RESEARCH
READING:
‘THE SOUNDSCAPE – OUR SONIC ENVIRONMENT AND THE TUNING OF THE WORLD’ R. Murray Schafer 1977 Destiny Books, by arrangement with Alfred Knopf, Inc.
A fascinating book! I wanted to read it to be able to work more deeply on the area of responding to the sonic landscape in my painting. It was obviously aimed more at musicians than artists but it still gave me a glimpse into this area of research. Much of the book covered very detailed sound analysis but R. Murrey Schafer’s style of writing made it easy and informative for the novice reader on the subject. It confirmed my interest in investigating the sonic landscape…
Notes
Now I will do nothing but listen…
I hear all sounds running together, combined
fused or following,
Sounds of the city and sounds out of the city, sounds
of the day and night…
Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
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Question: What is the relationship between man and the sounds of his environment and what happens when those sounds change? Soundscape studies attempt to unify these various researches.
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The home territory of soundscape studies will be the middle ground between science , society and the arts. From acoustics and psychoacoustics we will learn about the physical properties of sound … From society we will learn how man behaves with sound and how sound effects and changes behaviour. From the arts, especially music, we will learn how man creates ideal sound-scapes for the other life, the life of the imagination and psychic reflection.
FURTHER READING… Henry Thoreau ‘Walden’
Today all sounds belong to a continuous field of possibilities lying within the comprehensive dominion of music. Behold the new orchestra: the sonic universe! And the musicians: anyone and anything that sounds!
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In the West the ear gave way to the eye as the most important gatherer of information about the time of the Renaissance with the development of the printing press and perspective painting.
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Hearing is a way of touching at a distance… The eye points outward; the ear draws inward. Wagner: “To the eye appeals the outer man, the inner to the ear.”
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The mind must be slowed to catch the million transformations of the water, on sand, on shale, against driftwood, against the sea wall. Each drop tinkles at a different pitch; each wave sets a different filtering on an inexhaustible supply of white noise.
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No two raindrops sound alike, as the attentive ear will detect.
Emily Carr, Canadian painter; “The rain drops hit the roof with smacking little clicks, uneven and stabbing. Through the open windows the sound of the rain on the leaves is not like that. It is more like one continuous sigh, a breath always spending with no fresh intake. The roof rain rattles over our room’s hollowness, strikes and is finished.”
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In the …sheltered English countryside, the wind sets the leaves shimmering in diverse tonalities.
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Sometimes I ask students to identify moving sounds in the soundscape. “The wind,” say some. “trees,” say others. But without objects in its path, the wind betrays no apparent movement. It hovers in the ears, energetic but directionless.
Emily Carr: The silence of our Western forests was so profound that our ears could scarcely comprehend it. If you spoke your voice came back to you as your face is thown back to you in a morror. It seemed that the forest was so full of silence that there was no room for sounds.
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Bird song
…the history of effective bird imitations in music