â—¼ **Bill Forman** interviews deep-listening legend **Pauline Oliveros** at [csindy.com](http://www.csindy.com/coloradosprings/from-john-cage-to-sonic-youth-experimental-music-pioneer-pauline-oliveros-reflects-on-a-life-well-lived/Content?oid=2655997):
>Q: I’m wondering what advice you might have for people who think of more experimental music as, you know, quote-unquote difficult. What sorts of things should they be listening for, in order to better appreciate it?
>
>A: Well, I think the best thing to do would be to get something that disturbs them, and play it over and over again, until they’re no longer disturbed.
>
>Q: You’re not gonna get many people to do that.
>
>A: Well, you know, it’s up to them. But the experience is worth it. Because you find out quick that the more familiar something becomes, the more interested you are.
â—¼ New York’s MoMa is doing a big sound art show later this year. “Soundings: A Contemporary Score” will run from August 10 through November 3, per [nytimes.com](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/arts/design/sound-art-at-moma-and-big-works-at-christies-and-sothebys.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&). The show’s curator, **Barbara London**, made a comment in the New York Times piece — “Sound has come into the limelight”— that is either synaesthetically coy or, more likely, a prime example of how sound continues to labor in the, shall we say, shadow of the visual.
â—¼ The following conversation appears in a flashback between the title character in the CBS TV series *The Good Wife* (**Julianna Margulies**’ Alicia Florrick) and her deceased client, Matthew Ashbaugh, played by **John Noble**, who played **Walter Bishop** on *Fringe*. Like Bishop, Noble’s *Good Wife* character has an emotional and obsessive association with recorded sound. He carries with him little speakers that play back the same Bach piece over and over:
>Florrick: “You travel with your own soundtrack?”
>
>Noble: “Yes. Don’t you?”
The episode was titled “Death of a Client” and first aired March 24, 2013.
â—¼ The global engineering consultancy Arup has launched [arupconnect.com](http://arupconnect.com), a website-as-magazine about its endeavors. Arup has a large acoustic practice, with a particular emphasis on performance spaces. In a post from late last year, **Anne Guthrie**, who works in the New York office, explores the idea of [“acoustics for musicians,”](http://www.arupconnect.com/2012/11/09/acoustical-design-for-musicians/) which is predicated on the observation that much work by acousticians focused on the needs of the audience, at the expense of the needs of the performer: “Today, acoustic technology is faster and more complex, allowing us to recreate the entire experience of playing in multiple halls in a single room. In Arup’s SoundLab, several acousticians — including **Iain Laird** in Scotland and **Terence Caulkins**, **Kathleen Stetson**, and me in New York — have been working to develop a system where musicians can come into the lab and play in any hall or room in real time.”
â—¼ **Amon Tobin** has posted an example of the nearly hour-long audio that the recent shows on his ISAM tour have been playing before the curtain rises. It’s streaming-only, over at [soundcloud.com/amon-tobin](https://soundcloud.com/amon-tobin/isam-intro-version/s-Dkdfa). Found via [amontobin.com/news](http://www.amontobin.com/news/pre-show-music-recent-european-isam-live-shows). In a note, Tobin explains that **Jamie Harley** (“long time friend and collaborator in sound”) has been mixing this music live:
http://soundcloud.com/amon-tobin/isam-intro-version/s-Dkdfa
â—¼ **C. Reider** has launched a new netlabel, focused on supporting work that employs a Creative Commons license allowing for derivative works. Great URL, too: [deriv.cc](http://www.deriv.cc/works/).
â—¼ Over at [newyorker.com](http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2013/03/trailer-trash.html), **Ian Crouch** explores the “dunnhhh” sound that is in so many movie trailers these days. Correspondence on Twitter between critic **Geeta Dayal** and Echo Nest’s **Brian Whitman** rightly questioned some of Crouch’s language, in particular the phrase “accursed bass drone.” One thing Crouch doesn’t mention is how [sound in the *Prometheus* trailer linked the film back to the original trailer for *Alien*](http://www.thegeekgeneration.com/2012/03/prometheus-trailer-shares-sounds-heard-in-original-alien-trailer/).
â—¼ The One Hello World project by **Jared Brickman**, whose hour-long ambient piano work served as the basis for [the 65th Disquiet Junto project](https://disquiet.com/2013/03/28/disquiet0065-pianoverlay/), has been awarded a [2013 Webby for “net art.”](http://winners.webbyawards.com/2013/web/general-website/netart/honorees) This is the One Hello World project’s summary: “Leave me a voicemail and I’ll write music behind your narrative. Call it a soundtrack to your thoughts.”
â—¼ The great io9.com website has posted [crazy images from the Japanese album of the *Lost in Space* soundtrack](http://io9.com/freaky-alien-artwork-from-the-lost-in-space-japanese-so-472862414) and, separately, asks, [“Why do so many electric things hum?”](http://io9.com/why-do-so-many-electric-things-hum-472598475)
â—¼ Also via [i09.com](http://io9.com/listen-to-the-first-760-000-years-of-the-universe-471535830), this is (streaming-only, no download) an “auditory representation of the Big Bang” by physicist **John Cramer**, who “produced the audio by mapping sound frequencies to the changes detected over time in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation”:
â—¼ SoundCloud had a pretty funny April Fools joke in the form of “the dropometer” ([blog.soundcloud.com](http://blog.soundcloud.com/2013/04/01/dropometer/)):
â—¼ If you use [SoundCloud](http://SoundCloud.com) and have an [about.me](http://www.about.me/) page, they now [play together well](http://blog.about.me/2013/04/04/soundcloud-youtube-vimeo-and-blog/). Unfortunately, for the time being, if you also have a blog whose feed you want to include, as I do at [about.me/marc.weidenbaum](http://about.me/marc.weidenbaum/), then you have to choose between that and a SoundCloud embed.
â—¼ And this is pretty nifty. The official help page on [soundcloud.com](http://help.soundcloud.com/customer/portal/articles/874929-where-are-groups-) about the Groups functionality [uses the Disquiet Junto as a visual](http://help.soundcloud.com/customer/portal/articles/874929-where-are-groups-). *(Thanks to [Guy Birkin](http://aestheticcomplexity.wordpress.com/) for [letting me know](https://twitter.com/GuyBirkin/status/322996107389059072).)*
