When I was 16, I was hired for my first front-of-house position. In my new role as “person in charge” I quickly began noticing all of the little obstacles that seemed to appear each night. They had been present before, of course, but never so obvious. The way that bands assumed anyone in the room except me was the sound engineer. The flashes of surprise that crossed their faces upon being pointed my way. The way I was talked over, dismissed, or needed repeated requests to get things accomplished when the same request from a male coworker was heeded immediately. The questions I faced about my knowledge of audio sometimes turned into full interrogations. I had known that I would face challenges like these, but the relentlessness was getting to me.
Then, a few months after being hired, I did sound for a math rock band called TTNG. They walked in, immediately accepted that I was the sound engineer, and didn’t question my competence. They listened to me and treated me kindly, as an equal. I didn’t feel like I needed to prove anything to them. It was refreshing. Although I didn’t realize it at the moment, after the show I started to see just how much their respect for me had meant. How it had given me hope. And I decided to send them a message saying exactly that.
This started a habit. I now do my best to acknowledge bands that stand out for being exceptionally nice or easy to work with. I want them to know that I noticed and appreciated their behavior, and tell them thank you for making my job that much easier. If I can’t do this in person, I’ll usually send a message a day or two after.
I feel very strongly that it’s important to pass on these thank-you notes because it’s often underestimated how much weight a band’s attitude can have. How simply being friendly and rolling with the punches makes or breaks stressful situations, and makes all the difference between a rushed soundcheck being doable or downright miserable. I’ve managed to make lasting connections, friendships and may have even gotten my foot in the door to touring by doing this.
So if someone has made a good impression on you, don’t hesitate to let them know. You never know what might come from it.
3 Easy Steps to Cutting Classic Cartoon Sound Effects
At Boom Box Post, we specialize in sound for animation. Although sonic sensibilities are moving toward a more realistic take, we still do a fair amount of work that harkens back to the classic cartoon sonic styles of shows like Tom and Jerry or Looney Tunes. Frequently, this style is one of the most difficult skills to teach new editors. It requires a good working knowledge of keywords to search in the library–since almost all cartoon sound effects are named with onomatopoeic names rather than real words like “boing”, “bork”, and “bewip”–an impeccable sense of timing, and a slight taste for the absurd.
I used to think that you were either funny or not. Either you inherently understood how to cut a sonic joke, or you just couldn’t do it. Period. But, recently, I began deconstructing my own process of sonic joke-telling and teaching my formula to a few of our editors. I was absolutely floored by the results. It turns out, you can learn to be funny! It’s just a matter of understanding how to properly construct a joke.
WHAT NOT TO DO
Before I get into what to do, I think it’s important to point out what not to do. When editors start cutting classic cartoon sound effects for the first time, they pretty much always have the same problem. They stumble upon the Hanna-Barbera sound effects library and find some really funny sounds. Bulb horns–those are always funny! Boings–hilarious! Splats–comic genius! Then, one by one, they start sprinkling these in whenever they feel there’s a dull moment.
Let me say this once: A single funny sound effect is almost never funny. It’s like blurting out the punchline of a joke without the setup.
Here’s an example of a joke: Someone stole my Microsoft Office and they’re going to pay. You have my Word.
I know this is a super lame joke… but it is a joke nonetheless and if you told it at a party, you’d probably be rewarded with an awkward groan/chuckle. Cutting just a single bulb horn at a random moment is like yelling out “Microsoft Office!” in the middle of a party and expecting people to laugh. It’s just not funny. Cutting cartoon sound effects is not the artform of adding “funny” sounds randomly into a visual work, it’s the art of telling a sonic joke. And to tell a joke, you need three parts: the introduction, the setup, and the punchline. If you want to go one step further, you can add a bonus part: the tag.
AN EXAMPLE OF JOKE CONSTRUCTION IN PROGRESS
Love him or hate him, this video example of Jerry Seinfeld talking about his process in writing a Pop-Tart joke is very illuminating. There are many different elements that go into how funny your joke will be perceived to be. They are things like: how incongruous are the words (or sounds) to each other, how surprising is the punchline at the end, how well were elements from the setup woven back into the punchline, how well did you captivate your audience by the “story” of the joke. With that in mind, it’s not hard to see why it would take two years to craft the perfect Pop-Tart joke.
When telling a joke, this is your first sentence. It lets the audience know where you’re starting. In the case of Jerry’s Pop-Tart joke, this is when he starts talking about breakfast in the 1960s being composed of frozen orange juice and toast. From this, we understand that this is going to be a joke about breakfast.
In sound, the importance of the introduction is all about timing. Take a Mickey and the Roadster Racers that one of our editors, Brad Meyer, and I worked on. There was a sequence where all of the characters were driving around and Goofy was holding a stolen diamond. It was incredibly valuable and he was nervous to be mistakenly caught with it and possibly taken for the thief. At one point, he abruptly came to a stop, the diamond flew out of his car and landing in a Ferris wheel bucket. The Ferris wheel then began to turn around, and the two characters (one good guy and one bad guy) scrambled to enter the bucket with it. Up they went with the diamond to the top when it, of course, slipped from their hands, bounced down the spokes of the Ferris wheel one by one, and then landed neatly in Goofy’s car at the bottom.
In this sound design example, choosing the point at which we kick off the joke is key. Like I mentioned earlier, if we just sprinkle cartoon sound effects in whenever anything slightly “toony” happens in the visual, it’s not really a joke. We’re just shouting funny-sounding words at a party. Instead, we need to choose an exact moment to begin the joke. That moment would be when the diamond flies out of Goofy’s car. We chose a simple sail zip whistle to kick this off, and a glass clink when the diamond landed in the bucket. Those two sounds were our introduction to the joke. Keep in mind that from this moment, our goal is to make all of the following cartoon sound effects create anticipation leading up to the final “punchline” effect.
ANATOMY OF A JOKE: THE SETUP
In Jerry’s Pop-Tart joke, after introducing us to the idea that he’s talking about breakfast, he continues his setup by us about the downside of all of the prevailing breakfast foods of the 1960s. Then, he announces the arrival of the Pop-Tart, likening it to the arrival of an alien spacecraft, and he and his friends were like “chimps in the dirt playing with sticks.” As he points out–in that phrase alone, there are four very funny words: chimps, dirt, playing, sticks.
The setup is the story. It takes us on a journey and gives us all of the elements we need to pull together the punchline. But, notice that the more incongruous the elements of the setup, the better the punchline comes off. What do breakfast, aliens, chimps, dirt, and sticks have in common? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. This is exactly why it’s a great setup.
In sound, the idea is the same. You kick off the joke with something that makes sense (like a sail zip for an item flying into the air). In the example of the scene from Mickey and the Roadster Racers, we cut completely incongruous cartoon sounds for the landing of the hero and villain in the bucket (timpani hits), followed by a spin whistle for them scrambling to grab the diamond. Then, when they got to the top, we cut different pitched glass “tinks” (ascending in pitch with each one) for the diamond falling and hitting spokes of the Ferris wheel along the way. Not only are all of these sounds funny on their own, but they are funnier because they are so different from one another. Also note that these sounds, although different from one another, continue to build tension leading to the next moment.
ANATOMY OF A JOKE: THE PUNCHLINE
In the Pop-Tart joke, Jerry gives the punchline of wondering how they knew that there would be a demand for “a frosted fruit-filled heatable rectangle in the same shape as the box it comes in, and with the same nutritional value as the box it comes in.” And he goes on to wrap it up by telling us that in the midst of hopelessness, the Pop-Tart appeared to meet that need of the people. This punchline works because it harkens back to the introduction when Jerry tells us of the dire state of breakfast choices in America. The people were in need, and a savior appeared.
In our sonic cartoon example, we did the same thing. We started with an introduction of a sail zip, then lead to a whole batch of incongruous sounds that built anticipation, and then, as a punchline, we used a reversed sail zip to lead us to the final glass clink of the diamond falling into Goofy’s car. Thus, the joke was bookended.
ANATOMY OF A JOKE: THE TAG
In Jerry’s example, he talks about wanting to develop an additional end to the joke when he ties in the “chimps in the dirt playing with sticks” with the Pop-Tart punchline. This would be the tag. In a cartoon, it might be one final sound at the end of the gag that really finishes it off, like two slow eye blinks from another character who just watched the joke take place. When you see these visual “tags,” be sure that you always consider them part of the joke as a whole and keep the sounds part of the same family.
FINALLY, FARTS
Because you made it to the end of this incredibly long blog post, you shall be rewarded! So, here is a video of my favorite comedian, George Carlin, telling fart jokes. Being that we work in animation, we at Boom Box Post love nothing more than a good old-fashioned fart joke. If you want extra credit, you can analyze this bit to see how the intros, setups, and punchlines work together. Or, just sit back and enjoy the smell….
This blog is a repost for Kate Finan at boomboxpost.com. Check out the original post here which includes audio clips.
One Year On
I can’t believe it is almost 2020. Probably how most blogs are going to start in the coming weeks. I started this blog in January 2019, at home in Newcastle, six months after graduating from the University of Exeter, UK, still without a “real job.” I had volunteered at festivals throughout the summer, worked the whole month at Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and was debating between doing a ski season in France or moving to Sevilla, Spain, to work at a TV/film production company. I went with the latter, deciding it was more related to the career path I wanted to take. The three months in Spain were amazing for my language skills, meeting new people, and discovering a new city. However, in April 2019, I was back to square one again, at home in Newcastle without full-time employment.
I again volunteered at festivals, worked as a TV runner in a freelance/very on-off capacity, and was filling out job applications every day for everything from journalism to consultancy to working in theatres and production companies. In May, things very quickly went from screening phone calls to face-to-face to final stage Skype with a talent management company. Not something I’d ever considered before, or even to a real-life job people did! I’d known of the company for many years and followed the industry of YouTube, blogging, and podcasts for many years, too, but had no idea this could be an industry I could be qualified to work in.
I started on July 1st, 2019, and I’m still in the same job! I passed my 3-month probation in October and will hopefully pass the 6-month one in January. I love every aspect of it. Even the “boring/less fun” parts of the job, in my opinion, such as finance and legal, are relatively interesting in the context of the work. Every day is different, I work with brilliant people, and I genuinely learn something new every day, whether it be some behind-the-scenes tech knowledge of Instagram or random law jargon. I am hoping to continue to write this blog bi-monthly in 2020, so I can hopefully document the journey going forward!
Last week, I attended the second annual BBC Radio 4 Student Journalism Awards, in which I won the 2018 prize for ‘Best Student Programme’ last year. It was so great to return and be able to talk about the work I’ve done since and give advice to current students – mainly to make the most of the flexibility and freedom of university and enjoy it while it lasts!
I can’t wait to see what the next year brings. Will I stay in London? Will I be in the same house share? Will I live abroad again? Will I develop within the same company? (I hope so!) Who will I meet? What exciting events will I go to? Which fun work projects will I be involved in? I need to start writing my New Year’s Resolutions soon, I know two of them already:
To read two books per month (This may be easy for some and would be for a younger me, but since the age of 16 my reading has drastically reduced, I managed just over one per month this year, so aiming for two next year!
Three new cities (I luckily managed this very quickly in 2019, due to moving to Sevilla and visiting Málaga and Córdoba at that time) Maybe I could aim for three new countries too…
Thank you for reading my final blog post of 2019, see you in 2020!
Self-care is a trending phrase and life choice that many people choose to participate in, designed to create a healthy environment for one’s self to deal with various factors within their lives.
Personally, I think self-care is a healthy practice, but for people in our industry, it may look drastically different compared to others. Advice or health blogs suggest self-care steps such as sleep when you are tired, meditate daily, meal prep, exercise for an hour every day, eat right, and more.
All great ideas, but not always plausible for people in our industry. How can we practice self-care when working extremely long hours, living off buses, jumping from show to show, meeting recording deadlines, and more? Here are some ideas that you can tailor into your daily self-care routine or develop one with.
Drink water – Start your day off with a large glass of water. Easy to do wherever you are and a healthy first step to any day to get you started on the right foot.
Bring your favorite snack – Already know your day is going to be long with limited breaks. Grab a few of your favorite snacks, preventing yourself from getting hangry and something you can look forward to in your busy day.
Exercise – It doesn’t have to be an hour; it can be 10 minutes. Challenge your coworkers to a plank challenge. Develop a 15-minute routine you can do anywhere consisting of pushups, sit-ups, squats, and jumping jacks.
Wear one of your favorites – A favorite shirt, shoes, socks, or even your favorite necklace. Wear it. Frequently we wear black, and that’s ok, but no one says you can’t wear a cute pair of earrings with your black clothes. Wear something you enjoy and do it for you.
Journal – When your day is done, instead of streaming social media until you fall asleep, write about your day. Journal your thoughts and feelings, let our some of the bottled-up emotions out, leave it on paper, and then move forward.
Take a minute for yourself – It’s ok to take a minute for yourself even on an extremely hectic day. Step away, regain your thoughts, make an action plan, and move forward. In the long run, taking that moment can help you so much more than not. If you absolutely can’t do this, then find someone who can help you. Send them for your favorite drink or to grab a plate from catering for you. Take that moment to make the rest of the day better.
Speak positively to yourself – We tend to be hard on ourselves and even worse on tough days. Change your inner voice and speak positively to yourself. Work on developing a new perspective to notice positive things first, then address the negative things striving to make them positive.
Take a moment to permanently solve a problem– If you are continually running into an issue as you jump from show to show or recording session instead of spending 10 minutes temporarily fixing it only to do it again tomorrow. Take that hour to permanently fix it. This will save you frustration and annoyance each day and is self-care. Finding permeant solutions to daily issues make it easier and is a benefit to you every day. This frees up time and energy for anything else that may pop up or could actually allow for you to take that deserved break.
If you find you cannot fit in any or enough self-care steps every day, then make sure to set aside a day or two for yourself each month. Take yourself on a movie date, shut off all electronics for a day, read something for fun, cook for yourself. Find something you enjoy that provides satisfaction and do it. Taking care of yourself means you will be able to continue taking care of everything, and everyone else you encounter each day. Self-care will look and feel differently for everyone. Find 2-3 things for you, so you can handle our crazy industry a little bit better every day.
Sonic Memories
At Boom Box Post, we try to take the time to meet with nearly everyone who asks: be it for an interview or a to give career advice to a young editor. Among the most inspiring parts of interacting with those who are new to the profession are the questions they pose that cause us to look again at our job with fresh eyes (and ears!). One of these questions which was posed to me by a recent audio school graduate was, “What should I do to prepare myself to be an editor?”
My answer is, “Start listening.”
Unlike visuals of which we take constant notice, sound is often an unnoticed undercurrent in our lives. Ask yourself: when you tell a story to a friend, do you describe what you saw or what you heard? Most likely, you focus on the visuals. Now think about how hearing a sound from your childhood can suddenly thrust you back to the emotions from that time in your life. Sound can be an incredibly powerful storytelling device. Think about what emotional state the story asks of the viewer. It is our job to connect our personal sonic memories to those emotions.
To give you an example, I’d like to share one of my favorite memories from childhood: going camping on an isolated lake in northern Wisconsin with my family. I’d like to tell the first part with visual descriptions and the second with sonic descriptions. Think about which one you find yourself connecting to more.
THE VISUAL TAKE
When I was young, we often went camping at a lake in northern Wisconsin. My father always said, “It’s not a vacation if I see anyone else.” So we drove for hours to part of the north woods, parked in a remote lot, and then carried our gear and canoe along a path to a little piece of beach no wider than a child’s arm span and launched out into the lake. From there, we paddled to our campsite which was accessible only by water.
Once we had settled in, we spent most of the days by ourselves. My father wandered off amongst the trees to take photos of butterflies, mallards, or sometimes us. My mother took care of the camp, cooking the meals and washing dishes, and my brother and I played in the forest. Each evening, we shared a special moment together: a canoe ride at sunset.
THE SONIC TAKE
As the sun dipped lower in the sky and began to cast a shadow over the lake, the sound of the forest suddenly turned. The lively birds and cicadas of the day ceased and a period of pure silence washed over us. Our canoe scraped against the grit of the shore as we pushed it into the water, then only the sound of the tip of the bow cutting the water could be heard. We paddled into the center of the lake to the steady beat of oars splashing into calm water, and then stopped and just sat, letting the silence envelope us. After a while, we heard what we were waiting for: a loon. It skimmed across the water, letting loose its lonely cry, and we heard this solemn sound echoing off the banks and folding back on us like an origami bird.
SPINNING STORIES FROM SONIC MEMORIES
When sound enters the equation, don’t you feel not only a better understanding of the events of the story but also an emotional connection to it? This is what I attempt to achieve in each project. As sound editors, it is not just our job to look at the screen, and place the sound for the action we see (door open, door close, car ignition on, gear shift), but also to think about what emotional state the story asks of the viewer. It is our job to connect our personal sonic memories to those emotions and use them to trigger the right feeling for the audience. For example, whenever I’m faced with a scene that asks the audience to appreciate a lonely expanse of wilderness, I add in a loon.
THE LISTENING PROJECT
Now that you understand the importance of sound in storytelling and how to use it to make emotional connections for the viewer, there’s only one thing left: start listening. As you go about your daily life, start taking note of what you hear. This will help you in your ability to draw on these sounds as you edit. Think about this the next time you go for a hike, enjoy dinner downtown, attend a party with friends.
QUESTION: WHAT ARE YOUR FAVORITE SONIC MEMORIES FROM CHILDHOOD?
Mine are: the loon from my story, the sound of a foghorn coming through my window on a hot summer night, and the perfect hollow pop that a tennis ball makes as it hits a racquet.
Creating Suspense
Recently I’ve been working on a couple of projects that require some suspenseful swells of music. After trying out a few different methods, I decided I would share some of the techniques I used that seemed to be quite effective.
The first method I tried was to bury some long gong sounds leading up to the peak of the suspense. This worked as it was a very classical sounding score. However, if you were wanting to use this in another genre, you could always edit the sound with a pitch shifter, reverb, sending it through pedals. Etc.
My second tip is to just keep layering sounds during a build-up section. The idea of suspense could mean that the first section of your piece can be very controlled but the build-up really needs to grow. A really great way to do this is to add new sounds to every bar. This can be anything from recorded sounds to synths and instruments.
My final tip is to increase the volume automation throughout your build-up. This really helps especially when the music needs to be minimal but you still want the audience to sense some kind of change.
I hope some of these tips can help you create some suspense in your pieces. My advice is to just always keep playing around with different elements of the score, and eventually, you’ll find something that works.
Positive Action for Women in Music
Give peeps a chance
I’m impressed with what 2019 has offered so far in the way of women achieving greatness and it being celebrated, both close to home and worldwide. The 2019 Grammy awards were pioneering for women in the industry with 31 award winners, which is an increase of 82% from last year, sweeping the board across all areas including classical music and production. While the work of women is recognised at the highest levels, the language surrounding them is still being improved. Oscar-winning sound editor Nina Hartstone was covered by the BBC in the run-up to the event with the headline “The sound editor mum up for an Oscar.” After something of a public backlash, the BBC rephrased their reporting on the feature to “From tea girl to Oscars red carpet,” and it now appears in online searches under the headline “Bohemian Rhapsody: First Oscars night for sound editor.” Considering Hartstone is a woman with 25 years of experience in the industry and a string of A-list film credits in her portfolio, the backlash seems like fair criticism. It is refreshing to have seen the conversations and the subsequent corrections that were made to this error of judgment.
I wonder if a shift is finally happening around us, as for the first time I’ve experienced, being a woman in music seems to be supported, encouraged, and has positively impacted me – on a much smaller scale of course! While positive discrimination is illegal under UK law, positive action is when an employer takes steps to help or encourage certain groups of people with different needs, who are disadvantaged in some way, access work or training. I have been heartened to see big and small organisations alike encouraging the inclusion of women where there is a disparity. The Grammy Recording Academy Task Force on Inclusion and Diversity is announcing the launch of the Producer and Engineering Inclusion Initiative – an industry-wide initiative that asks that at least two women are identified and therefore considered as part of the selection process every time a music producer or engineer is hired. In the UK, The Musician’s Union is currently launching a mentoring scheme for women in association with Shesaid.So, as well as consulting with ministers in Government to implement policies that will promote parity for women in music. The MU also hosted a conference for Women in Music this month, which was a hugely positive event I attended that was filled with inspirational speakers, workshops and chances to network, share connections and experiences as well as business talk with like-minded individuals.
Recently I’ve been pleasantly surprised to have found positive action in motion via new allies in my work; taking on a client who specifically encouraged women to reach out, and also starting some audio work for a lovely company looking to support equality with the work they’re doing in the industry. These last few months have been quite unfamiliar to me, coming from a background where I’ve often felt like the ‘token woman’ at work, a subordinate, or at worst a ‘threat’ in a world where our major achievements are so often defined as secondary to our matriarchal or marital status.
While there’s still a lot of room for improvement across the board, and unsolicited explanations on the fundamentals of what I do from ‘helpful’ outsiders still regularly infest my space, they don’t hold the weight they once did. I can see positive changes that are both aspirational and experiential for the first time in my life, and that’s brand new. Even my local BBC radio station has shown support for female-led happenings in the industry, inviting me to be part of a conversation this week on the subject of women in music, and it feels like people are banding together to address the disparity and actually do something to proactively change it. It is a change that I hope will continue to flourish far and wide, and I also have hope that this is the start of better times ahead for all of us wherever we are, in our pursuit of making music and being heard.
Much like in part one of my festival guide, the key to working in-house at a festival is to be prepared. Pack warm, waterproof clothes, way more socks than you think you’ll need, sanitiser, etc. If you have any special dietary requirements make sure they know as soon as possible, and bring extra non-perishable food in case the message doesn’t get passed on. The days are long and busy; you may not get a chance to sit down to eat your meals, let alone leave the stage to get them. Someone else might pick your food up for you, and they might not understand what Coeliac is, for example, so have a backup ready.
When prepping the gear, read all the specs you’ve been sent carefully (e.g., a Shure Beta 98amp, 98AD/C and 98H/C may all have the same capsule, but they are not interchangeable) and allow for several bands to be mic’ed up at the same time if you have rolling risers. Pack extra mics (I’d recommend mainly Shure SM57s. We joke about it, but they really will work on almost any instrument) and adapters so you’ll be ready when someone inevitably brings more than what was on their spec. In fact, take the specs as a guide rather than gospel and plan to be flexible. If you are operating a desk, try to find out whether the bands have their own engineers, and whether they have a show file. If not, along with your generic starting file you can start building ones for them to save time on the day (but expect there to be changes!).
If you’re in charge of patching, discuss with the rest of your department whether you’ll work “1 to 1” (everyone gets plugged in as per their channel list) or if you’ll have a festival patch (all bands use the same channels, with similar instruments grouped together. e.g., inside kick drum is 1, guitars all go in 13-16, brass in 24-30, etc.). Festival patch can be a lot quicker if you’re using analogue desks, sharing backline and mics throughout the day, or if you’ll be mixing most of the bands yourself. It helps the in-house monitor engineer in particular because they can leave rough mixes up and just tweak them band to band instead of starting fresh every changeover, which can be very time-consuming. 1 to 1 is obviously a lot easier for guests, though, especially if they have programmed a lot of scenes for their set in their file which could take too long to adjust after a soft patch.
Festivals can be intense, with very short changeovers, so staying organised is paramount. Label absolutely everything. Imagine you were to suddenly get ill and have to leave. Would a colleague be able to step in and know where and what everything is? If not, label it up until there’s no way anyone could get confused. If the worst happens and you do have to go, someone will be able to pick up where you left off. More importantly, when you’ve been working flat out for 14 hours and your brain goes blank right at the critical moment when you’re fault finding, you’ll be able to rely on the labels to get you through. If coloured tape everywhere doesn’t suit the look of the show (for example if it’s being broadcast), silver marker pen on black tape is a lot more subtle. Keep your paperwork and a pencil with you, so you can note down any changes as you go along. Don’t forget to update anyone else who needs to know, e.g., other stage crew, engineers or the broadcast truck. Carry a phantom power checker, and a small mic with a patch lead and an XLR to jack for DIs so you can test any lines that go bad straight away (after making sure that channel is muted!).
Don’t wait for bands or engineers to come to you, go and find them as soon as they get to the stage. Check for any changes to their spec, ask them how they like their mixes if you’re doing monitors for them, and so on. Musicians can be very laid back, so you need to be friendly but firm to keep them on schedule. At the changeover, make sure they set up as quickly as possible. Take the lead for line check if you’re mixing. Ask for the instruments you want to hear, and politely tell them to stop playing the ones you don’t. For monitors, the quickest way to get usable mixes is to ask everyone to put their hand up when they want the instrument that is being checked in their mix, and not to put them down until it’s loud enough for them. Don’t get flustered trying to give everyone what they want at the same time, just calmly work from one side of the stage to the other and let impatient people know you’ve seen them and you’ll get to them. If the engineer on the other end of the multicore is moving too fast for you, ask them to slow down. You both need to hear everything, so they should be happy to oblige.
Festivals can be manic, challenging, wet and cold, but it’ll be over before you know it, and that huge sense of achievement you feel at the end might even be enough to persuade you into another field the next week. You’re going to need more socks.
Other articles on Festivals with useful information
Voice Recording and Spatial Audio as Tools for Empowerment
I am a Brazilian SoundGirl from Rio de Janeiro that moved to Berlin, Germany, in 2013 to study and work. During my first year in this new city, I started to feel alone and disconnected, like I was watching life passing by through a window: I was there, but I was outside. I would like to share here some of my experiences with you, and explain how I used audio as a tool for empowerment while dealing with my own feelings of alienation. I believe that many of us have gone or are going, through similar experiences. I hope I can bring a bit of encouragement, as well as proposing another point of view on using our knowledge as a weapon to overcome challenges.
In facing my feelings of disconnection, I found comfort in technology. I started to exchange voice messages with a close friend that was also living abroad. Speaking on the cellphone in my mother-tongue, while wandering through the streets of Berlin, helped me feel I was no longer an outsider. I was somehow functioning in that society. The streets were mine, as I walked through them. I was re-appropriating that place and contributing to its soundscape, by bringing my private discourse into the public space.
During this process, I noticed that I enjoyed playing back my recordings. I could listen to what I just said from a new perspective, and this was helping me reorganise my thoughts. I started to experiment with that, but without sending my recorded messages to anyone. In other words, I decided to talk to myself through the phone, and listen back to what I just said. This turned out to function as a fun (and reflective) practice, that I had developed spontaneously to deal with my issues of feeling disconnected.
This whole experience led me to develop a method for artistic research in the Masters in Sound Studies, at the University of the Arts (Universität der Künste) in Berlin. Through this method, I researched my own sense of self, while feeling “I don’t belong” – either to a place, to a group of people, or to both at the same time. This work culminated with the creation of an immersive installation, which I called ‘This Alienness and Me’.
I would like to talk a bit about this process, both technically and conceptually. The research project was initiated in December 2015 and lasted until February 2017. The installation was exhibited on 7th February 2017 at the Wave Field Synthesis Studio, at the UDK.
Installation: ‘This Alienness and Me’
In the installation, I used spatial audio to juxtapose my personal voice recordings, made with a cellphone. The process of composing the sound for my installation was executed by using object-oriented audio. Through a Wave Field Synthesis system (WFS), I was able to position sound objects and organise them spatially, around different parts of the studio. According to Brandenburg, Brix & Sporer (2009):
“Wave Field Synthesis is a method to recreate an accurate replication of a sound field using the theory of waves and of the generation of wave fronts…WFS controlled loudspeaker arrays reproduce wave fields that originate from any combination of (virtual) sound sources like an acoustic hologram. When driven properly, the system recreates wave fronts approaching perfect temporal, spectral and spatial properties throughout the listening room.” (p.1)
WFS Studio at the UDK
I will explain later how and why I used low-quality recordings in a high-end technology system, as well as talk about my experience with composition and mixing in the WFS. At the same time, I would also like to open a dialogue concerning the sense of self and female discourses. I believe, that through the use of our knowledge, we are able to shift perspectives on how we see ourselves and how we are seen by others.
Inspiration
The main problem I have faced in the few last years is to realise that the way I perceived myself – and what I understood as my identity – was different and disconnected from the ‘images’ of myself that I perceived through the eyes of others. I felt for example, that my personal history was not important (or almost worthless) to the new people I met. Conversely, the categories I would be put in as a first impression – woman, foreign, chubby – seemed to be overestimated. Another example concerns my auditory reality. My efforts to communicate were aggravating those feelings. I heard myself talking imperfectly in two different languages, neither my mother tongue: English and German. The situation was complex because it was surrounded by different issues related to self, identity, perceiving others, listening, talking, language, speech, communication, different kinds and degrees of relationships, and new and strange environments.
I had started to find some comfort in speaking on the cellphone – in my mother tongue – while wandering through the streets of Berlin. I felt empowered as if I had a secret weapon to deal with my problems. In 2014 I suggested to a friend, Fernanda Sa Dias, that we exchange mobile voice messages as an act of mutual comfort and ‘free self-analysis’. Fernanda is also from Brazil and was living in Bremen. We would record ourselves talking about our lives, experiences, insights, feelings, and send these recordings to each other. Further, we listened to each other, not specifically giving advice, but commented freely and gave emotional support if necessary; and we listened to our own voice messages. This was an agreement that we made as friends, to see if this could help us emotionally.
The writer and theorist Gloria Anzaldúa (1980), in her essay ‘Speaking in tongues: a letter to third world women writers’, writes “our speech, too, is inaudible. We speak in tongues like the outcast and the insane” and calls on third-world women writers to speak up: “Because white eyes do not want to know us, they do not bother to learn our language, the language which reflects us, our culture, our spirit” (p.165). For Lydia French (2014), professor of English and director of Mexican-American/Latino Studies at Houston Community College-Central, Anzaldúa brings attention to “social invisibility and inaudibility for [those women]” (p.3). For her, Anzaldúa is emphasising “how some in positions of power implicitly ‘close their ears’ to the voices of women of colour, voices frequently cast as unmeaning noise” (p.3).
Additionally, while analysing Bose’s noise-canceling headphones, Mack Hagood (2011), a researcher in digital media, sound technologies and popular music, discusses how mobile technology can act in favour of objectifying the sound of women’s voices into noise. According to Hagood, “voices – particularly women’s and children’s voices – are referenced in reviews [of Bose’s noise-canceling headphones] almost as often as the sound of the jet engine [of the airplane]” (p.584). For the noise-canceling headphone buyer, there is no difference between the noise sources: all of them are unwanted and unpleasant noise. Hagood takes into account both Bose’s commercials and the users’ reviews on the product. According to him, in male-written newspaper pieces, women’s voices are perceived as “emotional, distracting, and annoying – generally too young, feminine, and irrational to silence themselves” (p.584).
Inspired by my experience with mobile voice messages, I decided to explore this ‘talking out loud to myself on the phone while feeling alienated’ as part of my research. At the same time, I aimed to reconceptualize the sound of my voice into the soundscape of an immersive environment, which would function as a medium for communicating the results of my research to others.
Recording, Composing & Mixing
During the time of my research, I produced a total of 24 recordings with my cellphone. In all of them I’m describing my feelings of alienation in different conditions: different places, different times of the day, either moving through the city, sitting somewhere or laying down on my bed. Later, I used those recordings in my immersive environment, by further mixing them using the WFS.
Through the Wave Field Synthesis System, I was able to position sound objects and organise them spatially around different parts of the studio. To begin with, twelve different recordings were being played. The use of object-oriented audio allowed me to find a space in the room for each sound source. I mixed the audio by spreading the sound sources around the space, and focusing both on the macro and micro level simultaneously. It means that I should be able to produce an ‘acceptable cacophony’, where sound objects superpose each other, but have also their own space inside the room. Sounds happening in the micro environments should be more or less independent from each other, by telling different stories in different places of the room, at different moments. At the same time, the macro environment should still be reasonably perceived as a whole system.
During the compositional process I was able to hear myself speaking about my feelings of alienation and play with volume automation. I increased the volume in the moments where I felt I was saying something important and decreased the volume of the recordings where I was saying something not so relevant. This helped me guide the listener into the ‘acceptable cacophony’ mentioned above. Although the listener, most of the time, had the feeling they could choose what they heard inside the installation, those choices were limited through my mix. I guided the listener through my intimate thoughts, by choosing carefully what moments I would like to raise more awareness of.
Next, I included some voice recordings I made while reading written descriptions of my feelings. These were also recorded with a cellphone but, instead of walking through the streets, I was on my bed, in my room. Spatially, the sound of those recordings weren’t fixed in the studio room, as I worked circularly with the localization of these sound objects. I felt that the circular movement was providing a clearer way of continuing to ‘tell the story, without drawing the visitor’s attention to the technology and equipment.
Installation: ‘This Alienness and Me’
The composition needed to be so that the visitor could choose what and how they wanted to listen. They could also choose to listen to the environment by focusing more on sound quality, colours and movement, and less on spoken words. The idea was that the visitor should be free to make those choices. The audio was played in a loop and the visitor could move inside and outside the room at any time.
“If it is only through the other that we know who we are, then interacting with others is always a presentation and renegotiation of the self…” (Hagood, 2011, p.578)
Conceptually, and following Hagood, the idea was that the visitor would need to reassess themselves over and over, either by interacting with the installation – and, in consequence, being confronted with my voice and my words – or with other visitors inside the installation. Every time they made a decision to move inside the room, stay, leave, or even of changing their awareness from some mode of listening to another, they were responsible for how and to what they listened, as well as for which images of themselves emerged while inside the installation.
Additionally, a dialog between private and public was taking place. On a macro level, the cacophony produced through the superposition of my recordings was inspired by the cacophony present in urban spaces. Depending on the visitors’ interactions (either through movement or shifting auditory awareness), this was slowly intercalated with the private: the intimacy of my personal recordings happening in the microenvironments. Temporally, the composition also slowly changes from the macro-level to the micro, more interiorised level, when the recordings made in the streets stop, and the audio I recorded on my bed start to play. Visually, I decided to include some personal objects in the room: carpets, lights, a cushion. The contrast between my personal objects and the studio room was also contributing to this dialog, by bringing my private world into the university’s studio.
In the installation, the lights are spread out around the carpets and one chair is positioned in the middle of the room, while seven other chairs are positioned in the circle peripherally, facing the chair in the middle. On the chair, the visitors found glasses with a tag that said “Try Me”. Each chair brought the visitor to a particular perspective and a new approach to the environment. The glasses had mirrors that pointed to the floor. If the visitor chose to sit on the chair and put on the glasses, they could see themself seated, while the lights made interesting reflections back to their eyes. If they decided to walk around and/or sit on one the peripheral chairs, then according to their own perception, awareness and movement inside the room, they were able to interact with the space in different ways.
Anzaldúa (1980), facing an imposed silence, calls women to speak up. She speaks up through writing. She is compelled to write, “[b]ecause the writing saves [her] from this complacency [she] fear[s]. Because [she] ha[s] no choice. Because [she] must keep the spirit of [her] revolt and [her]self alive” (pp.168-169).
Facing my feeling of alienation, I also decided to speak up. I spoke, recorded, and turned each narration into a sound object inside the studio room. I layered, organised spatially, and played back all tracks containing my voice. My secret weapon to deal with my issues of disconnection was being upgraded to a new level.
I talked about my feelings on the cellphone while wandering through the streets of Berlin, or while in the comfort of my room. I brought my low-quality intimate recordings to the public through the use of hi-end technology. The mixing possibilities provided by the WFS enabled me to create a sound piece in which my cellphone recordings were reconceptualized into high-quality audio processing. Through this work, I could resignify the noises of my alienation into speech, by juxtaposing discourses and reshaping them into the soundscape of my created environment.
In the end, it was not only about myself. I hope to encourage Sound Girls into using their knowledge to feel empowered and motivated to speak up, reclaim acoustic space and reconceptualize their own notions of self.
References:
Anzaldúa, G., 1980. Speaking in tongues: a letter to third world women writers, in: Moraga, C., Anzaldúa, G. (Eds.), This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. Persephone Press, Watertown, MA, pp. 165–175.
Brandenburg, K., Brix, S., Sporer, T., 2004. Wave Field Synthesis: From research to applications. Presented at the 12th European Signal Processing Conference, IEEE, Ilmenau, Germany.
Hagood, M., 2011. Quiet Comfort: Noise, Otherness, and the Mobile Production of Personal Space. American Quarterly 63, pp. 573–589.
I’ll be developing and presenting these ideas further at the Symposium Sonic Cyberfeminisms in May 2017, in Lincoln, UK.
Mariana Bahia is a sound artist and researcher in digital media and audio technology. She is particularly interested in understanding the sense of self through sound recording and audio reproduction. She likes to explore the intersection between hi-end and low-quality technology, from cellphone recordings to spatial audio. Her work is based on composing sound pieces and installations using superposed voice and self-designed instruments. Mariana is a research assistant in immersive audio in the TiME Lab at the Fraunhofer Heinrich-Hertz-Institut and is finishing her Masters in Sound Studies at the University of the Arts (UDK), Berlin. www.marianabahia.comwww.sifonics.com
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When I was 16, I was hired for my first front-of-house position. In my new role as “person in charge” I quickly began noticing all of the little obstacles that seemed to appear each night. They had been present before, of course, but never so obvious. The way that bands assumed anyone in the room except me was the sound engineer. The flashes of surprise that crossed their faces upon being pointed my way. The way I was talked over, dismissed, or needed repeated requests to get things accomplished when the same request from a male coworker was heeded immediately. The questions I faced about my knowledge of audio sometimes turned into full interrogations. I had known that I would face challenges like these, but the relentlessness was getting to me.
