Musing 3 Soundwalking, SoundingWalk

Measure for a Mayfly

I started making a piece, that became Measure for a Mayfly, while teaching my Sound Studies class at Ontario College of Art and Design in the 1980’s. I took the class on soundwalks around the College, which is in downtown Toronto, and then on a field trip to the Elora Gorge, a wonderful park outside the city with a dynamic river and waterfall.

We walked and listened, and then we separated while using simple calls that had been prepared before the walk. The calls were made on simple blown instruments, like ocarinas, recorder heads, recorders, slide whistles. Some used voice. The instruction was for each person to continue the soundwalk alone, discovering how the sound might change depending on how close or far one was from the river, how a tree might mask sound, how the sounds from the trees, birds, wind mix with the water sounds, breathing, footsteps and other sounds in the forest. The instruction was also for each person to stay connected with the group by using the simple calls: a person could call if they wanted to connect with the others to make sure we were all still in audible range; the others could respond to say, yes we are all still here. A call could also be made from impulse – discovering something particularly interesting, from the joy of it, or to simply announce one’s presence. But the main idea was to explore in silence. After a time, the group was instructed to use the calls to come back together to finish the sounding part, improvising a closing while together, then walking silently back out of the forest together.

I took 3 classes on 3 different trips to the Gorge, each time repeating this soundwalk and sounding walk. Each time, the crows found us, gathering in the high trees above, calling to each other and perhaps to us. The students found syncronicity in the calling between birds and each other, and revelled in the play of calls in this charged environment.

Later, Gordon Monahan and I took a trip there to work on this piece for a presentation at Grange Park in Toronto as part of a New Music Cooperative concert. During that trip, the instructions for the piece became more clear, and a role for dancers was added for the performance.

Recently, during soundwalks at Mount Douglas Park in Victoria, BC, I have been making this piece anew with my daughter, and with others accompanying us on some of the walks. We are planning to make a public walk of it, and offer Measure for a Mayfly for whomever wants to take part.

One of the reasons I like this piece is that the listening of the soundwalk changes after we are participating in the soundscape in this way. Locating each other through sound, in a gentle way, and while not visible to each other, enhances awareness of the sounds in the scape. Near and far become more clear, directional focus of sound becomes more prominent, and the balance between focused listening and peripheral listening is more rich.

When we walk back out after completing the sounding, it seems that we hear even more of the soundscape and we seem to hear more of the richness in relationships between the sounds … noticing bird calls in relation to the sounds of wind, water, snaps and crackles of branches and leaves, faraway traffic, over head planes.

Since my daughter was very young, we used this simple call technique when we were in the forest as a way to be listening, but also be in communication without words.

creek bed at Otukamamoan

Sounding makes listening deeper.

Musing 2 Anything can be interesting

I am listening, more than usual, to recordings of soundscapes, soundscape compositions, sound art … sculpted ‘noise’. There are a lot of recordings to listen to from an intriguing range of compelling minds. More each day, each hour, each minute. I will never hear them all.

While listening just now on myspace to a series of composition excerpts of a sound artist, I thought to myself, ‘anything can be interesting’. Or not. On the one hand, the content of the sound itself … its references, the mood or thoughts it conjures … the microscopic focus on sounds we don’t normally have in focus … On the other hand, the technical skill and aesthetic choices of the artist/recordist: What is the microphone ‘pointed’ at, how is the recording edited, how good are the microphones and recorder … That dance between the sonic event – the listened – and the recording.

I am wondering if listening to sound art and soundscape composition increases my ability to listen to the sounds in my world and my awareness of all the micro and macro sonic elements of the world in general. What I do notice is that this listening has enhanced the scope of my musical improvisations – both alone and in group situations.

I find that there could be a schism in myself between what is commonly perceived as musical gesture and sonic play that has no discernable relation to typical musical gesture. Not that the schism should or should not be there, or is there, but could be there. Increasingly, my playing tends to be more in tune with the sounds I hear that are not typically thought of as musical. Noise, soundscape, soundart … A resemblance, but not mimicry or intention toward replication. After playing, I recognize that the sonic references could be sounds like, say, the coffee grinder, squeaking glass, crickets and frogs, a moose, electricity crackling through the ether, a fog horn, a doppler-ing float plane, my nervous system, water gurgling down the kitchen drain, mice, insects scurrying through dry leaves. Even the musical gesture that can be sometimes present in making these sounds is drifting away toward a different kind of exploration, expression, if it can be called expression. More like a sounding, resounding. Purely sonic and raw, sometimes animistic perhaps, or machinistic – striving toward some kind of glorious full sonic soaring at times, or subtle tiny hints at pre-sound.

I resist melody, beat, harmony in these kinds of playing sessions. When melody, beat, harmony, modality appear, there is a dance between whether they provide a kind of colour or counterpoint to the purely sonic, and are heard in that way, or if they morph the flow into something that begins to frame or structure or develop the flow into a more musical world. That place between these worlds of the raw sonic and the musical is rich and alive. It is best when the delicacy and power of the raw sonic doesn’t disappear.

Listening to anything can be interesting. I like getting pulled into something that is delicious, compelling, other worldly when my listening is deep.

Musing 1

Lately, I have been thinking again almost constantly about listening and what would happen if there were a lot more of it from all of us.

When I listen, whether it is to myself, to my daughter, to others, to sounds in general, to the birds, to trucks, to trees, to the wind … I am a better person and cause less harm. When I am listened to, that is a powerful thing.

Seems so simple.