I have just been setting up the Sonic Advent Calendar for Sound Diaries when I found myself thinking that there were so many wonderful sound recordings created for Sonic Wallpaper, that it would really be worth sharing some here as small snippets in the coming weeks. I was so busy during the time of editing the recordings for Sonic Wallpapers that – although I blogged about the process on the dedicated website – I feel I did not get a chance to really discuss the process here.

For Sound Diaries we are revisiting many of the old recordings we produced in 2008; a process which I have found surprisingly nostalgic and meaningful.

However, perhaps it’s not that surprising… I’m not sure if you ever feel this way but just now I find I am interested in taking stock; in looking back over the things I have done.

I think it is an effect of Winter.

I thought that for every day from now until 24th December, I could talk about one of the field-recordings that went into the creation of Sonic Wallpapers. I know I’m a little late to the Advent Calendar party, so today will be a bonanza edition, featuring recordings for 1st – 4th December, but for the rest of this time, I shall share the story around the recording of one sound, and talk about which wallpaper I was recording it for.

The competition to win a copy of the Sonic Wallpaper book will be extended throughout Advent and posted out after Christmas! Thank you to everyone who has already commented.

Rain on the Roof – 01 December

I recorded this sound to go with BADDA 4857 in the MoDA collection, because Colleen said it reminded her of rain on the allotment, with all its tiny grey dots. Throughout our very rainy spring, I lay in wait with my trusty Edirol R-09 at hand, so that whenever the rain struck I might put it on top of the paint tins in the garage and capture the sound of the weather pattering against our flimsy roof out there.

BADDA 4857, image © MoDA and used here with their kind permission

Ascending the Stairs in Dr Johnson’s House – 02 December

This was a recording used in conjunction with the rainy sounds, for BADDA 4857, since everyone said they would have the climbing beans in the design going up a staircase. This sound was recorded in Dr Johnson’s House, which really is like a giant musical instrument. It is the place where Dr Johnson compiled his dictionary, and I was recording there because Joceline felt that another wallpaper design (SW 1029) reminded her specifically of a writing attic. Dr Johnson’s House contains precisely such an attic, and Joceline’s yearnings for an environment free of the electronic hum of the modern world and full of wood and old desks fit with the way the building has been preserved as a 1700s town house. I hung microphones in the stairwell to capture my journeys up and down the stairs, and the approaching and receding creaks of my feet on the old wooden steps.

I couldn’t use this recording in SW 1029 in the end; it just didn’t fit with the rest of what was being said, but I felt it was such a clear record of traversing stairs that it could fit with the beans instead.

Vintage Matchbox Cars – 03 December

I recorded this sound to go with BADDA 4377 in the MoDA Wallpaper collection, because this wallpaper reminded Helen of play mats designed to look like neighbourhoods which she played with when she was small. As she talked about playing with matchbox cars during our interview, I found myself remembering in great detail the specific little plasticky/metal mechanisms inside such cars, and the sounds of myself and my brothers playing with them on bare floorboards. This association with cars and neighbourhoods grew through subsequent interviews, when it became apparent that this wallpaper reminded quite a few other people of a sort of abstract town plan. An idea began to form in my mind for using the car sounds to traverse between different ‘scenes’ or ways of looking at this wallpaper.

BADDA 4377, image © MoDA and used with their kind permission

I looked on eBay and in other places online for 1980s vintage toy cars, but knew that really I needed to hear the cars before I purchased them, to make sure they sounded just right. There is a specific heft in an old metal matchbox car which you can hear in the way it moves; a new car has not got the same loose axles as one that has been tossed about by an enthusiastic youngster! I eventually went into the Reading collector’s centre where they had a basket of cheap, un-collectable old cars, useless to pretty much anyone except me. The man who owns the shop made no comment as I started pulling them all out and lying with my ear to the floor to listen to them all, whizzing across the floor. I went away with a selection of toy cars – purchased specifically for their sonic qualities – and then spent an afternoon recording them moving on different kinds of surfaces around our home.

I still have the cars, although I have no further practical use for them. I am reluctant to throw them away, however, because recording the sounds they make has made me appreciative of the instant link to childhood memories which playing with them activates.

They are like tiny sonic time capsules.

Seagulls on Amroth beach

This was recorded to go with BADDA 2298 in the MoDA Wallpaper collection. Everyone who had looked at that paper had talked about the sea and the sky, and the sound of the seagull was a very clear way to reference this maritime combination. As someone else had also speculated the the paper would be wonderful in a room with a swimming pool in it, I was mindful of the fact that I wanted some way of moving between the distinctive atmosphere of a swimming pool, and the white-noise wash of the sea. I kept thinking about this transition between the two sounds – the wash of the water at the beach, and the white-noise levels of echo in a swimming pool – and the sound of a seagull gliding over the top.

I was not happy when I made this recording. I purchased chips with which to lure some seagulls towards me and my large microphone, and then I sat on the beach and ate some. I cried a little bit. The sea seemed huge and unrelenting and noisy – a great indifferent wall of water – and the seagulls were being irritatingly reticent. I stomped about with my polystyrene container, wondering why the gulls wouldn’t go for it when I set it down on the sand. Then I lost all patience, threw the chips out of their box, and began heading for the car. As if by magic, at that point a huge cloud of seagulls descended on the discarded chips, and I got my sound. It’s funny how sound recordings are – I remember exactly the mood I was in when I made this recording, and listening takes me right back to the day and all its bad feelings. But also in another way, a microphone is an impassive tool, and I don’t think any of my actual feelings made it into the field recording. In the end, it sounds sort of summery and light and transcendent, like waves and gulls a little way off, and a child laughing, and summer on the beach at Amroth.

Like a photo where everything looks pretty, but you know you were very sad on the day when it was taken.

I have one copy of the Sonic Wallpapers book to give to someone who would like to have a domestic listening experience for themselves! The book has all 18 wallpaper designs from the MoDA collection used in this project, and a CD in the back which contains all the sound pieces. There are introductions both by myself and Zoe Hendon who is the curator of MoDA, and notes on what people said, and what sounds were recorded, for each wallpaper included in the project.

To win a copy of the book, you just need to leave a comment on this post: -> http://thedomesticsoundscape.com/wordpress/?p=4655 about a wallpaper that you remember from your life, and one sound you recall from the room where that wallpaper was. If you cannot think of a wallpaper design and a sound, you could also leave one thought/response you have to this project. On 24th December, I will draw a number at random and post out a copy of the book to the winner!