Author Archives: gunsbe01

Hello again, and happy Tuesday. This morning, I stood outside of my house for several minutes at dawn to record the sounds of the natural world waking up with remarkably little noise pollution to interrupt. I have attached my sound file, along with an image of my very Minnesota-looking backyard to garner your sympathy. PleaseContinue reading “My Soundscape (4/14)”

Good morning, and happy Thursday to you all! The past couple weeks have been challenging for all of us, and I have to say I’ve learned a lot about how much I actually miss the ambient noises of everyday urban life from being locked in my home with little more than the sounds of airContinue reading “Listening Response (4/9)”

Follow the link below to view my video update for this week. I apologize in advance for parts of the video that aren’t oriented properly: https://drive.google.com/file/d/15yMi7Yvr5HmZAofyUE2EaySRkgb6N0DE/view?usp=sharing

In what has turned out to be a quite hectic couple of weeks since my last post, I’ve made a lot of progress on various things. Because Luther has graciously loaned a laptop to me over break, I can now use Reaper at my home, which will make future projects much easier. Unfortunately, after movingContinue reading “Listening Response (4/2)”

This week I started work on the Mermaid project. In class, we divvied up some of the sound cues which will be used as backdrops for different settings. I chose to focus on royal music sounds. I proceeded to record myself buzzing my lips, and used Reaper to organize the sound files into a well-knownContinue reading “Post #9: An Update”

This week, I had the pleasure of reading Polly Teale’s Mermaid, a dramatic production soon to be staged by Luther College, a project in which the composition studio is excited to take part. I also listened to another extended work of electronic music, Michel Chion’s Requiem, a piece for which I am excited to shareContinue reading “Post 8: Listening Response”

This week, I’ve had some exciting experiences relating to this course. On Sunday, I attended a performance of Dr. Joyce’s The Showing of Love. The work was composed for electronics and live performers together. The Friday before, I got to hear the professor talk about the inspiration and unique structural elements of his work. IContinue reading “Post #7: An Update”

This week, I had the opportunity to read Franscisco Lopez’s article “Blind Listening” and to listen to Francis Dhomont’s Foret Profonde. These two works were an interesting juxtaposition–one an argument for the untampered recording of natural soundworlds, and the other a composite of unnatural sounds greatly transformed from the source material. As such, the twoContinue reading “Post #6: Listening Response”

I’m glad this week to begin working on a larger project which will be performed in the planetarium as part of a electronic music show presented by my class. This week, I have continued gathering sounds, especially water sounds, in which I have noticed my sound bank is lacking. I have also begun to sketchContinue reading “Post #5: An Update”

In our culture, we often think about “beauty” as being inherently temporal–that anything worth noticing and appreciating is rare and brief, unlikely to be observed again. And yet, it’s easy to forget just how rare and exceptional our experience living on Earth is. This subject is the primary concern of both Westerkamp’s essay “Speaking fromContinue reading “Post #4: Listening Response”