Anthony, Ryan and Kyle's Sound Critiques

Anthony:
Ah, losing a valuable piece of expensive machinery. We’ve all done it at some point or another. This piece was successful and unsuccessful at the same time. I am a big fan of spoken internal monologues and this one was very honest and not at all overdone. At the same time, I would have liked to hear more of the uncertainty and panic of misplacing such an important item. I know that even when I lose something as cheap as my student ID, it’s a few good hours of panic and plan-making before I can relax in the knowledge that either I’ve found it or made a replacement plan. The voice and tone seemed a little too calm and bemused for the situation. I did however, appreciate the ambient sounds provided. They were the exact right volume and level of reverb for their surroundings. The fade-in interiors of buildings like Eickoff were dead-on. Really great job! Also the muffled winter footsteps were particularly effective, especially since footsteps tend to be one’s main focus when retracing them. Overall, great job, just would have like more of a build-up to the final discovery and relief. The panic and relief contrast could have been stronger.

Ryan:
Is this you playing the guitar? You are very talented. The first thing that struck me was the sharp tone of the guitar compared the warm and casual tones of your voices. This is both positive and negative in that it communicates the focus of music in your life, but also overshadows and outshines otherwise important dialogue for the narrative. I love seeing creative processes, especially in music. Music is one of my passions but the talent of writing it has always eluded me. I especially loved how ideas were immediately realized audibly to us as if they were already completed the minute they were conceived. Again, the strumming guitar is prominent but also distracting to the verbal creative process. I loved how natural the conversations were between the speakers and how absorbed you, in particular were in the emotional value of the music. The memory evoked halfway through was unclear, again, a result of the overpowering guitar. If that was changed, it would be an especially successful project.

Kyle:

Yet another guitar, might have guessed! Though they share the guitar element, yours is very different from your brother’s. It’s more of a jumbled collage of sounds, almost like a cut and pasted stream of consciousness. It’s very electronics based and I got the visual of speakers, laptops and tine cans while listening. The snipping sound at the beginning was very clear and your sound quality is crisp throughout. Again, music is very prominent and I can see it plays a large role in your day to day perception. I would, however, like to have heard some original sounds and voices in your piece. There’s only so much re-recorded audio can accomplish and the result was slightly impersonal. Some organic contrast sounds would have been nice, but overall, it had a sort of swift beat and rhythm, almost as if it was the sound of checking things off a list, a mix of work and leisure, the sounds of a college student. Though the narrative was unclear, it did come off as a very robotic, youthful rhythm of a life lived through electronics.

The Old Negro Space Program reaction

The Old Negro Space Program spoof takes everything that made Ken Burns Civil War a heavy and evocative slice of history and turns it on it’s head. The result is awkwardness and hilarity. Part of the reason Ken Burns’ original was so successful was that it took the audience deep into the heart of the American crisis while maintaining its gravity and mystery. By zooming in and out of still photos, he achieves motion picture standards of reality and continuity while maintaining the authenticity of the photographs and not attempting to reenact such heavy material that could easily be misrepresented by human error. The untold stories of the narrative lie in the spaces between the stills.
The spoof is very aware of what makes the original successful, so they, in turn, were able to successfully mock the drama of it all. They took note of the extreme authenticity of the photographs, so it was immediately funny when the clumsily photo shopped pictures of the “original black astronauts” were shown and zoomed into, as if zooming was going to make them any less fake. The awkwardness in the fact that you know you are supposed to feel something profound when that effect is being used is what makes it so funny.
Another technique is the juxtaposition of using both primary source speakers and academic figureheads to propel and explain the narrative. The spoof latched onto the effect of having old gritty people going on tangent about the old days while a contrasting self-important professor gives a formal recount and analysis of the events, often reiterating words to appeal to an “audience of lesser intelligence”. In the Ken Burns piece, these academic authorities demand respect and due the emotional evocation of the piece, the audience does not even consider that they are being condescended to. As the parody is totally devoid of authenticity and emotional weight, we are made extremely aware of the stuffy professor’s self-importance and the humor in his constant use of similes.
Perhaps the most hilarious part is their choice of music. Its nearly the same, twanging, meandering fiddle music as Ken Burns and it totally clashes with the subject matter! The moment it starts, you are immediately aware of the inconsistency and to not take it seriously. The gospel music behind the perseverance of the “blackstronauts” is particularly ridiculous. The true finale is the mention of the landing on the moon alongside the wig advertisements in a dramatic pan of a yellowed newspaper. Brilliant.

Project 1

2 Examples of Sampling

The introductory examples of sampling demonstrated a very director approach to gathering audio information from the world, audio sampling in its purest form. When introduced to DAVID BRYNE/BRIAN ENO: MY LIFE IN THE BUSH OF GHOSTS ALBUM
AMERICA IS WAITING, 1986 the listener is immediately aware that the piece is a mixture between rhythmic audio sampling of talk radio broadcasts and what sounds like springs of some sort, along with instrumental supplement to fill in the musical gaps. A base line of funky rhythm and simple musical theme is established within the first fifteen seconds, then follows the humorously rhythmic radio announcer voice. Is it Rush Limbaugh? The phrases are cut, pasted, and repeated as icing overtop the springy funk foundation. It is interesting that humans, and most especially, radio announcers speak in an almost musical manner. This piece uses the harmony is his speech patterns to not only make a catchy song, but also communicate his theme “America is waiting for an event of some sort or another”, “again, again” in a social and political parody. The recognition of the musical and rhythmic aspect of speech is a profound underline to this piece. We as humans live according to time and rhythm that is always felt and rarely expressed. By making voice and sound into musical elements, we see how time’s meter often escapes our notice. In a country that values time as money’s equal it was appropriate to measure a political fear and speculation in a form that is ever-present, music.

Continuing the tradition of finding musical elements in our daily soundtrack is EMERGENCY BROADCAST NETWORK, 1995
FROM THE ALBUM, TELECOMMUNICATION BREAKDOWN. The artist found Rhythm and themes in both pop culture and current event broadcasts and clipped and pasted them like a musical and visual collage humorously resembling the song “Get Down Tonight” by KC & The Sunshine Band. The social codes that both pop culture and the mass media dictate are as cemented in our consciousness as is the passing of time. It is, whether we want it to be or not, a part of who we are and how we think about things in our society. The pop culture clips include Harrison Ford and Mariah Carry interspersed with real life events and broadcasts. Ironically, both worlds, superficial entertainment and global crisis are equally ingested by the American public. The piece is essentially brings about the great paradox of modern American culture: it’s reality is it’s art and it’s art reflects it’s reality. This is a music video using music videos and films about global crisis, while also featuring global crisis. It is real world versus culture—art imitates life, life imitates art. Everything influences itself and is ever-present within our society as shared knowledge. In both pieces lies the truth that everyone lives according to motion, and music is the manifestation of that innate sense.

2 Different Narratives on ubu.ocm

Ezra Pound “The Seafarer (with drums)”

The Harvard Vocarium Readings Recorded in Cambridge, Mass., May 17, 1939

This narrative poetically told the story of an old sailor recounting his days of watch on the tossing seas. He bellows with a quivering age to his English voice and a forlorn tone. He speaks of the nature of Seafarers and their relationship with God, nature, and destiny. He describes the sea spray as an eagle’s scream and alcohol as his muse, all the while rolling over the Rs and relishing in the abundant alliteration. The conclusion that the narrative comes to is that men on the sea do not want for the things land-bound men want and when they settle to their grave, it is with their ever-present hunger for the gold of the unknown.

The story is being told in a rocking cadence, so that as the listener strains to comprehend the words, a rolling sense is achieved. The poem lifts and subsides, a feeling caught between a soothing lull and dizzied nausea. This manner of storytelling is quite repetitive and truly disorienting. The effect however is spot on in illustrating the nature of the high seas. He throws out obscure metaphors and descriptions like “nose-gone companions” to describe old and withering sailors and “dragon tossed seas” to communicate the peril of the seafarer’s quest. The drums in the background are first perceived as ambiguous and superfluous, but after only the first minute, they seem to create a meandering tempo for the wandering words of the Seafarer. They also construct an atmosphere, as they could be the sounds of crashing waves, thunder, the creaks of the ship’s underbelly, etc. The drums also bring to mind the drums of the rowers below deck on slave ships and in movies such as Ben Hur. The almost slave-like relationship the speaker has to the open sea is very appropriate. He both loves and laments his chosen life and his weary non-rest is exhausting.

Robert Whitman: 4 Cinema Pieces. Chicago: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1968-- “Window” and “Sink” (1935)

Unlike the Seafarer, “Window” and “Sink” demonstrate real time and fairly unembellished narrative. “Window” is multi-layered, yet subtle in its construction of a large empty room with hardwood floors, which consists of many windows. The figure in the piece first opens the window one by one to reveal the soundtracks of completely separate settings. One suburban, one urban, one rural, and the other very still with only a slight suggestion of soft air and breeze. He opens them and the listener is amused by the possibility that this large warehouse/room could contain portals to many different worlds, existing everywhere at once. The figure then opens all of the windows and addresses the listener asking he/she to observe the activity outside them. Then, as if we were in danger of diverting our attention entirely from the indoors, we hear the phone ring and the hardwood floor reverb as the figure goes to answer it in a familiar, casual manner. “Sink” is similar in that the noises are familiar and in real-time, registering with the audience’s memory as commonplace, but it differs in that it’s a concentrated close-up of daily human activity. We hear the gurgle of the sink and familiar sounds of teeth brushing and shaving. We are then spoken to for the parts we can’t hear, like the way people examine themselves in the mirror. It’s a routine we all share, yet no one really talks about.

“Sink” and “Window” both succeed in creating a distinct setting gin the listeners mind using only sound. The reverb and textures are enough to communicate the size and nature of a space. They are also both repetitive, in case the audience did not comprehend the visual connection the first time the window was opened and closes, he opens another. The sink sounds are so familiar, yet we know it is a different sink than our own because of the subtle differences in the sound of the faucet water splashing against the bowl. We are unconsciously aware of these subtleties in our lives, but this piece brings them into focus. I do believe that the spoken narrative in both pieces is superfluous. I go the point of the piece without any real time words or explanations. “Sink”, however was somewhat successful with the spoken words in that mirror-gazing is inaudible. The prose “spilled toothpaste” and “hot washcloth” give texture and imperfection to the reality being creating. “Water rushing toothbrush washing washcloth” mimics the cadence and texture of the sink noises within words.