Altered Sound

Hello, and welcome to Altered Sound. This is your host Lu-Ke-Tan, and thanks for listening. Today is Thursday, Dec. 7th 2006, and the title for today’s episode is ‘City Soundscapes’. What is a soundscape you ask? Well, we’ll get into that in a minute. First though…Altered Sound is brought to you curtesy of PRAradio, a fine example of Portland indymedia, streaming online at praradio.org. Podcasts for praradio are provided by tablesturned.com, and you can pick up a podcast of this episode and previoust episodes of Altered Sound at alteredsound.com. If you are listening to us live and reside in the Portland area, I’ve got a couple tidbits of news for you. First of all, being a first thursday, there’s all sorts of shit going on in inner northwest and the region known to some as ‘the pearl’. There’s some great art at “floating world comics” in their new location on NW 5th and Couch, which is sort of the heart of a new booming art corner, with the Portland Arts Center located right next door, so there is sure to be lots of strange going-ons and free wine and cheeze a plenty. And of course, for those who thought forever had ended…after it’s shut-down run at the now defunct Sylvia’s Dinner Theatre, “Forever Plaid” is back for a holiday themed show, “Forever Plaid Tidings” is running till Dec. 23 at Brunish Hall. They have all sort of different show times and prices, so call them up at 503-224-44hundred to get ticket information.

A soundscape is essentially a landscape, with the focus being on interpreting the environment around you acousticly rather than visualy. I explain this very simply and ignorantly, and acknowledge that soundscape is a loaded, academic, term– jargon even, and there are journals published and international societies focused on further explicating the notion of soundscape (the academic field is most often referred to as Acoustic Ecology). Proponents of Acoustic Ecology are concerned with the fact that we live in an eye culture, that the visual has an incredible dominance over all other senses. That in todays world, one has to learn to hear, or rather to listen. You can fly halfway across the world and have a guide take you on a ’sound walk’ through a particularly interesting acoustic environment. In some ways it is very zen, very meditative. Being a musician myself, and primarily concerned with creating content that is audibly consumed, taking the time to listen intently to the so called silence around you is like learning to hear for the first time. It’s more than just becoming aware of the sounds, one can also hear your acoustic environment as a musical composition of sorts. And that’s an interesting excercise. In nature, it’s easy to find the loops. The frogs, the owls, the whippowill, the crickets. But it’s a little harder to hear in the city, because most of the unique elements of the soundscape have been drowned out with the unrelenting hum of the automobile. Take yourself on a soundwalk down burnside avenue, and you can’t even hear your own footsteps! Imagine if you couldn’t see your feet. This is not to belittle or say that our acoustic environment doesn’t provide us with appropriate material for a musical composition, it’s just that there are certain areas of the composition where the low brass have mutinied against the conductor and decided to play as loud as they possibly can irregardless of the listener’s ability to hear the other instruments. It’s still beautiful, though. I hope you have the headphones on, or are at least using stereo speakers. Listen to this sound sample I caught standing on the corner of NW 22nd and Burnside:
– cue auto sample

Here’s another piece of our acoustic environment, a little different, quiter.
– cue max line sample

I recorded this on the max line. A lot of the sounds of the city are shut out inside the confines of a sparsely occupied max train. But I was lucky enough to catch a group of about 20 6-8 year olds all come on for a stop. Notice the difference in the acoustic environment just having so many more people inside a closed space provides.

For more information on soundscapes, and acoustic ecology, I recommend that you check out the link on alteredsound.com for the world forum for acoustic ecology. Today’s piece contains other soundscapes: I stepped off the streets into the classy pioneer square shopping center for one sample, and I left the recorder in the center of an old haunted house (if there ever could be such a thing). That’s enough talking for today though, this is Lu-Ke-Tan on Altered Sound, brought to you live via praradio.org . Take care, and we’ll talk at you again next week.

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