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Listening Experience #24

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Un/natural Field Recordings / Natural Overdubs Workshop::Vol.2

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Un/natural Field Recordings//Natural Overdubs is a workshop which utilizes urban, architectural, and natural spaces as both a source for cultivating and processing/re-recording sound. This workshop is open to artists of any level of experience with sound, who work in a various mediums including: dance, visual art, sound art, experimental music, performance, etc; who are interested in experimenting with sound.

Un/natural Field Recordings / Natural Overdubs: Workshop Vol.2 is the second installment of the workshops at Liebig 12, which began in March of this year. Participants from the previous workshop are very welcomed to attend, as well as new participants. Rather than continuing where we left off in March, we will begin anew: approaching established and newly proposed ideas, techniques, and methods.

The first half of this episode of “Listening Experience” is a construction of many one-minute segments recorded over the two days of the workshop.

The second half is comprised of recordings of short pieces created by the participants in this workshop.

Here is a link to Liebig 12

Un/natural Field Recordings / Natural Overdubs: Workshop Vol.2 is a project of william “bilwa” costa

A link to some photos by Till Bovermann is here

Listening Experience #24 – Un/natural Field Recordings / Natural Overdubs Workshop::Vol.2 is available on Bandcamp

Listening Experience is aired and archived by Resonance Extra.

This is a link to Resonance Extra

This is a link to Listening Experience

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Listening Experience #22

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smol

photo from pixaway.com

This episode started out as an experiment in sonic punctuation and ended up as an ambient album. In a way this reflects the sudden shifts in life I’ve been witnessing lately. Feeling very small.

smol.

There are four segments to this episode; click this link to hear these segments. The first segment is the first half of the episode, the experiment in sonic punctuation. The remaining three segments are the second half of the episode, the ambient album. The ambient sound space ended up sounding rather nice. Maybe I will work more with this sound space.

Segment 1: Indecision
Segment 2: Hope
Segment 3: Strength
Segment 4: Remorse

You can listen to these segments here on Bandcamp.

Listening Experience is aired and archived by Resonance Extra.

This is a link to Resonance Extra

This is a link to Listening Experience

Commercial Work – Healy Kickoff 2019

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healyLogo_01

I really enjoy doing commercial sound design/music editing/composition work. It’s a different experience than the other sound/music things I am doing, and I always like being a part of a team that works hard to get good results.

Recently I finished a project in collaboration with Havelmond Film, an independent film company north of Berlin. The project was for a product launch, and consisted of a series of short informational videos about the product, its history, and how it works.

The product is called Healy. It is a wearable, personal well-being/fitness device that is in use around the world, and is supported by a large community of health care practitioners. Click here for more about the Healy product launch.

I was asked to take over the sound production for this project a week before the deadline. Because of the time pressure I settled on the strategy of editing library music that the client liked, but there were a few cases where I quickly composed some music to help give some variety to the set of videos. There was no request for sound design, but I thought adding some subtle whooshes and transitions would help improve the videos.

This project required a lot of work and decision-making in a short amount of time. I am really happy with how smoothly everything turned out.

Here are some representative videos from the Healy Kickoff 2019 project. Music and FX stems were cut to picture using Logic Pro X. Dialog, FX and music stems were mixed in Final Cut Pro X. Audio source files and XML project files delivered to client for final approval/rendering.

An introduction to Healy:
(Library music edited to fit video, sound design)
Healy Image Video Endkunde DE

A video for new Healy owners:
(Composed music cue to fit video, sound design)
Healy & Zubehör – auspacken DE

The different well-being and fitness programs for use on Healy:
(Library music edited to fit video, sound design)
Healy – alle Programme DE

The Gold Circle health and wellness programs available on Healy:
(Composed music cue to fit video, sound design)
Healy Goldzyklus DE

Click to get in touch

Listening Experience #21

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EMS 2018

 

EMS is an historic music studio established in the 1960’s that continues to this day. In December 2018 I was able to use two of the studios there as part of an artist residency.

The first half of this episode of Listening Experience consists of recordings made on the Serge and Buchla modular systems at EMS. The second half uses recordings made at EMS as source material for an instance of Das Lied Ohne Eigenschaften

Listening Experience is aired and archived by Resonance Extra.

This is a link to Resonance Extra

This is a link to Listening Experience

Listening Experience #20

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#ODORWAVE EXPLAIN SHOW #20 – EASY LISTENING WITH ODORBABY

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Say hello to my little friend…

There is a long story about ODORBABY: How it came to be, what adventures it has led me on, and where it is now. Much of the story of ODORBABY involves drinking too much coffee.

ODORBABY started out as an unnamed harsh noise project I created while living in Austin, Texas. Very quickly, the project developed an identity as an anti-consumption/ anti-music industry/anti-corporate culture entity. The general idea was to take the blown-out, over-saturated, consumer-centric information environment I was living in at the time, and to feed it back onto itself.

I figured why not make the project even anti-self; hence it doesn’t take itself too seriously.

There are many ways to interpret ODORBABY. Here is what ODORBABY has to say about itself:

ODORBABY IS AWESOME

INFORMATION CONTAMINATION USUALLY IN ENGLISH ODORWAVE EXPLAINS HOW

ALL OF THE MARKETING AND HYPE YOU CRAVE, WITHOUT THE BURDEN OF AN ACTUAL PRODUCT TO SLOW YOU DOWN

At the present time, the original inspiration for this project has faded, and I haven’t been very active with it. The current circumstances in the US have gone further than I could have ever imagined going with ODORBABY, so the original inspiration has declined.

I am told that some of the content has been archived at the Sound Archive of the British Library. This episode presents some of the less-abrasive content from this project.

ODORBABY lives on Noisewiki and Twitter

ODORBABY sonic masterworks can be found on Bandcamp

Listening Experience is aired and archived by Resonance Extra.

This is a link to Resonance Extra

This is a link to Listening Experience

Listening Experience #19

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Capitulation Risk

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(image source: https://www.silverdoctors.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/SurrenderFlagCapitulate001 [dot] jpg)

There is an expression in German, which roughly translated says “If you do not struggle for what you want, you can not regret what you have lost.” With so much changing in the world right now, changing in ways that affect all of us, I’ve been thinking lately about the idea of “capitulation”, of giving up before a goal is reached. My guess is that we are all being tested by circumstances, and we will all learn how far we are willing to go in order to get where we want to be. All of us are at risk of capitulation, of giving up before we should. Our ability to manage this risk, this temptation to give up, will determine where we go.

Recently I have had a new earworm, the song “Is That All There Is“, written by Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller and famously sung by Peggy Lee. One takeaway from this song is that all of the big, seemingly insurmountable, obstacles that life presents to us inevitably end up seeming a lot less awful after they have passed. Things that make us want to give up turn out to be just another day in the life. If that’s the case, we should just keep going on and live our lives happily. To not give up, to not capitulate.

I took the recording of Peggy Lee’s performance and ran it through my usual process of carving up sound material; this is a great way to deal with an earworm. Much of what resulted from this carving process ended up in segments two and three of this episode. Hence the title “Capitulation Risk”. I tried to release the hopefulness that lives within this song.

The first segment of this episode is an edit of a reading from “Walden”, by Henry David Thoreau. The reading is of chapter four, “Sounds”. I like this segment because it is a form of sound walk, created before recording technology was available. I edited the reading to clarify and enhance the sense that the author is describing a sound walk through the environment in which the book is based. The reading is sourced at this link.

The second and third segments are audio experiments with a new means of extracting and manipulating sound that I recently discovered. This is where the Peggy Lee edits live.

The final segment is a recording of a Listening Experience performance at Spektrum in Berlin.

Capitulation Risk segments are available on Bandcamp:

Listening Experience # 19 – Capitulation Risk

Listening Experience is aired and archived by Resonance Extra.

This is a link to Resonance Extra
This is a link to Listening Experience

 

Listening Experience #18

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DAT Quad 2018

datFest_2018_01

DAT Quad 2018 was a 24 hour durational performance event curated by the team at Noiseberg. The venue was State Studio. It featured performances on three levels of the venue. The top level and the basement level were both set up for quad audio playback.

These recordings make use of listening objects created during the performance, as well as listening objects which were created for the event, but not used.

The first segment of the show is a recording of a real-time performance of The QuadTool. The second segment is an attempt to take the strategy of Brian Eno’s “Discrete Music” and implement it in quadraphonic sound (I added some material from another performance about halfway through. Why not).

Both of these segments are stereo reductions of the quad source material.

Here is the Event website

Here is the Venue Website

DAT Quad 2018 segments are available on Bandcamp:

Listening Experience # 18 – DAT Quad 2018

Listening Experience is aired and archived by Resonance Extra.

This is a link to Resonance Extra
This is a link to Listening Experience

 

Listening Experience #17

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geist – blur

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This episode of Listening Experience is titled “geist – blur”. It began a few months ago as an episode for this show, but along the way I found a few other interesting ideas to base some shows on. Now there is a space for this idea in an episode.

“geist – blur” is a reaction to recent life in Berlin, without any overt narrative.

Excerpts of “geist – blur” segments are available on Bandcamp:

https://mattburnett.bandcamp.com/album/listening-experience-17-geist-blur

Listening Experience is aired and archived by Resonance Extra.
This is a link to Resonance Extra
This is a link to Listening Experience

 

Passing Sounds

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Often, when passing someone while walking along the street, I have an urge to scratch my face. Other people do this as well. I don’t know why, and as a result I’ve started paying attention to this minor phenomena. There is probably a name for this phenomena, but at the moment I am too distracted to look for it.

While paying attention to this, I began to notice that some people make sounds as they pass. Small, short sounds usually made vocally. This is interesting: A new sound world that I never noticed until now. I wonder why people do this.

Are these sounds intentional? Instinctual? What motivates them? Do these sounds communicate something, and if so, what? Is there a repertoire/grammar for these sounds?

Are these sounds part of some sort of avoidance instinct we have? Are these sounds motivated by the same thing that motivates so many people to stare at their smartphones?

Do these sounds acknowledge, or greet or dismiss the one being passed? Is there some relationship between this gesture and the gesture of saluting, which we often associate with the military?

Right now it’s only an idea. Perhaps something more substantive will result if I try to organise this idea a bit more…

I think I will start keeping a log of these sounds, as I notice them along the street. No idea if this will end up being anything useful, but for now I’m curious if there is some sort of taxonomy of these sounds, and if they could be of any use in a sound project.

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Here’s what I have so far, collected between 09-Sep-2018 and 12-Feb-2019:

Sound Number of times encountered
Silence / “default” (whatever incidental sound is being made, ie clothes rustling, etc.) So far, overwhelmingly frequent
Footscuff 2
Cough 1
Remove keys from pocket 2
t-ch vocal sound 1
Melody fragment:
do re mi (base long short(. .. .)) 1
indistinct 13
Whistling a random tune 4
Throat clearing
mmmP Mmm 10
Slight inhale 2
Slight exhale 9
Forced exhale (fuuuuuuuh, goes down about 20 cents) 1
Hmm (downward pitch) 3
Spoken
muttering to self 14
something like “De-Ne” 1
something like “mal” 1
something like “zum Pass” 1