considering Epping forest or Brighton beach. I am longing to feel a reconnection with nature away from the capital city and explore other soundscapes. The live broadcasting to me seems like an animalistic urge from most humans of listening and having attentive sleeping. I will think about the equipment and if this is even possible seeing as it’s coming up to December.

Since reading Environmental Sound Artists: In Their Own Words (2016) for my dissertation ideas of environmental sound arts as a practice has really been sticking with me. Last year for my hand in I recorded the Thames following in similar footsteps of Peter Cusack and his ideas on sonic journalism. I’ve been busy writing my dissertation and haven’t had much time to start, but I’ve been laying the foundations.

Today I decided to go on a field recording trip to warm up the engine that is my brain and explore my surroundings. I’m living in surrey queys next to the Thames and decided to go and field record around there with my Zoom H1N.

I began by almost conducting a sound walk towards my location of the recording. I simply listened and what stood out for me was the specialisation of the environment, the different sounds that are all fighting or layering on top of each other. I began recording without a goal, I wasn’t sure what these sounds would become or how they would eventually be used if they even do. I recorded the waves crashing against the river bed, the trees and my footsteps walking amongst the leaves.

I then continued further along and began hearing pouring water, I followed the sound and recorded a long take off around 5-10 minutes. I then opened the gate towards the sandy riverbed and began recording amongst the ruined section of the Thames. I found the repetition of water sounds having their own rhythms to interest me in the recordings. As well as the idea of a micro soundscape, especially within cities and the noise pollution. How are these sounds being masked by larger sounds?

I took some recordings of close and far away, water dropping and running, alongside waves crashing. I could hear planes and other sounds that were coming and going. The city had a rhythm. i then walked out to an abandoned dock and recorded the Thames up close, whilst the loud Uber boats passed. I also discovered a lot of rubbish that spoils the environment. I thought perhaps if I could come back and take some rubbish and convert it into an instrument? Now I’m going to experiment with the sounds I’ve recorded.

I had my first meeting with Milo and discussed my ideas so far. Which isn’t set in stone and I do believe the creation process will guide me to something. At the moment for the first hand in I want to do an EP. Sampling music and creating something to do with my Brazilian heritage, and thinking of music or recordings as a more fluid thing and not a defined set-in-stone premise.

I wrote down some quick ideas during the lecture beforehand that inspired my work.

Cinematic 

Field recordings

Sampling performances and jams, 

Drum machine, Alexis, Lin Drum?

Minimalism, 

Anthropocene

Lo-fi

Mixing and recording

4 track tape machine experiments, pitching and making a song on it

Reel to tell Yamaha in the performance lab

Record drums, through the equipment in the performance lab, Audient desk? Percussive sounds, claps, random sounds click pops

SP303 make beats on it, SP404 MK2

Microphone selection is important,

Sonic aesthetic.

I was considering the idea very much of recording to be just as important as the creation. And what recording techniques can offer us in terms of sonic aesthetics and consider that right at the start. I want to record on cassette and digital of course. But to consider the idea of minimalism within my work and to reduce the feeling of being overwhelmed by DAWs and other modern mediums. But rather combine a few. I just want to create and see what happens if I create with samples and rap as the main vessel. Using field recordings to create a cinematic feeling towards the EP and then incorporate that within my ideas.

I also spoke about recording instruments and friends/jams. Recording drums, keys, and saxophone. All in the university as well as using the Audient desk as a tool to escape this digital screen working mode. Milo advised me to start small and then work my way up which is my idea as well. I’m going to start with smaller instruments. I think I should also think about what I want from the recordings and how to best situate myself ready for it. Do I want to prepare drum loops for others to play? Or do I want to do sessions of recording and producing with my friends/musicians?

I think these are ideas I’m going to explore this week and for next week record something in the studio and make sure it’s all booked in.

I’m waiting back for the notes from the meeting as I’m not sure 100% if this is everything we discussed.

I also continued my idea to state that this original EP will lead onto an Album in the final portfolio hand in and the other portfolio would be a piece similar to sonic journalism with field recording practice being the centre of it. A continuation of my last hand in titled “Listening to the Thames”

We had a Mixing and Recording session with Rory which was mainly for the audio paper module but I found more interest in using it for my portfolio work. We went through different microphone types and applications as well as analysed different pieces and considered how they were recorded. What each recording offered and how the technique either enhanced the mood of the recording or clashed with it.

We also discussed polar patterns, frequency response and other aspects of microphones. Which ones require power, and why do they operate as they do. As well as different recording techniques and ways of capturing sound.

We also recorded vocals in the foley room through the control room and set up numerous microphones and listened to what sounded best or perhaps what each microphone offers. Rory also purposely was doing errors in order for us to detect what is wrong with the recording and how to fix it. After the session it made me consider my own microphone uses and application. I’m considering why I use the microphones that I do and why if I have a certain idea for the sound I shouldn’t use perhaps a dynamic microphone instead of a condenser. I love the sound of a dirty, not clean microphone and the AKG D-190 seemed to sound perfect for my portfolio ideas.

It’s from 1971 which is my favourite era of music. I checked online and did research and AKG reported it as a low-handling noise microphone which made it popular for live events and performances and PA/conferences. After hearing Rory use the microphone and setting it up with a pop shield it really interested me to use it. I’m going to use it with my 424 Tascam Tape machine and record straight into the cassette.

I was also curious to learn a bit more about the microphone and study it properly. It says there’s a 4K slight emphasis to give it brilliance which is interesting. As well as this the frequency response is only up to 15Khz. This is probably what makes it sound dark and not as bright as the other microphones I listened to. The interesting part is the Tascam 424 MK1 which is the medium I want to record to only records up to 16KHZ. So they almost are a perfect match.

I’m going to make sure I test or use this microphone for my ideas.