mysounds from Barcelona
It is always nice to see the kind of beloved objects that participants of TCR bring to the first session. They do not know we are going to use them as sound instruments!
And so, today all their little boxes covered by pictures and full of secrets, teddy bears, binoculars, books and glasses… were subjected to curious sonic exploration.
We started by collectively attempting to come up with possible ways of obtaining sounds from a single object. Then moved to individual exploration. An attempt was made to avoid hitting and scratching as too obvious or easy.
Paying attention to irregular surfaces, materials and moving parts proved to be a good way of obtaining sound. We wrote down how to produce this sounds.
During the recording we exercised collective silence and listening… using the pauses between a recording and the next, to cough and move around a bit before … hush!… and again… until all sounds where ready. Please enjoy them below, and do not forget to visit our Freesound page for the rest of them :)
http://www.freesound.org/people/thecityrings/
p.s. apologies for the phone-quality pictures, we promise not to forget our camera again , ouch! ;(
First sounds of Lamaçaes – Portugal
First sounds from Portugal.
For the first session in Portugal the pupils waited captivated on how the school bells of Barcelona and Ghent would sound. All children wanted a school bell as in Barcelona! Several children visited already the Spanish city and there was even a girl that visited Ghent. Ingredients of the sound cooking today were talks about sounds of the sea, the woods and mountains and how various places in Europe and as well in Brasil sound.
After a vivid talk we came finally to the objects and their stories. First the children wrote down the sounds of their objects.
Explanation about recorders and listening to their objects via headphones was the following step. The children experiences how you can use the recorder as an “earoscope”.
Then the recording sessions followed in a complete silence.
Time flew so fast that no time was left for creating an own soundscape.
But tomorrow there is another session.
Enjoy listening!
New ringing and rumbling sounds from Ghent, Belgium
Hi there
Our first day at De Piramide school in Ghent was full of springlike sounds; birds all over the place (doves, blackbirds, sparrows), children having their gym class outside at the schoolyard (goodbye winter jackets!!!), and we had this amazing roof terrace to spend our first listening session. First we all listened for several minutes to the sonic environment with our “normal” ears and then we switched to the headphones connected to the recorders. The kids noticed they could hear much “further” then on ground level because of the “air” that surrounded us instead of walls and buildings. While we had to cover our mics from the wind they also started noticing very near and detailed sounds like a shoving shoe, a zipper carefully being zipped, breathing, movements and some mysterious whispering… but maybe that was the wind playing tricks with our ears!
After our “blowing-with-the-sounds-session” we went back inside the classroom to examine the chosen sound objects. We first tried out the loudest possible sounds we could make and then we concentrated on making a sound as quiet as possible. We discovered there were a lot of variations and expressions possible with only one object. Having recorded everyone’s personal sound we listened them back with our eyes closed and tried to “forget” the source of the sound. This first was a bit difficult but as soon as fantasy kicked in a whole new world of enthusiasm and storytelling emerged. We heard an animal with a big trunk spading the ground, an elephant maybe? Oh no more like a giant anteater! Then we heard the ocean with it’s big waves crashing on the beach. After that we heard footsteps in the Sahara and then suddenly someone was shaking his spray can to paint some graffiti.
A few sounds that we have recorded that day are at the bottom of our post here. The rest you can find in the freesound pack called: mySounds_Ghent_April2013. We are looking forward to hear the mySounds from the other kids too. Enjoy listening!
Mysounds from Paris
Hello from Paris where Winter has arrived.
We started our session by listening to all the bells and thinking about the descriptions of the schools. The general thought was that our bell ( Henriette )seemed the loudest and oldest.. whilst many of the others sounded more ‘electronic’ and impersonal. This was not intended to be a competition !
Unfortunately the person who was taking photos of our session has technical problems with her camera, so sorry, no photos today.
Each pupil revealed their object to the rest of the class. It was also a chance for the pupils to listen through their ears and through the headphones, what difference does this make ? We re-familiarised ourselves with recording techniques and tried to make several different sounds with the same object, and not only tap with our hands. For instance one pupil breathed deeply in and out of a plastic bottle, another shook her whole body which ‘rung’ her many gold bracelets, someone else dropped a small tin on the floor. Some objects were more personal than others.
Here are some examples :
The ‘cricket’ is an interesting object. It is a signalling device used by French soldiers in the Second World War. What could be a modern day sonic signalling device?
And lastly our class composition, entitled ‘Symphonie de Bruits Quotidiens’ ( Symphonie of Everyday Sounds) – we are French you know !
Looking forward to hearing your work. A demain.
their sounds ; Palau Solità i Plegamans (Barcelona)
And so we started January’s 2013 edition of TCR :)
First of all I want to say this school, Can Cladellas, is at our hometown! both Laura and I, Jaume grew up in this town called Palau Solità i Plegamans. This makes the whole situation a bit more special for us.
And we started by presenting the project to the participants, in particular the pictures and bell-sounds of the other schools. The bell sound is always a very interesting way to perceive differences and similarities between schools, their locations, history and way of doing.
Since we did not have a lot of time we went straight into checking our objects -beloved objects that the participants were asked to bring from home- and here you can see an example of the variety, a horse named “xocolata” (catalan for chocolate) and a fork that was engraved with the name of its owner, right when she was born.
We started the sonic exploration of our objects collectively as an attempt to help each other go further the hit/scratch basic sounds that we usually come up when we confront the sonic exploration of an object for the first time.
Then we moved to individual exploration of the object, where each participant was asked to come up with at least 5 or 6 sounds (our strategy to, again, attempt for them to avoice hit/scratch sounds… this works sometimes ). And then we went onto recording the sounds one by one.
Listen to some of them below and to the rest visiting our January 2013 Mysounds pack at Freesound, also below. Thanks for stopping by!
http://www.freesound.org/people/thecityrings/packs/10939/
Fresh mySounds from Ghent, Belgium
Hello everyone!
We had such a great time today! After checking out the ‘thecityrings’ website we did a listening exercise. Half of the class would listen to the sonic environment with their “normal” ears and the other half listened with the headphones on (and the headphones connected to the recorders, of course). Some of us thought they heard a horse walking by, while others heard the breathing of their neighbour and the sound of clothes moving . At one point we opened the door to get some more sound into the room, but except for a lot of ice-cold air we didn’t get much new from that, except for the squeaking sound made by the hinges of the door.
Then we recorded our sounds. A lot of very different sounds were made, some of them really loud (at some point everyone had their fingers in their ears, that was a funny sight!), others extremely quiet and intimate. We listened to our recordings and talked about the feelings and visions we got while the sounds were playing. After that we did the samewith some prerecorded sounds. That was when our fantasy really ran wild! Someone even thought she heard a zombie biting someone in the leg! Oh, and most of our listening was done with eyes closed, there is just so much more you can hear all the sudden.
You can listen to some of our sounds at the bottom of our post here. The rest you can find in the freesound pack called ‘mySounds_jan2013′. We are looking forward to listening to the sounds of our partner school tomorrow! Did they record similar sounds? Or will it be totally different?
MySounds of Essen
Hello again from the Schillerschule.
Today we had a very exciting day, because we learnt that a school near Barcelona is our partnerschool and they have a basketball field!
But we began the session with showing our objects that we brought from home, we introduced ourselves telling why we choose this object, and what sound it could do. Then we made a little listening exercise to concentrate better on what we hear.
And then everyone from us 22 children recorded with a little help his object and the sound it made.
We learnt that to record objects we have to be very silent in the classroom, and that we have to announce our name and what we record before creating the noise.
We experienced that our own voice and the sound of the object sounds very differently when we record it, just as if we were holding our ear right next to the object.
And while we were recording and talking the time went by so fast we didn’t get to compose our first mysound-composition.
We are all very excited if the partnerschool will find out what we recorded? And what did they record?
MySounds from Rennes (France)
Hello everybody,
Today, we went to the computer room to see on the screen the site of “thecityrings”.
The pupils brought some objects from home others some they found in the classroom. We tried to draw some sounds from them. After that in each group, we recorded the sound trying to avoid to get only drumming sounds. It was nice to listen afteward the recorded sounds as they ‘look’ really different.
Tomorrow, we’ll begin to construct a soundscape with the “mysounds” of German students from Berlin. Looking forward to it !
Listen you !
Monday, January 14th 2013 :
The class was divided into three small groups. One group recorded the sounds of their objects in the room of the gamelan ( a set of instruments from Bali). It was hard to not use it as it sounds really really good!
On this pictures, you can see us during a recording session. We had : spoons, fork, pencil case, scissors,etc.
Now, you can listen the result of the day, enjoy !
Try to find the sources of the sounds and rendez-vous on Freesounds to listen our other “mysounds” !
My Sounds from BMS Berlin
Hello,
For the first session I introduced the students to the recording device and spoke about the levels for avoiding distortion and we talked about ‘closing miking’ putting the recorder close to things to use the recording device to hear the sounds like you would use a magnify glass to see more details.
After the discussion I ask students to find objects in the classroom that they through they could make an interesting sound with. The students found pencil sharpers, zips on pencil case, paint squiring out of the tube, chairs to bang, pencils to hit together, water taps to run… while students were at their tables l walked around each table recording each sound (recording each sound at a time, pressing stop and recorded at each table to edit the sounds in the recorder directly)
My Sounds from Ghent
Hello ,
Here we are again for a new edition of the CityRings in Ghent.
As a start we listened to ‘silence’ for a minute. But it turned out there was no silence at all. We heard a lot of sounds around us, especially because there were loud construction works going on in the school. But we also heard very tiny sounds such as the movement of our clothes and dripping of water somewhere we couldn’t locate.
Afterwards we experimented with the sound objects everyone brought from home.
We tried to make as many different sounds as possible with them and we recorded our favourite sounds. You can listen to some of them here :
Then we listened carefully to our sounds and it was crazy to see that we sometimes couldn’t remember how the sound was made.
To end the first session we listened to a movie fragment and we tried to make up our own story of it just by listening. Listening to movies ( without seeing it ) defintely triggers imagination, you should try it too there in France and Spain !
More soon !
