Laurie Anderson

This is a collection of songs about the financial crisis in America. Unusual subject matter. I quite like what i have heard from these pieces in the fact that the background noises automatically give you a sense of space, and she has a variety of different 'spaces' that she's in. And i like how she obviously has something shes wanting to say in them, an opinion. However, I doubt i could create anything in any way similar to any of these pieces (particularly as i have no musical background). They also seem like audio poetry, which im also not much of a fan of unless its particularly funny.

Bus Idea

Ive done some quick notes on ideas ive had for the bus idea that Debbie suggested. Theres not much, Im really not sure how to go with this idea. We seem to have less ideas than with the kitchen theme. Hopefully Alex will have some ideas..

Tutorial with Debbie

Went to a tutorial with Debbie to pitch our ideas so far.
It didn’t go so well, unfortunately it turned out we were the third group in a row to pitch the kitchen idea and she didnt think it was interesting enough, she had a point but I thought we could make something more interesting out of it. Debbie thinks we should try to focus on our bus stop idea but instead try and make the sense of space an actual bus. Im a little concerned that this might be quite difficult to record sounds separately from each other without having other sounds overlapping. Im also unsure how to make it any more interesting than our current kitchen idea. However, Alex likes her idea so we’re going to focus on making the bus idea interesting.

Non-Verbal Narrative

Because so far our project doesnt seem to have any voices or script, Ive been looking on the internet for non-verbal storytelling. Here's a Youtube clip of one I found:

I like that they've been able to tell a story without using verbal communication, however, i got slightly bored halfway through the piece, and as our piece is only a minute shorter than this one, i think we need something more to jazz it up a bit. Im not sure what yet though..

Mics

During our Skills workshop, Darryl showed us a website that has all kinds of info on microphones, it seems pretty useful

Lost Sounds!

O No!

while editing the sounds ive already recorded, Ive somehow managed to lose all but one, not-so-well-recorded kettle boiling sound.
I had all of my sounds on one half hour audio track and was attempting to split them all up to individual short, edited clips so that i could place them all onto our timeline and give us a better idea of which other sounds we still needed to record.
Its somehow managed to save just the boiling kettle when i had intended to save the entire project.
O well, looks like im recording it all again. Thankfully it wasnt something id had to travel far to record..

Sound Test

I did a quick sound test, took out the Marantz 661’s (slightly different to the 660’s we’d used before but pretty close..) so tested this out by getting the key sounds for our sound piece. I intend to place them quickly on a timeline to check how they flow before we decide if we need additional sounds or which of the sounds we’ll actually need. Used an Omni handheld mic, Ill use a rifle mic for most, next time I collect sounds.
Ive actually recorded about half an hour of sounds so not quite sure how ill fit them all in at the moment, ill definately be able to layer some of them.

          Today I collected:

• Kettle Boiling
• Kettle pouring
• Tea stirring
• Tea slurping
• Toast popped
• Spreading butter on toast
• Toast chewed
• Fridge opened and closed
• Cupboards opened and closed
• Plate put in sink
• Ambient Fridge noise
• 2x Clocks ticking
• Chopping onions
• Frying onions in pan
• Cracking an egg in frying pan