“Sound Studies,” while increasingly common in the academy, still lacks basic definitions. This post is part of an ongoing effort to provide clear, descriptive expositions of what the study of sound encompasses – as an art form, as a humanistic science, and as a general philosophy.

The piece is 54 minutes in total, but the interview is only the first 45 minutes or so. Follow along with the annotations below as you listen, for further comment on some of the issues that might be extracted from the conversation.

0:00 – 1:40 Introduction, bio

1:40 – 2:40 Discussion of a silent moment in The Beach Boys’ “The Little Girl I once Knew”

Music is one of the most important areas where “Sound Studies” makes its interventions. This discussion is a nice example off the bat of how attention to sound can connect with other topics. DeLaurenti aptly identifies that radio often functions like a friend, a companion on long drives, for example. And that, “like a good friend, you want to make sure that that good friend doesn’t go away.” For this reason, dead air is the scourge of radio, the thing to avoid above all else – even babbling is far better than making the listener feel abandoned. This accounts for the failure of an otherwise marketable pop song.

2:40 – 3:45 Discussion of places where radio transmitters overlap

We all know what this sounds like. DeLaurenti regrets not having recorded some instances of it on a recent drive in the western U.S. Moments like this, where sound is disconnected from intentional meaning (i.e., where it strikes most ears as noise) is exactly what the Phonographers Union is most interested in treating as art.

3:45 – 8:15 How the Phonographers Union performs live

As a process, the Union takes concrete sounds and organizes them into improvised compositions. Shades of musique concrète. The host plays an example of one of the Union’s improvisations. Japanese temple bells, water, accelerating in pace, birds. Compiled from multiple sources. DeLaurenti quotes Stravinsky in suggesting that this improvisation should be heard as a composition, since it’s “frozen.”

7:50 On not relying on visual cues onstage

“We are incredibly boring to look at, and that’s deliberate … we have to react only with our ears.” There is no way for the members of the group to know who is doing what. In Sound Studies, there is a tendency to rely on a supposed binary between sound and vision. Proponents of this binary will argue in broad generalizations, that western culture is visualistic, that it relies on fixed images, but is meanwhile inept at coping with the ephemeral relationality immanent to sound. This position has a point, even if it is extremely overdetermined. DeLaurenti, however, is too good at what he does to engage in this kind of polemic.

His goal in withholding visual cues is to facilitate heightened attention. If the listener leaves a performance more aware of the world, the performance was successful. “The world is continually trying to give us gifts through our ears.”

9:30 – 10:45 The host will play some listener recordings

10:45 – 13:10 First sound sent in by a listener – boat passing under a drawbridge

Colossal metal scrapes, pulleys. The big, soft reverb of wide-open spaces. Melancholy, if you feel like reading it in emotional terms. Followed by an excerpt from that Beach Boys song.

15:10 – 16:50 Second sound sent in by a listener – hummingbird’s wing

Jim Culp, a former city-dweller now living in the country, one day heard a hummingbird at his feeder, and liked the sound. “It was kind of like listening to a didgeridoo played by an Australian aboriginal, but there was a little hint of helicopter in there.” References to aboriginal/native/primitive people are quite common in descriptions of sound, especially abstract ones. In classes I’ve taught, when playing unfamiliar sounds for students and asking them to note their impressions, the notion of “tribal people” (usually of unspecified ethnicity) is often invoked to account for wild strangeness. Many scholars of sound have suggested that imagistic descriptions serve to domesticate aural mystery.

16:50 – 18:50 Awareness of the microphone’s presence
Listening to the recording, DeLaurenti picks up the gentle friction of Mr. Culp’s sleeve against the feeder, as well as the proximity effect of the microphone as it moves around. DeLaurenti explains how the proximity effect works – in both mics and ears. “Microphones are themselves instruments.” This is a wise, if surprisingly rare, point. As with cameras, listeners tend to assume that what a microphone picks up is immediate – that is to say, not mediated – and that it is therefore true. In fact, microphones are very idiosyncratic, and what they pick up depends heavily on both their design and on how we use them. Being aware of the microphone as a form of mediation that affects sound is a key part of being a good sound artist/scholar.

18:50 – 20:50 Fidelity

DeLaurentis says that high-fidelity is a fine goal, but that the aura of imperfection becomes “part of the music” on many recordings. “Fidelity is wonderful, however, you can walk to my CD shelf and you’ll still see Robert Johnson there.” Microphones lie, but it’s a noble lie.

The host mentions the phenomenon of cleaned-up, remastered recordings, on which old pieces are “rescued from the way they were recorded.” Sound is more manipulable now.

20:50 – 21:20 Third sound sent in by a listener – an old tugboat engine from the Center for Wooden Boats in Seattle

Hydraulic, clanking, exhausted-sounding. The host calls it “forlorn,” and it reminds DeLaurenti of the fact that Stravinsky used to notate environmental sounds, especially mechanical ones.

22:10 – 24:25 Fourth sound sent in by a listener – tree branches rustling in Riverfront Park, recorded with a contact mic

Rubbery, internal. Again on the subject of how microphones mediate what we hear and thus experience, contact microphones (which are super cheap and easy to build) respond to sound in a very different way from mics that respond to disturbances in the air.

For those who haven’t gotten to it, the physics of sound is a great read. Once you understand that air is a medium through which sound travels, but that other materials (including walls, bodies, etc.) also conduct sound, you can understand the fundamental difference between normal mics and contact mics.

24:25 – 26:30 A listener calls in to talk about a mysterious sound – he confused Beluga whales for horses

“Whale recordings have been proliferating for the last forty years.” Water is also a medium for sound; marine animals have rich aural communication systems that we understand only in part. Don Ihde has written about whether what whales do is singing. But no conversation about whale sound is complete without consulting the work of Roger Payne.

The device of choice for recording underwater is called a hydrophone.

26:40 – 28:55 Fifth recording sent in by a listener – bats (slowed down)

Chirping, mild. Bats use a technique called echolocation to assess their surroundings. They send out chirps, and then interpret the resonance created by them to figure out their spatial position. Their ears are sensitive enough that they can immediately tell where they are, and what’s nearby. In familiar terms, this is akin to “seeing” with the ears. By listening to echoes, bats can tell the precise shape of nearby walls, whether there are bugs (food) in range, and even how those bugs might be moving.

The first thing the hosts notice is the variety of sound in the recording. “Our ears are not only receptacles, but they’re also filters.” At noisy, polyphonic cocktail parties, for example, we can focus on the sounds that matter to us, but a microphone could not reproduce that kind of filtering.

DeLaurenti suggests that we are “trained” to focus on specific, clearly relevant things, and to filter out noise. He says he’s spent years trying to untrain himself, to listen more broadly.

28:55 – 30:55 On listening polyphonically

DeLaurenti made an album of “surreptitiously recorded intermissions” at concerts. Other phonographers and composers have also specifically tuned in to crowds as a source of sonic interest.

Different people, even recording the same event or same type of event (which happens often), will inevitably come up with different recordings. This effort is predicated on deep listening and environmental awareness.

31:00 – 33:00 Sixth sound sent in by a listener – irrigation pipe

Round, small glissandos, fluid. The piece was made by Gordon Hempton, who DeLaurenti has written on. GH evokes place, depth. Master field recorder.

One more piece by Hempton. Dropping pieces of wood into a well. Fuzzy lasers, neurotic ghouls.

34:15 – 35:40 Station identification, ads, weather

35:40 – 37:30 Phonographers Union will perform in Seattle a few times in the coming days

DeLaurenti compares the Union to Yes and Deep Purple.

37:30 – 39:25 Seventh sound sent in by a listener – wasp in bedroom

High, pleading, slippery, human. Leads to a discussion of recording eerie things. DeLaurenti did this recently, only to figure out it was I-5 being repaved.

39:25 – 40:30 Eighth sound sent in by a listener – kitten in heat

Unnerving, piercing, moist. “Sound helps us see through walls … compresses the distance.” Sound is a source of information about the otherwise unaccessible. I would add that sound-without-vision is also, frequently, a major source of consternation. People dislike being aware of things whose identity they can’t confirm. Sound, then, can be an invasion of privacy, a way of asking for our attention (maybe repeatedly) without saying why. Neighbors, at least those I’ve spoken to, usually hate hearing each other. One of the great things about the Union is that they invert this relationship into one of fascination.

40:30 – 41:35 Ninth sound sent in by a listener – walking over a wooden floor with microphones attached to feet

Doom and leather. There are multiple labels devoted to releasing albums of field recordings.

41:35 – 43:05 Tinnitus

The host has tinnitus (my wife the doctor says TINN – it – tus, but apparently pronunciation varies), and puts an electronic “masking sound” in his ears to quell its effects. DeLaurenti adds that the ears actually emit sound. I’ve heard this physiological phenomenon described as akin to warming up a gong before hitting it, so that it will react with more sensitivity when struck. The eardrum is covered with little hairs that move constantly, keeping the drum “warm.” Their movement creates a sound of its own. Hearing is also sonorous.

43:05 – 44:25 Tenth sound sent in by a listener – walking down a muddy stream at midnight

How might this sound different if you hadn’t heard it was recorded at midnight? Part of a movement of “improvising with natural sound in natural spaces.” As a field recorded, it is sometimes necessary to provoke reactions in order to make a recording. A muddy creek bed on its own may not be recognizable, but once you walk through it you’ve got something clear to record. This is also true for, often, interview subjects.

45:00 – 46:05 Email from listener

Banal sounds can become musical. We hear with our entire bodies, in a sense. I would add that they also connect very powerfully to space – this particular listener hears wind and boat sound as “quintessential western Washington.” Our aural experiences are a huge part of the way we define and remember the areas we inhabit. Usually, cities are represented by their skylines, but cities also have sonic identities.

46:05 – 47:00 Eleventh sound sent in by a listener – drumming busker in San Francisco

Street performers improvise with objects at hand. Public performances have a particular immediacy.

The pursuit of authenticity apparently knows no bounds. Says Murray:

We went and recorded a lot in South Africa and tried to be accurate to the background. My recorder went to the shantytowns. We found circa 1990 phones that we believed would be in Mandela’s office. We went to Robben Island — the jail door you hear is actually Mandela’s cell door. We got to record in his cell, which is kind of eerie.

and …

In South Africa, we recruited 25 guys, professional players that they rounded up in Cape Town, and we had a professional rugby coach there. We got them together and we set them 25-30 yards apart and said, O.K., you guys run into each other as hard as you can. And I mean, it was just brutal what we got back.

Ryzik professes honestly that sound design is a mystery category, Academy-wise, that it’s “one of those categories that make people lose their Oscar pool.” Murray, like most people who deal with sound professionally, is obviously used to the association of invisibility with nonexistence that accounts for such a lack of awareness. (He starts the interview by saying “thanks for noticing. A lot of people just think the sound happens when they shoot the movie.”)

Coming up: a sound studies primer

The human question of when to look or not look is usually clear-cut. When in doubt, don’t. And whatever rules apply to your eyes apply ten times as powerfully to any recording device you might be carrying. A person with (what seem to be) unfortunate physical anomalies is not to be photographed unless you know them very well, and unless you can convincingly demonstrate to the viewer that you are framing the subject out of consideration, not exploitation.

Photographers have negotiated these normative strictures throughout the life of the medium. Street photographers like Diane Arbus (and just about any war photographer you can name) have been called exploitative, even as they insist that their work carries a greater journalistic or aesthetic value. Many professional photographers habitually carry a copy of Krages’ “Photographer’s Right,” a document that explains in one page that a photographer can legally document anything and anyone publicly visible to them. They produce this when confronted by a police officer or private citizen who questions their right to take a picture of something, which happens more often than you might expect, a testament to deep-seated expectations about what kinds of documentations are or should be OK.

Audio recording presents a unique set of ethical issues that overlap but do not align with photography’s. I am curious to hear from readers their thoughts on a few specific questions.

- When is it appropriate or inappropriate to use a sound recording device?

- When is it appropriate or inappropriate to use a fully concealed sound recording device?

- What constitutes an ethical presentation of sonic material? (i.e. if I had recorded the man on the subway, should I have asked his permission before posting the piece here?).

“St. Louis Blues” dubbed onto a skull, from here

Comments on roentgenizdat have been floating around for a few years, and Princeton English professor Eduardo Cadava is writing a book on the subject, out soon.

Roentgenizdat are interesting, first, as a series of artifacts. Prefiguring picture disks, non-circular shapes, and other graphically novel record gimmicks, these albums feel like an early example of what few people got into until the 70s and 80s – experimentation with records as objects. Although dubbing onto x-ray was in this case a matter of political necessity rather than unprovoked aesthetic tinkering, the dubbers quite clearly paid attention to the images they chose, as well as the placement of the center holes. (See this gallery for examples, many of which are lovely.) Record collectors in particular seem to like them for this reason.

Meanwhile, researchers like Cadava are taken by roentgenizdat because of their metaphorical richness. 20th-century philosophers were very much preoccupied by the advent of mechanical reproduction and its consequences (Benjamin and Adorno on music, and Barthes on photography, spring to mind as obvious examples, but there are many others as well), and death is always in the mix – recorded sounds and images, the moment they’re captured, become more immortal than our bodies. For this reason, a series of objects that make the relationship between mortality and recorded music visually explicit carries deep poetic power. Cadava discusses.

The third source of intrigue is one that hasn’t gotten much attention so far, but that is timely now because Professor Martin Daughtry is doing research on it in preparation for a publication. That is, the sound of roentgenizdat. The aforelinked LiveJournal gallery includes MP3s of each song. I am not certain that these are taken from the x-ray records (although I suspect so), but in any case they remind us that the recordings have a sonic specificity. The recording medium affects what and how we hear, and it has a history that extends into the realms of visual technology, medicine, censorship, commercial networks, and the availability of raw materials. The ways in which our hearing of music is mediated includes not only the format as such, and not only the choices of musicians and producers, but a whole confluence of political circumstances.

I’ve had a pretty good set-up going for about two years now, and for those interested in the technical details I’ll describe it today. This is what I use for every recording presented on this site, unless otherwise noted.

The Sony PCM D50 is undoubtedly one of the best low-priced digital field recorders on the market. By low-priced I mean under $500; the D50 hits right at or slightly below that mark, depending on where you buy it. (Mine is on long-term loan.) There are cheaper options, but the D50 has a lot going for it, including that it is a) mostly steel, and thus durable, b) not too quick to drain its AA batteries (you get something like 30 hours of active recording/4 batteries), c) equipped with a really solid pair of internal microphones that … d) can be adjusted depending on whether you want ambient room sounds or a more direct pattern, e) small and light enough to keep in a pocket or hold for a long time without it getting cumbersome, f) able to record for a suitably long time (the exact length depends on whether you use the internal memory or a removable stick – I use the first, and it’s OK even at the highest recording resolution), g) designed with a very clear and usable graphic interface, h) controlled by actual buttons rather than on-screen menu options, which I strongly prefer, and i) sold with an adorably fuzzy windscreen that works great and makes everyone – everyone – ask whether you’re carrying some kind of gerbil/rodent/kitten. This can also be distracting at times, since you end up with plenty of “is that a pet?” on your recordings, but it’s usually just a good conversation piece.

The Recording Gerbil

Having decent internal mics, meanwhile, is huge for a couple reasons. It streamlines the recording process, since you’re dealing with one handheld object and no wires, meaning that you can be as mobile as a given situation requires. It also gives you an extra hand free to adjust recording settings etc. And in terms of price, it saves you significant expense for not having to buy a separate microphone. (Probably between $200 and $700, for a recorder in this price range.)

And having a good windscreen is, I’ve come to realize, life or death for active field recording. Unless you’re in a room without much activity or air circulation, a sensitive mic will pick up at least an occasional gust of wind. And it sounds terrible, at least to my ears – more than one second or so of wind noise is a dealbreaker for a recording. The windscreen not only minimizes or alleviates this problem under normal conditions, but allows you to record in rough weather, in crowds, and while you yourself move around a space.

There are a number of other perks to the D50, as well as a few annoying problems, described well in the video below. (Not made by me.)

The D50 only records to WAV, although I generally convert my recordings to MP3 immediately once I upload them to my MacBook. (Uploading is very easy, btw, with the D50.) I realize that the compression this entails is not optimal, but for recordings that I expect to share, it’s just unreasonable to expect people to download hundreds of megabytes for a short amount of content. I use a piece of Freeware called Switch for Mac for conversions, and I’m pretty happy with it.

One of the gaps in my current setup is that I do not have a good audio editor at all, at least on my own machine. I used to run SoundForge, which actually worked quite well, but now I rely on Garageband for the most basic operation – cutting sound files into segments – and just sort of don’t worry about effects or processing. This will have to change soon.

For the time being, the issue of sound quality is mostly academic anyway, since I’m presenting my recordings on a website, which means that most people are hearing them through computer speakers about as crappy as my own. There’s an astonishing difference between listening to these recordings directly as uncompressed WAVs, and through the site, compressed and coming through tiny, tinny speakers. It is a stunning experience to listen to the world through the D50, with the entire local sonic-spatial field very loud and clear in your ears. You have a sensation of the audio equivalent of x-ray vision — conversations down the hall are just as clear and present as the ones right next to you. Your footsteps produce echoes that render the shape of a room with the precision of a magazine photograph. It’s an experience everyone should have.

By contrast, my Mac speakers flatten any semblance of stereo, and kill all bass and most mids. You can still hear resonance, but it doesn’t hit you viscerally as a better system would. I don’t mean this in an audiophilic, elite ears kind of way. There really is a huge difference in sensation, and you get much closer to “feeling” a space by listening with headphones or bigger external speakers. To test out the difference, try listening to the recording in the previous post, first through computer speakers and then with headphones.

At the same time, to play devil’s advocate, I think that people who record sounds, both environmental and musical ones, have some obligation to attend to the technologies that most people will use to hear their stuff. Music producers test their work on multiple platforms, from high-end studio monitors to dirty, blown-out car stereo speakers to shoddy headphones. The idea is to make a recording flexible enough that listeners can enjoy it on the equipment that’s ready at hand. I’m interested in hearing how others who’ve done field recorders handle this issue.

The idea is 1) to render an image of a space in the shortest time possible (always under four minutes, and usually under two); 2) to try to capture that space in an active moment so as to render its image robustly; and 3) to select politically compelling or aesthetically charged moments.

My only real background in art is as an amateur photographer who was lucky enough to be able to take multiple classes over the course of three years at a photography school where I was doing fundraising work. I read a lot and thought a lot about approaches to photography during those years, and what I picked up has informed my ideas about audio sculptures. I try to record the same event multiple times from different angles, and to think about framing.

Sound, of course, is very different from imagery. A recording (usually) has a definite length, and (usually) suggests a linear apprehension. Viewers are used to approaching visual media in a less linear, more deliberately subjective fashion. People don’t usually attend to photographs for more than a couple of minutes, and this threshold of interest likely holds for sound as well. I think it might be brazen to expect someone to listen to 11 minutes of a recording, unless they’ve really come to trust you, or unless there’s a rock-solid narrative, or unless it’s music they like. So I’m starting, at least, with shorter segments. Listen to them like you would look at a snapshot – expect funny juxtapositions, emphatic arrays of forms, minor narratives, and surreal scenes.

Artwork #1 was recorded inside a student art gallery in Madison, Wisconsin. For the first minute, I walked around with the door closed. You can hear voices. Then I opened the door and joined the group outside.