Recorded Sounds

With my newly made piezo in hand, I explored my instructor's, Mr. Speciale's, conglomeration of music-making instruments as well as sounds that could be made from classroom objects. Using Audacity, I recorded sounds ranging from tapping a music stand to massaging a wooden tree frog to shaking a giant maraca. It was a productive day; my group as a whole recorded 89 sounds.

John Cage

John Cage, a highly avant-garde musical innovator and pioneered the concepts of music's omnipresence as well as omni-perceptibility. In other words, he believed music was around at all times, in all places, and in all things. He enjoyed the music he found in construction, traffic, perhaps wind blowing through grass, and, when all other sound was muted in Harvard's anechoic chamber, even what he thought to be his blood flow and nervous system. His major contributions to music included the prepared piano, the roots of which lie in his unique style of relocating the rhythm of a composition in the foreground, rather than the background. in the strings of which he placed screws that would serve as a percussive distortion to the piano's existing sound; thus, he transformed the piano into its own orchestra. Today, Cage is referenced mainly in alternative contemporary culture. Artists much on the edges of mainstream music such as Aphex Twin, Sonic Youth, and Frank Zappa have acknowledged his innovations in their own productions.

Various modes of listening - applied to previous post's videos

Rain Stick Piezo:
Causal - the number of vibrations made with the piezo in the amount of time indicates a high amount of objects making contact with the walls of the stick.

Slinky Piezo:
Causal - it is evident from the pattern of sounds that the slinky is very pliable.

Wine Glass Piezo:
Causal - the short length of each sound indicates that this wine glass doesn't vibrate well and absorbs shock very well.

Contact mics!

We can do things like this too!

This guy uses a rain stick with a piezo mic to produce a really cool rain-sounding set of vibrations:

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

This innovator hooked up his piezo to a slinky, creating vibrations that bring you back to the times when you played with these toys yourself:

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

This producer glued the piezo to a wine glass and experiments making sounds on it with different utensils:

Yggdrasil - The Norse Mythological Tree

Yggdrasil

This expansive tree from ancient Norse mythology links and shelters all worlds and guards the wells of wisdom, fate, and roaring kettle (the source of rivers and knowledge).
Many famous Norse mythological characters are said to live in Yggdrasil, where they are protected from harm.

As the tree Yggdrasil is ubiquitous to Norse mythology, music is a universal language similar to math because all ethnicities and cultures of the world can understand and partake in it. One does not need to know the language of lyrics which may or may not be present in music to enjoy its sound.

Music also shelters us from stressors, unwanted negativity or positivity, and pain alike.

A deep understanding and compatibility with music is a strong indicator of wisdom in experience. The more exposure one has to music, the wiser one becomes as music is like exposure to raw emotion and truly advances and expands a person.

Music can be thought of as a harbinger of fate in the same sense that a positive mental disposition can bring positive occurrences and the reverse can bring negative ones. As one allows music to become more of one’s reality, the future such a person might choose and shape for him/herself might correspond to the music.