Dr. Bernie Krause is world-famous for his audio field recordings and writings about natural soundscapes, so having him as a guest at Stetson was a truly a dream come true. This high-profile public lecture really helped raise awareness on campus and in the local community about the importance of acoustic ecology research. We also had several people travel to campus from outside Florida for his visit just because he is rarely on the east coast.
Students in my DIGA 365 course prepared for Dr. Krause’s visit by reading selections from The Great Animal Orchestra, which enabled some deeper interactions with him during his time with us. Seeing their positive response to his lecture and this topic of acoustic ecology helped confirm for me that this will continue to be an important part of my research and teaching agenda going forward.
In October 2019, ACA’s Eve Payor invited me to co-lead a soundwalk with her at the MOAS in Daytona Beach. I had organized many soundwalks with my students over the years, but this was my first time designing such an experience for the public. I wanted to use this opportunity to share with others some of the tools that are part of my regular field recording practice. Eve and I decided to build the experience around two headphone listening stations, one with hydrophones and another with a binaural mic.
At the first station, our audience could listen to sounds beneath the surface of a small pond live. Although the water was relatively still, the hydrophones made the occasional gurgle or splash became important events. At the second station, people were treated to the binaural mic positioned above their heads among the trees. With the gain boost provided over headphones, they could hear the heightened sense of reality that I often feel while recording. The entire experience was further enhanced by rain that started half way through the journey.
The following recordings were captured at the two listening stations during the soundwalk:
After the soundwalk, I gave a presentation in the MOAS auditorium about audio field recording tools and how they enhance the capabilities of our hearing. Because they had just experienced the hydrophones and binaural mic firsthand during our soundwalk, the material really seemed to click with the audience. They had lots of great questions. Overall, it was a memorable day.
I recently had the pleasure of traveling to the Czech Republic and sharing some of my audio field recording work from DeLeon Springs State Park. The presentation was part of the Central European Network on Sonic Ecologies (CENSE) conference. It was great meeting so many sound artists and researchers from this part of the world and hearing about their inspiring work.
Most of my previous academic work has been in the area of audio programing, so this was my first time presenting at a conference on field recording. I really appreciated the positive feedback and the many conversations with kindred spirits. My presentation first covered the motivation for this project and methods employed, followed by some of the results and my personal reflections.
You can listen to a 30-minute recording of the presentation on SoundCloud:
And here are some of my pictures from the conference on Instagram:
In June 2018, I initiated a project to capture audio field recordings at DeLeon Springs State Park in Florida. It is a location with evidence of human activity dating back 6,000 years, but today it primarily draws tourists and Florida residents for swimming and other forms of outdoor leisure. As of July 2019, I have made 24 visits over a 12 month period and recorded over 16 hours of audio.
To celebrate World Listening Day 2019, I have released via SoundCloud 5 tracks captured at DeLeon Springs during my yearlong field recording project. They will sound best over a good pair of headphones.
If you enjoy these free recordings, please consider a donation to one of the following organizations:
My students in DIGA 366 put together the third edition of DIGAHERTZ, a concert to showcase their electronic music projects. This year, I had more students interested in sound design, so the program reflects that. The first half featured original sound designs for examples from music videos, anime, Cartoon Network, and classic animation. The second half featured some live performances on original instruments that used Ableton Live, Roli Blocks, Makey-Makey, and LED sensors.
Every so often, I run into someone that has fond memories of the Hipno plug-ins and asks me if they will ever be resurrected. These folks inspired me to spend the tail end of 2018 looking back in my archive and trying to resurrect one of my favorites from that collection: GoMoDo.
My contributions to the collection were focussed on hybrids between granular techniques and other common types of audio processing. One of problems I had with real-time granular processing on a live source is that the loud bits sound interesting, while the quiet bits are less so.
GoMoDo aimed to solve this through a hybrid of noise gating and granular processing. The plug-in lets you set a threshold and use the audio source’s dynamic variations to control what goes into the sampling buffer, and what gets ignored.
Just before Christmas, I posted a new version of GoMoDo to maxforlive.com as a free download. At the time of this writing, it has already been downloaded over 300 times, which confirms there is still demand for new granular devices among Ableton Live and Max users. It also motivates me to try resurrecting more plug-ins from the Hipno collection in this format, so check back in the months ahead.
GoMoDo: this Max for Live device resurrects one of my favorite plug-ins from the Hipno collection.
Using modular synthesizers, my DIGA 365 students had to design a cohesive set of sound effects for a smartphone interface. This was my second year assigning this sound design task to my students, and I once again enjoyed the results. The somewhat unpredictable nature of these hardware synthesizers requires students to generate lots of potential options then edit, which is an important skill to learn for their future creative lives.
The piece was created using binaural recordings that were captured on Stetson University’s palm court. Listeners can choose a pair of headphones and listen for as long as they like. Visitors frequently start with one set of headphones and close their eyes, trying to imagine the scene playing out for their ears. After a few minutes, they then work their way through the other headphones in turn.
