The Domestic Soundscape

I posted a few months ago about the importance of Good Weekends and so far, that is what today and tomorrow are shaping up to be. Incidentally, the grunting pigs sound which I posted from Mudchute Farm on that post is now up on the UK SoundMap (my new favourite thing!) and The London Sound Survey. I have also been uploading some sounds of Rachael spinning and ball-winding to the UK SoundMap, as I think knitting sounds must be represented! And anyone who cares to browse the map will also see that my favourite road – the A4074 – is also sonically documented by me, in sounds that range from a hoverfly buzzing in Caversham Heath, to the revving of biker engines outside the HCafe. It is very easy to upload via Audioboo, and I’ve been really enjoying listening to other people’s sounds – especially the sounds from remote places, such as the lovely recordings of time and tide bells uploaded by Vergette. If you don’t know about the UK SoundMap, Richard Ranft gave a great interview about it on Radio 4′s TODAY programme, and there is a bit more information here on the Sound:Site blog, as the British Library will be speaking at our festival about the map.

On a very different festival note, the lovely Mark is off at Reading with his boys this weekend. I confess that I do not like the crowds or – bah humbug – the Music at this event. I would brave snow, rain, hailstorms and the worst portaloos in the world for a knitting festival or some amazing sound-related celebration, but loud rock music is something I am mostly keen to avoid. I love small festivals – like the Shillingford and Warborough Festival, or the Oxford Folk Festival… but the big ones really freak me out and belong on a list of things in my head which is titled ‘Things which are meant to be SUPERFUN but are really ACTUALLYQUITESTRESSFUL.’

Although I accompanied Mark to Reading Festival in 2008, I confess I didn’t have a great time there beyond my happy discovery of Santogold and her amazing music. In fact the last ‘big’ festival I really enjoyed attending in Reading was WOMAD in 2006. I couldn’t walk very easily back then, so I hired a scooter for the day and enjoyed speeding around the site with my felt-covered walking stick and indulging in some reckless drunk-scooter-driving (which Mark captured on camera, for posterity.) From memory, it was a happy day of pies, spiced cider, laughter, and painkillers. We cruised the stalls, enjoyed looking at all the shiny-shiny, listened to a few bands, and tried on wigs. The scooter was genius, as people gave me a very wide berth – something that you don’t get when you are walking about, even when you have a walking-stick – and it meant I enjoyed the day relatively pain-free. Although my arthritis doesn’t really affect me in that way anymore, I find that what I love doing in my life remains forever changed by the experience of having been disabled… and maybe this is why the noise and the crowds of Reading Festival have me mooching about indoors for a quiet weekend, this year.

I do, however, enjoy the distant wash of bass and excitement that drifts over here from the site – which is several miles away – in the evenings, when the wind is right. It is a distinctive and regional aspect of the soundscape, and an annual sound event, and this evening I hope to record this sound and place it on the UK SoundMap. (Did I tell you already how this is my new favourite thing?)

Other than making this recording, I am hoping to catch up with friends on the telephone, (really, is there anything better than a good long chat with a girlfriend, plus a bucket of tea and a mindless knitting project?) cast on for the second sock in the pair that I making for Mark, (Rav-link) and reflect on all the things I learned at Knit Camp.

Here is the inside of Mark’s 1st sock, in all it’s woven-strandy glory. Although I agree with what Kate says about leaving long strands in her excellent post on the subject of stranded knitting, when it comes to the fabric of a sock, I find that any strands over 5 sts in length do get tangled in one’s toes, however sticky and woollen your yarn! For this reason, my other colourwork socks have used very short and simple patterns – just one or two stitches before each colour-change – so as to create a warm, snug, dense fabric with no entangling loops lying about.

My first stranded-colour socks

Look at the little strands!

However, because in the case of Mark’s socks I wanted to depict objects which would involve large swathes of one colour or the other, I decided to travel the yarn across the back and weave it in as I went. This creates rather a tweedy look in some areas – a little bit like the effect that the Armenian Knitting Technique creates Elsa Schiaparelli’s Bow Sweater.

The socks depict scenes from along Mark’s Walk 2012 walking route; the route he has been plotting over the past few months, and blogging about, here. Scenes on Sock #1 include: Seagulls, (Weymouth) Durdle Door, The Square and Compass Pub at Worth Matravers, (a truly amazing refuge) and a New Forest Pony.

The real Durdle Door

A bad photo of my dodgy, knitted version!

A real New Forest Pony

My knitted interpretation (which Mark has started calling ‘A Camel.’)

One of the things I learned at Knit Camp involved my depiction of a horse, as this was the subject of energetic debate in the car on the way home from Stirling. Ellen correctly pointed out that my first attempt at charting a design appeared rather wolf-like, and furnished me with a helpful drawing, which led to much travel-sickness inducing scribbling on my part, and the final horse-design, which I hope you will agree is more equine than the first attempt.

This was one of many instances where just informally hanging out with knitters meant that I learned loads and moved something on far more than I could have done on my own. The actual organised *classes* were also good, and I have come away with much information on how to make the perfect Aran, and about how different types of fleece and yarn can be used for creating different things. Consider for a moment the difference between the knitted fabric created by 100% Manx Yarn;

…and a fabric knitted from Castlemilk Moorit yarn, which is blended with a little silk and Alpaca, to soften it:

I hope you can see that in the bottom photo, the Castlemilk Moorit fleece gives greater definition to each of its stitches than the Manx wool? The Manx fleece makes a wonderfully dense, gingery, rich, warm fabric of joy, which makes me feel immediately that the Winter can be kept at bay. I left Knit Camp and Deb Robson’s class on knitting with rarebreed wools lusting for a simple sweater made in this wholesome stuff. However, the Castlemilk Moorit yarn is a little crisper and the mixed-fleece gives a varied, tweedy effect to the yarn, which I think would be perfect for creating an amazing Aran. I ordered 2 balls of Castlemilk Moorit from Blacker Designs, in order to start swatching for an Aran cardigan based on the theme of Sound. Like Liz, I really enjoyed steeking in Jared Flood’s Class at Knit Camp, and I left Flood’s class with all the knowledge I need to confidently swatch for, calculate yardage for, and begin, a big Aran project. For me the golden discovery re: my future Aran was the Castlemilk Moorit Yarn with its special, stitch-popping tweediness, coupled with some empowering maths regarding how to design such a masterpiece.

For the sonic-celebration-Aran, I want to use Popcorn stitch, the superimposed double wave cable, (as it reminds me of soundwaves) maybe the banjo-cable, and one I’ve seen in one of my knitting books, which reminds me of a long string of ears, because of the way the cable widens and narrows up and down its length.

I found the discussion of rare breed sheep at Knit Camp to be very interesting, especially the information about the St Kilda archipelego, and the now very rare Boreray and Soay sheep. There are less than 300 breeding ewes left of the Boreray sheep breed, and they are listed as being critically endangered by the RBST. I have written before about my obsession with the extreme North of the UK and the Hebridean islands that lie just off it but UK Knit Camp 2010 made me want – even more than before – to learn more about these places where our rarest and most endangered sheep breeds come from, and the knitting traditions therein. Deb Robson is right when she says that we have the power – as knitters – to keep the rare breeds alive, and so I spent the majority of my yarn allowance at UK Knit Camp on wool from rare breed sheep. The North Ronaldsay sheep is on the endangered list of sheep breeds; I couldn’t buy any Boreray yarn, as there was none for sale, but I did buy some natural-coloured North Ronaldsay and some hand-dyed North Ronaldsay – both from Liz Lovick’s Northern Lace stand.

Liz gave me a pattern for the ‘Cat’s Paw Scarf,’ which I might make from that second skein of dyed yarn, because I really liked Lovick’s notes in the pattern about the history of the pattern. It is apparently a traditional Shetland pattern, a lacy thing with a short repeat that is easy to remember, which can easily be picked up and worked on in between other jobs, and which is thus worked in order to be sold at the end.

I also purchased this fine hand-spun/plant-dyed yarn from Elizabeth Johnson, and I am reminded by the colour of the sea and also of the amazing recording in the British Library Archives from Harris and Lewis. This can’t be accessed without an Athens log-in unfortunately, but it is one of my favourite regional recordings of all time, especially for the section where a sheep is being sheared using old clippers, and the shearer is talking about the condition of the Rams that year.

Yarn – like sound – is for me a material that is deeply linked to ideas about places and regions. As I scour the Internet for knowledge about different sheep-breeds, I am also searching for sounds that come from the regions where those breeds are from. Somehow it helps me to plot and plan what I will knit, to picture in greater detail the places I want to visit, and to envisage terrains, ways of living, and flora/fauna that surround different knitting and sheep-keeping traditions.

Here are some sounds I have found around, which remind me either of places I’ve been to, or places I want to go to, and all the knitting projects in between.

I hope you too are enjoying some good sounds and some good yarns, this weekend.

Waves at Chesil Beach on Joe Steven’s site: – reminds me of Mark and of Weymouth, and of the Portland sheep breed

St Kilda Cultural Traditions: – webpage has embedded sound (quite high, quite loud, turn your speakers down!) reminds me of Boreray and Soay Sheep

This was going to be an amazing post highlighting my upcoming radio show for this Monday, on BBC Oxford… but unfortunately, the BBC are not, afterall, going to be playing my show out on that date.

In one sense this is discouraging; I have worked very hard on ‘Around the A4074′ throughout this whole summer, including a ridiculous amount of editing in the past week, and I have had it in my mind for months that 30th August is the broadcasting date for the programme. I hope that the many people I gave that date to will not be disappointed to find that the show is not going to be playing out then. However in another sense, I am quite excited, because the BBC have said some good things about the show, and the idea is that the project will be broadcast, but that it needs some BBC polish/finesse first.

The feedback was largely positive; apparently the atmosphere and energy and pace in the second hour of the show are great; the audio is good, and in general, it holds together very well. But the first half is comparitively a little lacklustre, and the producer isn’t sure that folks would stay to listen to the second half. The plan is for me to meet with the BBC and talk about how to improve/develop the show from here on in, and the guy I spoke to reckons the show is mostly done – about two thirds of the way towards being a great radio show. Rathing than rushing it to air for this Monday with little promotion and missing a few of the bells and whistles they think need adding in, they would like to work it up to be as good as it possibly can be… which I really understand. I feel that the way things are, ‘Around the A4074′ is going to be made more accessible and get a wider listenership than it may otherwise have done. Plus I will learn huge amounts about how the BBC works, and about how to make some of my more radical ideas available to a broader audience. I am especially happy that they like the concept, and find it worth working on.

Mostly I am very excited at the thought of getting some professional help with making my stuff BBC-friendly, and encouraged by hearing from a BBC radio producer that the concept (and much of the audio) for the show is ‘brilliant,’ but I can’t help feeling a little bit sad that my show wasn’t so great that they decided to instantly air it. I have never made a 2-hour show for mainstream local radio before, so maybe it was ambitious to think I could ace it first time. But I secretly hoped in my heart that I would, and I just have to hang onto the idea that I will learn more this way, and that this – and the show being the absolute best that it can be – are what I should focus on, rather than feeling like I have failed.

Podcasts and suchlike will all have to wait until after the BBC show is done and aired, but I will keep this blog updated with the progress of the project.

A not-very-useful-anymore Road Atlas.

Liz and Ellen were both amused when I texted them to enquire whether either of them possessed a Road Atlas ‘since I made a collage out of mine.’ I think Ellen thought I was joking until she pulled mine out of the passenger door on the way to Stirling, opened the Oxfordshire pages, and found the shredded doily that was once the relevant pages.

Shredded doily.

Although everything from Newcastle Northwards remains intact in my Atlas, we needed some help with the tricky M6 stretches of the route. Luckily, we had a combination of Liz’s printed out googlemaps instructions and Ellen’s clever iPhone for navigating our way to Stirling for Knit Camp, but I am happy to be able to now announce what exactly I had been up to, with my Atlas!

sound:site speakers!

The destruction was part of my quest to create visuals for the forthcoming sound:site event that I am co-organising with Paul Whitty and Martin Franklin for this October, at South Hill Park’s Digital Media Centre. I wanted to create a simple image that would unambiguously combine ideas of sounds with places. In a very literal fashion, I dismantled and recovered my beloved cardboard MUJI flatpack speakers with pages from my road atlas.

Map speakers.

Martin has written a post about the SHP brochures which mentions the map speaker images, as well as a great photo of Jonathon Coleclough taken by Greg C and sourced through the wonderment that is Flickr.

You can read about my ideas for sound:site here, but if you need a paper map to find the way to the venue where it is going to be held, I’m afraid I can’t help; You’d best stick to googlemaps or an Atlas that doesn’t belong to me and my scissors.

Yesterday I received a most pleasing packet in the post; this one came from smallPRINT records and contained an order I placed last week in the midst of working on The Sonic Tuck Shop book; apropos, a hand-packaged CD featuring the Sonic Catering Band’s live popcorn-performance in Linz, entitled Popkorn.

I am very much enjoying listening to Popkorn. My main experience so far involves trying to identify how the sounds have been extricated from the process of making popcorn for this performance, and how the exploding kernels and whirring motor of an electronic popcorn-maker have been transmuted into something that is such a musical experience. Additionally I have been feeling a great sense of kinship with the aims and ideas of the band. I am especially delighted by the fact that, when working out how to package this lovely bit of ear candy, they decided to include actual popcorn kernels.

This is in many ways a sort of dream-record for me; it has sounds, it has popcorn, it has culinary references, its packaging features actual popcorn packaging, and it sounds amazing. The outrageous thing is that I didn’t know a thing about it until about a week ago! I learned about Sonic Catering very recently, when I met with Telling The Bees to record a track of theirs – The Language of Birds - in a field near Sandford, for inclusion in The A4074 radio show. It turns out that Colin Fletcher – who plays guitar in the band – is one of the founding members of Sonic Catering.

I don’t know how it came up, but in between avoiding the curious cows in the field and trying to get a good level of all the instruments in the field we somehow started to talk about the sounds of food. It was such a coincidence that we immediately organised to do an interview and no sooner had I penned the piece, than it was being formatted and typed up for inclusion in The Sonic Tuck Shop book. I really enjoyed talking to Peter Strickland and Colin Fletcher about their approach to working with the sounds of food, and especially learning about their labour-of-love release; ‘The First Supper.’ This was a box-set consisting of 5 ‘courses,’ each one a coloured vinyl record, containing a composition derived from the sounds of preparing the recipe detailed on its corresponding sleeve. All 5 courses were housed together, in a hand-stencilled pizza box.

This red record I believe is the second course of ‘The First Supper,’ a soup course, described thus:

The First Supper: Edition 2 (Soup)
‘The Sonic Catering Band … report from an Alimentary Zone’
tracks: 1) Peristaltic 2) Nootka-tone Ensemble
10″ vinyl in an edition of 500, (250 red vinyl, 250 plain)
recipe: Borsch Soup
released: October 1999 (Peripheral Conserve pH-02)

Strickland and Fletcher were a bit disappointed at the scuffing on the packaging that they showed me, but I love the way these vinyl releases have taken on the patina of age and the indefineable record-ness of them. All my favourite old records have scuffed like this and it seems to be part of the material life of a record sleeve… to scuff and fade a little bit. I love all the food/music similes they came up with the release. The vinyl records are like dishes, the playing instructions are phrased like cooking instructions, and so on.

The release cost the band about £5,000 to produce… a sum of money I am not sure they ever recovered through producing something so niche, on such a small scalle. There is a painful dichotomy inherent in working with the idea of industrial packaging; often in my own practise I will decide that the work must look like cheap, throwaway packaging, but not being a corporation or a company and not being able to order in the thousands like a big company means ordering instead on a smallscale. And on a small scale, industrial-looking packaging is often very costly to produce. In my experience, because of its industrial appearance, such work is rarely valued highly at the time of its production. But in later years when it is univerally understood to be ART, its value increases massively – often to the gain of third parties, and rarely to the advantage of the artists who made the work. For instance I searched online for a copy of The First Supper and found that only one copy can be tracked down online – at the costly price of around £75. I am sure that Sonic Catering never got £75 for a copy of the release when they made it!

In my own work with popcorn I have done nothing to change the actual sounds of making popcorn; only the way that we view or think about them. Here, for instance, lie packets of Sonic Popcorn in the window of The Sonic Tuck Shop installation. They are packaged with the following instructions:

SONIC POPCORN: Instructions
Pour enough oil into a pan to coat enclosed corn. Add corn to pan. Put lid on pan. Apply MEDIUM heat. Shake the pan once while keeping the lid on. As the corn pops, listen to the explosions and sizzles! When these sound quieten down, turn the heat off. Remove the pan lid. Add salt or sugar to taste. ENJOY YOUR SONIC POPCORN

For myself, I really like the idea of working with sounds just as they are, and changing our relationship to those sounds… and for this reason I have not done a lot of manipulating sounds in a musical way. I like keeping sounds firmly connected to their sources and the material world, highlighting their role there in the soundscape around us, and using paper, packaging and other real objects to ‘frame’ them there. However, I appreciate that another way of framing everyday sounds involves extending the sonic potential of everyday instances and objects, and reforming them as music, and Sonic Catering’s Popkorn is a brilliant example of the effectiveness of such an approach. Popkorn evidences the same tight organisation of sonic events and considered sense of structure that one would expect to find in a conventional Sonata or a Concerto. The difference here is that the sounds being organised are made by a popcorn machine popping popcorn, and not by – for instance – a flute. When I play my flute, I blow across the hole at the top of the instrument and this excites the air molecules inside. As the air in the resonant chamber of the flute is excited, it produces a sound, which I am able to mediate through changing the length of the chamber and by adjusting the force with which air vibrates inside the instrument. Making the resonant chamber longer or shorter produces a change in pitch – producing lower and higher sounds respectively – and blowing with greater or lesser intensity produces an increase or reduction in the volume of the sound. In addition to these aspects of playing the flute, changes in my breathing and mouth-shape can also moderate the sound, and I am therefore able to manipulate consciously the sounds that are produced from the instrument when I play it. Many folks have, over the years, written documents which detail how high or low the sound I produce from my flute ought to be, at what intensity I should be blowing when I produce a higher or lower sound, and what texture or feeling I should imprint upon the resulting sonic output. This process of organising sounds is part of the realm of human activity that we have come to entitle Music. When I listen to Popkorn by Sonic Catering, I am reminded of this collective, cultural endeavour of Music. For in this performance, Sonic Catering have an instrument for producing sounds; a popcorn maker. As popcorn is poured into the chamber inside this device, and as electricity is supplied to it, it produces a sound which can be mediated through a series of electronic attachments. Amplifying the sound of the electronic motor via the use of a telephone pick-up results in a sound whose pitch and volume may be adjusted through means of electronic manipulation or – less prosaically – a mixing desk. Other sounds produced by the instrument may also be mediated in this fashion, and therefore the performers are able to consciously manipulate the sounds that are produced by the instrument according to pitch, tempo, volume, and so on. Everything about the release is therefore traditionally musical except the source sound. Because whilst most of us consider something like the flute to be a specifically musical device, we do not always think of appliance like popcorn-makers in such terms. But perhaps it would be more fun if we did?

Popkorn, The Sonic Catering Band

The Sonic Tuck Shop believes that food sounds tasty, that we should play with it, and that the everyday routines of cooking and eating are full of sonic interest. The Sonic Tuck Shop reframes every meal as a potential concert of sounds in its making and consumption, and every foodstuff as an instrument in the orchestra of life. The Sonic Tuck Shop enhances the essential everyday act of eating by applying a sense of specialness to it. The central idea of The Sonic Tuck Shop is that ALL FOOD is a potential feast for the ears as well as for the belly and that we should start a trend in EAR CANDY.

- excerpt, The Sonic Tuck Shop Manifesto

This is a plate that my friend Stav got me for my birthday. It has a design which looks like embroidery, and the words say ‘no matter where I serve my guests, it seems they like my kitchen best.’ I love this plate, as it reminds me of how I favour entertaining people in my kitchen, and of all the happy cooking sounds that attend those informal, social gatherings. The thought of someone visiting and there being no bubbling, droning, sizzling, boiling, pouring or draining sounds to accompany our friendly chatter is unthinkable to me,and the words on the plate succinctly state that sociable warmth which I associate so unequivocally with food and the sharing and making of it. I have used the plate almost daily since Stav gave it to me, and I have noticed that its surface has a particular quality which means that cutlery scrapes on it in a certain way. I wrote about this sound in detail in the SOUNDBANK in July and I have enjoyed eating off the plate and experiencing its distinctive materiality ever since. It looks like my plate, it feels like my plate, and perhaps most of all in the context of this post, it sounds like my plate.

Now it may seem a small thing to introduce a new plate into the selection of items from which one eats, but every new object that comes into the kitchen brings with it new sounds and these all add up to form the collective sonic wash that backdrops my life. The sounds of such things as the scraping of a spoon in a dish or the specific resonance of an often-used steel saucepan clanging on the hob are the incidental nothings which deeply and intimately shape the daily soundscape that I inhabit. They are tiny and seem inconsequential when considered in isolation; but when all the parts are added together, they form an intricate, unique and detailed aural accompaniment to life. This forms my domestic soundscape, and it is the sonic information that tells me I am home. I know what my pans sound like, I know what noise I am listening out for when I push the toaster button down. I know it is Summer now because I cannot hear the faithful roaring of the gas boiler. I am intimately familiar with the ring of my specific cutlery drawer when I open it to select an implement, and I know what sounds indicate that I must attend to the clogging waterpipe under the sink in the kitchen. When I stay in my bedsit, I know what time it is according to the volume of traffic on the main road outside the building, and when I stay at Mark’s house I know what season it is by the species of birds who sing in the garden. I have noticed that when I stay in a strange place, the unfamiliar smells and sounds are far more unsettling than the different view, and – conversely – the familiar smells and sounds of my home spaces are what give me the cherished sensation of feeling like I am in my familiar habitat. And the specific, impossible-to-replicate qualities of your domestic soundscape will have a similar effect for you. I bet you have in your home somewhere some curtains that sound a certain way – which swish to indicate the end or the start of the day – or a cat whose comings and goings through a noisy cat-flap punctuate the hours. Perhaps you have a wonky drawer in the kitchen which makes a distinctive and familiar sound as you heft it in and out to utilise its contents? Those sounds, those sounds in your house and in mine, are what Georges Perec would have dubbed the ‘infra-ordinary‘ sonic content of our lives; the stuff that is habitual, the stuff that we are habituated (and therefore insensible) to. In his essay – the infra-ordinary – Perec rightly states that ‘the daily newspapers talk of everything except the daily,’ and he implores us to investigate the spaces and situations immediately to hand and to question our teaspoons*.

How should we take account of, question, describe what happens every day and recurs everyday: the banal, the quotidian, the obvious, the common, the ordinary, the infra-ordinary, the background noise, the habitual?

To question the habitual. But that’s just it, we’re habituated to it. We don’t question it, it doesn’t question us, it doesn’t seem to pose a problem, we live it without thinking, as if it carried within it neither question nor answers, as if it weren’t the bearer of any information. This is not longer even conditioning, it’s anaesthesia. We sleep through our lives in a dreamless sleep. But where is our life? Where is our body? Where is our space?

How are we to speak of these ‘common things’, how to track them down rather, how to flush them out, wrest them from the dross in which they remain mired, how to give them a meaning, a tongue, to let them, finally, speak of what is, of what we are.

What’s needed perhaps is finally to found our own anthropology, one that will speak about us, will look in ourselves for what for so long we’ve been pillaging from others. Not the exotic anymore, but the endotic.

What we need to question is bricks, concrete, glass, our table manners, our utensils, our tools, the way we spend our time, our rhythms. To question that which seems to have ceased forever to astonish us. We live, true, we breathe, true; we walk, we open doors, we go down staircases, we sit at a table in order to eat, we lie down on a bed in order to sleep. How? Why? Where? When? Why?

Describe your street. Describe another street. Compare.

Make an inventory of you pockets, of your bag. Ask yourself about the provenance, the use, what will become of each of the objects you take out.

Question your tea spoons.

- Georges Perece, The Infra-Ordinary

Imagine in your mind if you will – just for a second – the sound of whatever you ate for breakfast this morning. I bet you can remember whether or not you had the radio on, whether the washing machine was making its clunking slooshes, (if you can hear the washing-machine from where you eat) what the ambience of the room was, (do you have carpets or bare floorboards?) and what culinary sounds punctuated the experience… (toast popping? an egg frying? keys flying into the depths of a bag as you skipped breakfast?) …if you have never thought about it before, then it is probably a surprise to you to realise the detail with which you can recall that soundscape if you try to draw it into your mind. But this is the soundtrack that gave your morning its distinctive sense of familiarity, and your ears have heard it so well that they can recall it like the way your cells can tell you when the season is starting to turn.

A perceived collective disinterest in sounds is generally bemoaned amongst folks with an interest in sound. But I think that po-facedly lamenting a lack of sonic awareness re: the architecture of domestic space, the acoustically cacophonous design of cities, or the insufficient attention assumed to be given to designing the sound of domestic appliances, are disempowering and unimaginative responses to the problem. In talking to people about sounds over the past 3 years, I have realised that most people – when asked – actually have very detailed knowledge of their daily soundscapes. The difficulty is that there are very few situations where it is socially acceptable to discuss or consider this detailed knowledge that we have, because – like everything that is not untoward and extraordinary -  everyday sounds seem to be unworthy of the kind of attention we bring to, say, The Opera. But what would happen if we decided that all everyday sounds were potentially special and worthy of that attention? And if the everyday soundscapes that we generally experience as unconscious drudge could become playgrounds for the imagination? What would happen if we did all indeed question our teaspoons?

These were some of the questions in my mind when I started playing with the idea of The Sonic Tuck Shop, and for me the main strategy has been to find ways of reframing what is ‘banal’ and ‘boring’ through forms which make them somehow special.

John Cage is a big inspiration for the project since he set the precedent for this kind of work when he used the ‘extraordinary’ circumstances of the concert situation to present utterly ‘ordinary’ ambient sounds to an audience during his most famous work – 4″33 - in 1952. The score for this piece specifically instructs the performer not to play their instrument during the entire duration of the piece; therefore sounds heard during the performance are comprised entirely of random environmental noises. The piece works because people bring certain expectations to the concert situation, which result in the kind of attentive listening which would be difficult to effect in another setting. Because people are listening to normal sounds in a heightened, extraordinary context, those infra-ordinary sounds to which we are normally habituated are framed in a way that makes them sound different. Nearly all of the sound projects which attempt to revise our relationship to everyday sounds use a related approach; one such theme involves performing ‘normal’ everyday tasks (such as cooking) in the ‘extraordinary’ context of the concert or the gig. Indeed one of the features in The Sonic Tuck Shop book is an interview I did last week with Sonic Catering who – when describing their gigs – said that ‘people would come to a venue to see a gig and we would have a pre-prepared menu of what we were going to cook. Among the favourites were pancakes, (which the audience always got to eat) milkshakes, and stirfried vegetables. Popcorn was always a very popular menu item at our gigs, too.’ I particularly liked what Sonic Catering had to say about the real sounds of cooking:

It seemed interesting to take something that most people in the Western World hear all the time, and just take for granted, and to put a microscope over it and amplify it, and to just explore those sounds…Our aesthetic was very much ‘we’re not going to bang a pan specifically to make the sound of it; we’ll cook the dish and whatever sounds come from actually really cooking the dish, are the sounds that we’ll use.’’

- Peter Strickland & Colin Fletcher on Sonic Catering

Cathy Lane and Matthew Herbert have also produced audio works which use the sounds of food-preparation as their main inspiration, again with different but related approaches. Herbert’s album – Plat du Jour – very much transforms source sounds taken from cooking situations (many more industrial than domestic) so that they sound more conventionally like music. The sounds themselves are made extraordinary, so that in the end what we have is essentially an extraordinary dance album which was derived from ‘ordinary’ sounds. And Cathy Lane takes yet another approach in The Pickle Jar is her home;

This composition is an multi-faceted exploration of food as a material, a commodity and as a sounding substance. It also aims to explore the many  relationships between food and sound from their basic ephemerality to the links and metaphors that tie them as materials to be processed and transformed – from ideas of “mixing”, “chopping”, “cutting” and “blending”.  Mixed, cut and blended together in this ‘ear-piece’ are sound recordings, from both the UK and India, of  food being prepared and cooked, of the places where food is grown and sold, of people and companies selling food and food products and of people talking about food that reminds them of home and childhood and foods that they like to cook and how to prepare them.

- The Pickle Jar is her home, quoted from the modisti site

So there is a long legacy of people exploring the sounds of cooking and our imaginative relationship with the domestic soundscape, and The Sonic Tuck Shop is my new version of this old idea. I love the grace with which John Cage talks about sounds in this video, and I am not altogether sure he would approve of the deliberately OTT styling of The Sonic Tuck Shop, but we are agreed that listening is no more than just listening and I like to think that he enjoyed the distinctive sound of his plate whenever he ate his beloved wild mushrooms from it.

*Georges Perec is my favourite philosopher.

On Friday I put the finishing touches on the first 21 editions (of 40) of The Sonic Tuck Shop book. On Saturday, I packed them all into a suitcase along with some other hand-made goodies and made my way to Seven Sisters for the SoundFjord gallery launch, which was taking place in Unit 3b, Studio 28, 28 Lawrence Road. I was very happy to showcase The Sonic Tuck Shop there as part of the launch, and even happier to meet up with many people who – so far – I’ve only known online. Many people involved in the Tapespondence project were there and I was reminded that I need to get that tape back up and out into the world again as everyone who contributed to the original tape had good things to say about it.* I had a great time talking to Adam Asnan, Simon Whetham**, Joseph Young and Martin Clarke, and it was also brilliant to see Martin and Lucia again, who collaborated on the Sonic Wallpaper feature in the ROOMS & CHAMBERS episode of The Domestic Soundscape Cut and Splice Podcast series. I particularly enjoyed their mimosa | moize performance at the SoundFjord launch. They used a lot of soft and delicate sonic textures and mixed them in a very sensitive way; it was like a sound-collage made from electric feathers and a trace of it has stayed with me, like a temporary transfer tattoo; all filmy and light and detailed.

I also found the configuration of their performance oddly compelling. Normally I dislike the spectacle of someone twiddling about on a laptop as a performance format, but there was something very engaging about the way these two sat opposite each other, weaving a mix together through their computers. During their performance they were very still, both staring intently ahead into their screens and making only the slightest of movements with the mousepads to generate this very subtle, shared soundscape. The way they sat and communicated through all those electronic circuits reminded me of our very human use of computers and how many connections we make across cyberspace through this interface. In their hands the laptop becomes a delicate instrument, a thing we use for talking to each other in many languages. Sometimes even a language of sweepy, electronic shufflings. I really liked it. Here they are, setting up. I was too transfixed during the performance to photograph it.

There were 2 other performances throughout the afternoon and in between listening to these, I spent a lot of time explaining to people what The Sonic Tuck Shop book is all about. One of the main reasons for making this book – and embarking on the whole Sonic Tuck Shop endeavour -  is that I wanted a way of working with everyday sounds beyond recording them or delivering an electronic, amplified performance featuring recordings. I love working in these ways, but I am also interested in developing forms which can direct listening and change our imaginative relationship with sounds as they naturally occur in the world around us. I also wanted to find forms for celebrating everyday sounds which could be used beyond gallery spaces… such as in the context of shopping at the supermarket, or preparing a meal. Given that this was a Sound Gallery Launch, I think people were a little bit by this unexpected approach to exploring the soundscape. Even experimental areas of artmaking have conventions, and I think my paper and object based approach was bemusing to people who had come along expecting mostly to hear a lot of live, electronic sound-manipulation and to maybe see some CDs for sale. Ididn’t sell any copies of my book, but the complimentary items that I was giving away in celebration of both the book launch and the gallery launch were enthusiastically received by those who got into the idea of The Sonic Tuck Shop.

I felt SoundFjord were especially supportive of the whole concept of The Sonic Tuck Shop and I really enjoyed having the opportunity to be part of the launch of this exciting new venture by Helen Frosi and Andrew Riley. It is really great that a gallery space dedicated to sound is opening in London. According to the SoundFjord website;

SoundFjord is here, not only to showcase and to document new trends in methodology and research, but also to insist on the creation of works that not only stimulate the concerned listener in a novel and inventive way, but similarly, in a refined, deft and probing manner

As part of the gallery’s progressive and universally receptive stance on the essence of what sound art is and can be, SoundFjord seeks to nurture and develop artists whose work shows its own vision, but equally questions itself and the world around it. Indeed, the gallery wishes to be seen as a place to highlight what is challenging in the sound art world

SoundFjord presents itself as a hub for research and networking events, as an occasional venue for live performance within the field of experimental music and sound art performance, as host to lectures, workshops, talks and critiques in and around sound art practice and the art world in its entirety, and also as a collaborative force, motivated to work with other inspired individuals, collectives, galleries, venues, recording labels, institutions and foundations to assist with the materialisation of creative ventures, projects and events

If Saturday’s launch was anything to go by, then we can look forward to much more experimentation and sonic delectation emanating from Lawrence Road. I really enjoyed seeing and being in the space, being able to put so many faces to names and sounds, and to present The Sonic Tuck Shop in another context.

I gave away quite a few sonic hangover cures and letter-press-print-wrapped-apples were a big hit once people understood what they were. I letter-press printed some white tissue paper with the word CRUNCH in several typefaces, at different sizes. The idea was inspired by those wrappers that are sometimes used on apples or oranges and I wanted to visually/linguistically draw attention to both the sound of biting an apple, and the sonic qualities of tissue paper itself. I thoroughly enjoyed unwrapping the apples repeatedly to demonstrate this idea to Sonic Tuck Shop visitors and many people seemed to enjoy the spectacle of the unwrapped print. However one person wanted to take the apple only and leave the wrapper behind… no matter, as another Sonic Tuck enthusiast was very happy to take it in his place!

I love these wrappers in all their physicality; I love the shiny green ink, the meta-data aspect of them, the way they do actually CRUNCH as paper objects, and the fact that they have dual imaginative/practical dimensions. However I am not certain yet that I have found the correct way of displaying them and – like so many of my ideas – they raise further questions of context and audience for me to puzzle out in my thesis.

I also distributed a fair few Sonic Tuck Shop shopping lists, (to help you to select your foodstuffs according to their sonic qualities) and a whole load of ‘Genuine Installation Pieces’ packs. I was sad when I took down The Sonic Tuck Shop installation in Reading on Tuesdayand I decided it should be parcelled out as small packs that people could use to create Sonic Tuck Shop installations in their own homes, should they wish to.

Each pack contains a postcard with an image of the installation in situ and a load of handprinted items from the actual installation itself. I like the idea that people can go away and pin this on a noteboard somewhere, or maybe stick a giant, fluorescent POP on their toaster. At the very least, the idea of emblazoning sound-effects on one’s kitchen is hopefully both fun and accessible.

I also hope that people will go away with The Sonic Tuck Shop shopping list and start mischieviously buying food according to the way it sounds; I also hope that people who read The Sonic Tuck Shop book will find themselves at the market inspecting the cabbages, and then hear a particularly squeaky one and remember the earnest instruction to select one’s cabbages based solely on their squeaking powers; And I hope that at least one person with a hangover will take a little humourous comfort from the noise of their dissolving Alka-Seltzer, which I hand-packed with instructions to ‘allow the sound of this tablet fizzing to gently soothe away your hangover.’

It is always difficult to tell how good my work really is when I am at a gallery, presenting it to the public, attempting to explain myself, and trying to gauge whether people think it is amazing or pure shite. But I feel it is important to keep making my work anyway, to keep putting it out there, to keep earnestly hammering my ideas into shape, and to constantly review the gap between what I think the work is about and the way that people respond to it. That is why today I ventured forth again with my Sonic Tuck Shop – this time to the Oakford Social Club’s Sunday Art Market – to present the concept in a different context.

One person was rather intrigued by the Sonic Tuck Shop shopping list and took a copy  away with him; Martin also seemed happy with the copy of the book plus ‘Genuine Installation Pieces’ pack that I gave him in thanks for all the help he gave me during the installation in the shop window back in June, and several people commented favourably on how they remembered the shop-window installation, and how it had brightened their walk in that part of the town. One person even sounded sad that it has now been taken down. I am not glad to have been instrumental in creating any sadness in this town, but it is encouraging to learn that The Sonic Tuck Shop installation will be missed!

Postcard featuring now finished Sonic Tuck Shop window installation in Reading, Summer 2010.

However, my favourite Sonic Tuck Shop anecdote so far involves my chemist and an exchange we had on Friday when I went in and asked him for his biggest box of Alka Seltzers;

‘Do you have a big weekend planned?’ he enquired, to which I replied ‘well actually, no… it’s for an art project. I’m doing a thing all about the sounds of different edible/ingestible items and I especially like the fizzy noise that Alka-Seltzers make when you dissolve them in water. I’m going to repackage them to draw attention to this aspect of them.’

My chemist laughed at this and apologised for having assumed me to be a wild drunkard.

In that instance at least I feel my intentions for The Sonic Tuck Shop reached another person in fun, mischief, celebration, and playfulness… which hopefully means that I am getting somewhere with this idea.

*Incidentally, I recently found this article – The Paris Tape Run – which details a spin-off project that was inspired by the Tapespondence!

**Simon Whetham is one of the artists who is going to perform at the Sound:Site conference I am currently working on with Martin Franklin, at South Hill Park, and you can hear us both talking in this episode of the Genepool podcast about that forthcoming event and about our work!

I’m clearing out my camera and finding evidence and reminders of all the things I’ve done so far this July in my explorations of The A4074. Firstly, I’ve been trying to discover what plant this is. It grows all along the verges beside the road for miles around Ipsden, and it looks to me like it may belong to the mallow family? In this photo it look more lilac than blue, but on a clear sunny day it is a bright, periwinkle shade. So far the closest match for my photo seems to be Chicory; does anyone know if this is a relation to the kind of Chicory we put in salads, or have an opinion on whether or not I have correctly identified this plant?

In other news around the A4074, there was a splendid BBQ had by myself and my good friend Stav last Friday. We purchased sausages, salad leaves and cheese from local Blue Tin Farm (TASTY!) and cooked the sausages in a layby, as a sort of homage to the old burger/bacon/sausage wagon that used to operate here. Stav made use of some dumped furniture to assemble a fine table and we feasted at it, just a few metres from the road.

Earlier on Friday morning, I recorded an amazing performance of music from one of my favourite local bands – Telling the Bees – in a field in Sandford, near the A4074.

This music was performed before a live audience of cows, who took a great interest in our doings!

There was also the Soundwalk on 18th July for World Listening Day, around the A4074. In truth, this turned out to be a rather more solemn affair than I was hoping it would be. I had terrible anxiety dreams the night before and was too nervous and shaken by 8am on the Sunday morning to bring my customary playfulness to the event. I feel I learned a lot and got some amazing recordings of very subtle sounds… and it was amazing to listen in the stillness of the morning with Liz and Jonathon. But the fun of the lovingly-printed stationery and the concept of the Soundwalk didn’t – at least in my mind – translate into a public event of dazzling joy.

I guess three hours is a long time to walk with other people without speaking. I love the bleak soundscapes around the A4074 and because I walk there regularly alone and in my own silence, I am accustomed to listening for long stretches of time to the sound of wind rustling through leaves and grasses. But as Liz pointed out, this is quite a hardcore introduction for people who are not already dedicated ‘listeners,’ and the event could be made more welcoming with meeting points and discussions, chats about the soundscape and so on. So there are things to learn from the Soundwalk, but it was a most informative adventure – from thinking up the concept, to printing the stationery, to actually doing the walk – but I was very glad to have company and feedback on the idea and I am comforted by knowing that I learn more when things don’t work out as I had planned, than when they do.

There is Jonathon, listening.

In terms of the Warborough and Shillingford festival, it was difficult to entice the locals away from the festivities and out into the surrounding landscapes on Sunday morning as there were some very diverting (and FUN!) things to see in Warborough – such as the camel races which took place on Warborough Green during the Saturday. Just look at those eyelashes! I loved the festival; it is a wonderful local production, and I met some amazing people there whose voices will all be heard on the forthcoming radio show.

So around the A4074 this month we have had wildflower identification, camel-racing, layby-BBQs, local sausage appreciation, soundwalking, and MUSIC! This week I will be mostly working out how to turn these – and other – adventures into a 2 hour radio show to air on BBC Oxford, on 31st August.

On Monday I went to a most instructive workshop led by Chris Watson.

The workshop was organised by Sound and Music and was held at Kew Gardens where an extraordinary work by Watson entitled ‘Whispering in the Leaves‘ can currently be heard in the Palm House. The work was made through making recordings in various rainforests and then collating these into a layered composition to be played back through 90 waterproof loudspeakers concealed throughout the Palm House. As with the experience of listening in a real rainforest, sounds rustle out from within the lacy mesh of entwined leaves, and the supporting pillars of the Palm House behave acoustically like the trunks of trees, so that sounds resonate within the corridor-like space rather as they may in a real rainforest. The speakers also disperse the sounds at different levels so that when you walk up the stairs you begin to hear the kinds of sounds that could be heard at higher levels within leafy canopies, and the humid, soupy air is – according to Watson – an excellent substitute for the atmospheric conditions within actual rainforests, so that sound travels through this medium as they do in their original locations.

There are in fact two compositions by Watson which play in the Palm House like this; one is based around the dawn chorus, and one is based around the sunset. In each of these compositions, several hours’ worth of sonic activity have been condensed into compositions of around 15 minutes. And rather like the collection of plants housed in the Palm House, this representation has been collected from many different rainforest locations, rather than from one rainforest in particular.

Here is Chris, pointing out the arrangement of the speakers and answering all our questions about the work. I was interested to learn about how he had rationalised or organised the compositions, and the role that listening itself had played in informing his decisions. Sounds occur sequentially, though in a compressed time-frame. Apparently there are many hours at both dawn and dusk where all one hears is the sustained waiting pulse of the trees, and so some moments in Watson’s arrangements remain briefly static, before loud sonic interest re-enters the soundscape.

It is a beautiful piece of work; a true homage to a place through listening, thinking, recording and making, and I was especially excited to be able to learn about how something like this is made.

Watson explained very well how our ears differ from microphones, and how – as a sound recordist – one must compensate for this and learn how to recreate natural listening through various recording approaches. He talked about our ears’ inherent ability to pick out distinctive sounds from the soundscape, and reflected on the comparitively unselective powers of microphones. To illustrate this, it’s interesting to think about how – even in the most incredibly noisy nightclub environment you can imagine – it is still possible to home in on the specific voice of a dancing/drinking companion with one’s own ears, yet there are very few microphones with the capabilities to do the same job of focussing. Watson described in very helpful and accessible terms, how we are always aware of the sounds around us, and possess an uncanny ability to listen selectively and pluck from the soundscape the distinctive elements in which we are particularly interested. As a sound-recordist who wants to recreate an approximation of this natural listening experience, it seems necessary then to record in layers which roughly represent 1. background ambience, (ATMOSPHERE) 2. specific, identifiable locations (HABITAT) and 3. highly specific, distinctive sounds of sonic interest (FEATURED SOUNDS.)

Here is my very rough representation of that idea.

In order to specifically create such an effect, Watson uses a wonderful array of KIT and it was THE MOST ENLIGHTENING THING EVER IN THE UNIVERSE to have someone EXPLAIN the differences between OMNI-DIRECTIONAL, MONO, STEREO and SHOTGUN microphones, in the context of being a sound-recordist and being interested in capturing the specific essence of PLACES, in sound. Did I mention how helpful it was to have someone explain this? I will therefore do my best to now explain those things here, in the simple and helpful terms which I remember from Watson’s workshop, so that if you desire to use this information, you will not be utterly dazzled and confused (as I have been for several years) by the array of equipment available on the market.

1. Omni-Directional microphones. These are – as the name suggests – microphones which pick up sounds from all around, and which are amazing for gathering broad sonic atmospheres. Desirable examples include this fine pair of SHOEPS, but the budget recordist such as myself can apparently buy an amazing pair from microphonemadness.com for the princely sum of $84.99. Watson uses an expensive pair of omni-directional microphones strapped onto a coathanger for collecting ambient, atmospheric sonic textures. They have many advantages, including that they do not suffer from wind sound as much as directional mics do, since there is no solid back to the microphone, for the wind to hit.

I was especially taken with the coathanger set-up which allows for moving the microphones through space, collecting a lovely stereo impression, and bending your tiny microphones into corners or places where a larger implement would not fit.

2. Watson uses mono microphones to collect single or individual sounds. He figures that any stereo microphone will collect ambient sonic texture, so for specific individual voices (such as birds or creatures) he likes to get a single beam of sound with a mono microphone.

3. Stereo microphones are a single unit which contains essentially a L and R pick-up point so that sounds are collected from a rounder, wider radius than is covered by a mono mic. There are 2 channels in a stereo recording; one in a mono recording. You probably knew that, but from a recordist’s point of view I had not appreciated the advantages/disadvantages of recording with either and had always assumed stereo was better than mono! A stereo mic can have a wide pick-up pattern or a narrow pick-up pattern.

4. A shotgun microphone (like my delicious Audio Technica BP4029) is a microphone (either stereo or mono) which can be pointed (like a shotgun) at the source of a sound. Advantages include the ability to ‘focus’ in on a specific subject (such as a single bird in the midst of the dawn chorus) and disadvantages include WIND and handling noise (there has been much griping about these in recent weeks.) The directionality of the microphone means that wind hits the back of the mic, causing much noise. This is why costly wind-baffling such as blimps, zeppelins and dead-cats is required with such devices; to attenuate the wind and prevent it from hitting the back of the microphone and making a sound which the clever natural hearing of our ears, would never hear during the normal experience of listening since our ears are far better equipped to attenuate wind than the solid metal back of a shotgun microphone.

The only thing that is more directional than a shotgun microphone is a Parabolic Reflector, such as this one made by Amberwood. A parabolic reflector dish catches sounds in a very specific way, reflecting them back into the microphone that is held inside the dish and therefore naturally amplifying individual voices in the soundscape like birds or bees. Watson uses a costly model by Telinga, but the Amberwood Reflector is now at the top of my list of ITEMS I HIGHLY DESIRE, since it would be very helpful for recording birdsong around the A4074!

I learnt so much about how to use one’s natural hearing to inform one’s recording process and about how the ears can cleverly determine when a sound has been unnaturally amplified. This has been immensely informative in terms of how I am thinking about weaving together my radio show, how I am thinking about mixing the recording that I made in Warborough during World Listening Day, and how I am thinking about The Domestic Soundscape.

I really enjoyed the workshop and Watson’s no-nonsense breakdown of KIT. I also enjoyed playing with the parabolic reflector (although most of what I caught in it was roaring jet engines from the flight-path over Kew Gardens) and roaming about with other sound-recordists, exploring the difference between different approachs to recording. I was also happy to meet Alun Ward – whose blog I have mentioned here before, and who combines marathon-training and sound-recording in amazing ways. I guess the marathon training means Alun is regularly out and about at 4am, when the dawn chorus and deer action is at its highest point!

The workshop showed me much about how to interpret KIT, but it also showed me that there is no substitute for listening if you want to work with sound… and that very useful things can be achieved using lofi solutions like coathangers. It was also very useful to learn more about the relationship between recorded sound and natural hearing, and to meet with so many other people interested in sound.

I thoroughly recommend going; the workshop was a total steal, being basically FREE, with entrance to Kew Gardens being the only actual expense.

I have been busy handprinting maps for the forthcoming Soundwalk this Sunday, 18th July, which is to take place in Warborough, Oxfordshire. There is a permanent page about the event here.

The Soundwalk has been designed to coincide with World Listening Day, which has been organised by The World Listening Project.

Here is some information from the official World Listening Day Press Release:

EVENT: WORLD LISTENING DAY

You are invited to participate in the first World Listening Day, which happens on Sunday, July 18, 2010. The purposes of World Listening Day are:
• to celebrate the practice of listening as it relates to the world around us, environmental awareness, and acoustic ecology;
• to raise awareness about issues related to the World Soundscape Project, World Forum for Acoustic Ecology, World Listening Project, and individual and group efforts to creatively explore phonography;
• and to design and implement educational initiatives which explore these concepts and practices.

World Listening Day is being organized by the World Listening Project, in partnership with the Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology. July 18 was chosen as the date for World Listening Day because it is the birthday of the Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer, who is one of the founders of the Acoustic Ecology movement. The World Soundscape Project, which Schafer directed, is an important organization which has inspired a lot of activity in this field, and his book The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World helped to define many of the terms and background behind the acoustic ecology movement.

WARBOROUGH/OVERY/DORCHESTER/SHILLINGFORD – a circular Soundwalk devised by Felicity Ford in conjunction with World Listening Day and the Around the A4074 Radio Show project

In designing the Soundwalk, I was interested in setting aside an occasion for contemplating the Soundscape around a main road. Although the A4074 is especially significant to me as my main commuting route between Oxford and Reading, many of us use roads and the sound of the car is key to the current Soundscape of the world. Therefore it felt important to include some proximity to a road in the route. As well as this, the route takes in farmland, the very old mill at Overy, stunning views across to Wittenham Clumps, and the Anglo-Saxon land relic that is Dyke Hills. It finishes up in Warborough Green in time for the Warborough & Shillingford Festival. The idea is to meet, talk briefly about Soundwalks, walk and listen, record sounds using a variety of means, and finally, regroup for drinks and tales of the Soundscape in the celebratory atmosphere of the Warborough and Shillingford festival.

Taking in sounds and views around the A4074, (which we will walk beside and beneath during the walk) the Soundwalk includes 3 or 4 stiles and is conducted across flat, well-marked public rights of way. Because of the concurrent Warborough and Shillingford Festival, there should be plenty of parking available for people who want to come!

Meet Sunday 8am or 7.30pm at Warborough Green, outside the 6 bells pub. The guided Soundwalk will be taking place at both times.

Participants on the walk will be given custom-printed stationery for ‘recording’ the Soundscape in words, pictures, diagrams, or found objects. The idea is for participants on the walk to create a sort of ‘I HEAR’ guidebook to the area, through listening to – and noticing – the Soundscape. The walk will also be recorded in audio, and available for download from Felicity Ford’s website after the weekend. There is a blog post about the rationale for this here.

Felicity Ford will be at the festival all day on Saturday 17th to answer questions about the Soundwalk, and to interview anyone who wants to talk to her about the A4074 road and the landscapes that surround it. Please send an email to felixbadanimal(at)hotmail(dot)com if you are interested in attending or leave a comment here.

Last Friday I once again walked the length of the A4074 overnight, using the surrounding footpaths. This time Mark came with me and he has posted a beautiful account here of the experience from his perspective. He took some amazing photographs (which you can see in his post) – my favourite one being this one, where I was trying to record the sound of traffic along the A4074.

I am sure we freaked out some motorists with our beside-the-road recording tactic + Mark’s camera flash! He also got a beautiful shot of some deer in the same poppy field where I spied a badger last time I walked through the night, but neither of us were quick enough with our cameras to catch the wiley pair of hares that passed us further along the way, near Ipsden. I must admit to feeling quite proud of myself when Mark admitted to me that there is no way on earth that he would have undertaken the night-time walk alone, and that he was mystified by my ability to find the paths in the dark, without a torch.

However while I’d love to think I possess some sort of inherent echo-location ability as Mark suggests, I think that in reality it is working with sounds that gives me a hefty advantage when navigating without light. I have been making and listening to sound recordings made around the A4074 for a long time now, and this method of documenting places is far more complete to me than any other methods I have used in the past for creating a mental map of an area. Images are amazing and as you know, I love to take photographs when I go on adventures. But images cannot contain swathes of time in the same way that sound-recordings can and somehow the moments contained in recordings act as a very effective measure of distance, and as powerful triggers for memory. This means that stretches of the route are remembered for me in durational terms, as well as in terms of texture, events, things heard, and so on. The duration of a recording often roughly reflects the duration I spent in a specific environment, so that if there are 20 minutes or so of relative quiet, I know I was probably tramping for a good distance through a pretty empty field. And the road itself is a constant sonic yardstick, being at times a soft white wash of sound in the distance, and at other times a deafening roar that is obviously close by.

There is a beautiful quote in Joe Moran’s book On Roads, where he writes about how certain roads exist as much ‘in the mind as on the earth,’ and this reminds me of the way that the imagination fleshes out and retains impressions of places. For me, this process is one increasingly informed by sounds and the pathways around the A4074 are places I recall more and more according to what I heard along them. My imagined sense of the A4074 is fragmented, audible and internal, somehow more physical than pictures, and full of time and bodily sensations. I love adding to this map with the ongoing Around the A4074 radio project.

For instance I was very excited on Friday as we slipped into the fields behind Marsh Baldon and began heading towards the exact spot on the path where I had stood and held my breath in awe on June 21st, listening to a Barn Owl hissing and calling in a tree above my head. We did not hear the same owl this second time around but earlier in our walk together, Mark and I had heard a barn owl (and a rave!) down by Sandford Lock, just off the Thames path. These places are now marked out in my mind as ‘owl places,’ and a sense of the texture and atmosphere of them is marked out in a very detailed way when I listen to the recordings I made on each occasion.

The Rave Owl recording contains the memory of how eerie it was to have electronic beats drifting across the damp, hot field toward us as we lingered at the margins of a woodland, listening to a barn owl screeching in the trees beyond. And the Marsh Baldon recording recalls the tense feeling I became aware of in my body as I stood on the path at the edge of a field of oilseed rape a couple of weeks ago, trying to locate the source of that otherworldly hissing sound. Both recordings bring to my mind a prickling sense I now associate with being extremely alert, and a sense of me holding my breath.

Somehow the velvet darkness morphs things so that they become less distinct, which is where the particularities of sound become so useful and so specific in their descriptive powers. I think of the route as a sequence of places, which is echoed in the sequence of my recordings and all the different terrains and shapes they describe. I know for instance that when you leave Sandford Lock, the paddocks beyond that lead ultimately up to Nuneham Courtenay are full of thistles and nettles. The specific scrunch of thistles underfoot is a very distinctive sound; those corrugated, barbed edges fold underfoot like sharpened tinsel.

And I know that there is a stile leading out of those paddocks with a plank that is split clean down the middle, which wobbles disconcertingly, and which makes a worryingly rotten sound. I can’t describe exactly how rotten wood sounds, but it lacks the confident resonance of a healthy plank of wood, and in this case is concealed within a dank tunnel of trees where clouds of greenfly buzz vaguely around your face. In enclosed, forested-over areas the soundscape becomes eerily muffled, punctuated only by the quite scary sound of snapping twigs and frightened beasties rustling in the undergrowth; I have a sense of where all such places lay along my now familiar route, because this sonic atmopshere is so specific. I also know that after the rotten stile there is a field which is planted with some sort of legume, because larks like to nest there (as they seemingly do in all the pea-type fields between Oxford and Reading) and at night-time, the foliage bubbles with their melifluous songs. Beyond this, the field that leads up to the A4074 itself is planted with wheat and the farmer has created a path using some sort of weedkiller. The resultant carpet of parched, brittle, chemically-burnt stems along the public right of way scrunches underfoot with an unmistakeably straw-like quality. My breathing in recordings made here evidences the slight hill, and the crescendoing white noise of traffic makes it easy to locate one’s increasing proximity to the road itself. I could go on, explaining to you how each section of the walk is indelibly tattooed on my mind by the sounds that I associate with walking through it, but I think by now you probably get the idea.

To my mind the sequence reads somewhat like a musical score; here there is a refrain, there, a crescendo. For this section, we will hear this kind of bird, and for this other section, we will hear the sound of the road. And so I feel like a walker who is learning the landscape, and also like a listener, who is learning the score of this place and the sounds which unfurl as it is played.

It is really suprising how predictable many aspects of the night-time score are. I expect, now, to hear the sound of owls around dusk, as the night first darkens the sky. But other sounds are even more specific in their predictability. For instance on Friday, near Wallingford on the bank of the Thames, I recalled to Mark that last time I had undertaken this journey, I had heard the strange and beautiful calls of an unknown bird around this spot. Almost on cue, just as I had I finished describing the sound to him, it began to roll out from amidst some reeds near to us! I have posted both recordings here – the one I made on the binaural microphones a couple of weeks ago, and the one from Friday (which was recorded on a different set up) – so that you can decide whether, like me, you think these are the calls of the same bird, from around the same time, from around the same place.

Crickets and blackbirds also begin their sounds at specific times according to the position of the sun, and the traffic even has a roughly predictable rhythm, the roads getting busier first thing in the morning and dwindling to the occasional lonely moan of a single engine deep into the night. There are also chance encounters – like the deer or the badger or the hares in the field of poppies – that seem less predictable. But one thing is certain; the sun always sets and the sun always rises, and everything that happens in between seems strange and magical to our diurnal senses.

I have now become obsessed with the owl sounds and the identity of the strange, riverside bird which so thrilled us at 3am around Wallingford. I am hoping Chris Watson will be able to give me some tips on how best to capture both sounds when I attend his workshop at Kew Gardens next Monday, and that someone who reads this will be able to tell me what the bird is that I heard beside the Thames.

 

 Barn Owl hissing, recorded on EDIROL R-09 with binaural microphones: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Barn Owl shrieking, recorded on FOSTEX FR-2LE with Audio Technica BP4029 mic and poorly fitting windshield (hence all the terrible handling noise): Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Mystery Bird, recorded on EDIROL R-09 with binaural microphones (sorry about the hiss): Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 longer recording of Mystery Bird, recorded on FOSTEX FR-2LE with Audio Technica BP4029 microphone and poorly fitting windshield: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download