Predictably, we once again headed to the usual meeting place; The Shed. Predictably, we sat down with our smooth pints and got down to business. Unpredictably, no sooner than we’d sat down, I unzipped my bag (and no, it’s not Mary Poppin’s magic carpet bag, it’s a brown leather number!) and pulled out my singing bowl and two sets of “Chinese Exercise Balls”, jingling as they clonked together in their neat little boxes. The perfect ingredient to any meditation-inspired composition, as I (repeatedly) pointed out to the gents.
This led us nicely onto the idea of comprising a list of sounds which we would be using in the piece, half of which we had already recorded, and half of which that were still to be included. Timmie and I whipped out our notepads and pens, the unofficial group secretaries and scribbled down a list, him writing the list of sounds we already had, me thinking of the sounds that we still needed. Timmie’s list read: Wind (check), Birds (check), Swans (check), “Grass Walking” (footsteps through grass; check) and Thunder (check). Underneath this, I wrote: Singing bowl, Wind chimes, Water → Trickling? → Dropping something in?, Karimba (a “thumb piano”) and Swishing branches.
We decided that, due to our ideas and eventual aims of the piece, we would no longer require to record animals other than birds, so our trip to Riseholme campus would no longer be needed. This is because the type of animals that we could record there would not fit in with our ideas, unless we were to heavily distort/edit them, which would go against our idea of keeping the soundscape and sounds used as natural as possible.
We finished our meeting and headed our separate ways. I then had to prolong my writing of the blog, due to the previous meeting’s blog not yet being uploaded. This, however, gave me the chance to do some more personal research (which, as you have probably guessed by now, is pretty much my favourite thing, ever) that, due to the delay, I am now able to include in this blog post.
I spoke to some members of a meditation group, who meet frequently for guided meditation and soup, to ask what aspects they think should be included in a meditation-inspired composition. Alva, who hosts the group and takes them through a guided meditation, spoke about the frequencies that affect us as humans, something which we had already discussed in our Principles of Audio lectures. In her words, “Different people resonate with different frequencies, though there are certain frequencies and pitches which everybody can hear and relate with. It’s these that they [meditative pieces] include. This is because people are feeling orientated and we feel sound.” She spoke about how meditative pieces should paint an image within a person’s head, but not have a “story-line”, as the idea is to allow the individual’s mind to respond to the piece in its own way.
-Vashti
