Earlier this week I posted responses I’d made to a series of questions about listening posed by Steve Ashby, who teaches music at Virginia Commonwealth University. Two more people have replied to Ashby’s questions, and I wanted to share segments of their thoughts here, both of them responding to the fourth, and core, question in Ashby’s survey: “How does one make their listening listened to?”
This is Bryan Walthall, a recording and mastering engineer who runs Stereo Image in Richmond, Virginia:
my perception of the way music sounds has changed greatly over the past 15 years. my favorite records when i was a kid (hendrix, nirvana) sound completely different! sometimes it breaks my heart because they don’t have the exact same magic they did when i was younger. its as if my “suspension of reality”has been diminished because I’ve seen the sausage being made for 15 years. for the most part they still evoke the same emotional response, but it has been diminished. i hear things completely different now, because i know how they were achieved. thats good for me making records, but the kid in me gets a little bummed sometimes that i can’t just listen to the song, i have to “hear the drums”or “know thats a plate and not a spring”or that “thats obviously a vocal double.”
This is the sound artist Stephen Vitiello. Up top is an image of visitors to one of his sound installations:
I mostly hope to achieve this in installation environments. Setting lighting in a space, comfortable seating, establishing a volume level and a speaker system that works well with the material are all important. Also, removing or minimizing visual distractions is vital ”“ so that it is clear that in the work I’m presenting, sound is primary and not secondary to any sort of visual content. As I re-read these responses, it seems I’m hoping to create a space for the installations that goes back to what I used to create for myself when listening to a new record for the first time.
Ashby is archiving the responses at his ashbysounds.com website, and on his syllabus page at VCU’s rampages.us site.