Why: 'Architecture and Music'?

The effect of architecture on sound is one that has shaped the development of music itself. Music was and has been composed for specific spaces, and each space has its own acoustic properties. This has been both a conscious, and an unconscious development, and has involved pre-existing as well as constructed spaces.

In a very direct example of the relationship between styles of music and the spaces in which they are heard, David Byrne points out how the drums and chanting of African village songs fit perfectly in an outdoor open space, whereas the melismatic meanderings of Gothic choral music only really work in the acoustic reverb chamber of a stone cathedral. The space shapes the style of music and the delivery of its content; the culture then works within that, but only secondarily. When music evolved from religious worship and began to be recognised as an art form in itself, the composer wrote for the space in which it would be heard simply because that would be the only place that it would be heard.

Yet curiously before even this, natural spaces had a hand in shaping what would even become to be known as 'music'. According to many in the field of acoustic archeology (aka: 'archaeoacoustics'), before even a conscious collaboration between sound and space: natural design played a part in the shaping of ritual and culture that led to musical practice. The echoing, reverberant cave spaces where tribes gathered for shelter and then socially, had acoustic properties that inspired and encouraged tribal rituals, and hence allowed an emerging culture to develop. Cave painting and visual cave art are often found in cave spaces where unique acoustic properties abound - often relating to the image itself: for example a bird image in a place where there is a flutter echo effect.

Therefore since the dawn of civilisation, the space, the sound, and of course the technology facilitating architecture have always been inextricably linked.

What really is 'the sound of the streets'..?

“As this wave from memories flows in, the city soaks it up like a sponge and expands. A description of [the city] as it is today should contain all [the city's] past. The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the flags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls.” - Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities.

All you need to do is start, and countless revelations lie on the other side of a sensory awakening that can be gained from  the simple practice of - listening. 

From that point on, the world will reveal itself to you in scrolls, in artefacts, in histories and symphonies of sound that are ever unfolding in this constantly living, changing universe - a universe that always offers a point of contact through awareness.

'Put The Needle On The Record' (2012)

Part of the portfolio for my Master's degree (2012).

St Barnabas Sound Map 03 (Year 1)

The Year 1 class at St Barnabas were given a talk about active listening, and the difference between active and passive listening.

They were then shown a Sound Map of the World in which you can hear recorded sounds from around the globe. We listened to sounds (recordings) from various places in the world, and the pupils described what they could hear. Lastly, the pupils were then sent out in small groups to capture sounds with hand-held recording devices, with the idea of collecting material for their own Sound Map of St Barnabas School.

Click on the map pointers to hear where the sounds were recorded. Or play from the SoundCloud list below.

From looking at frogs, listening to taps, and jumping off steps the children seemed to be lost in a world of sound...I think the railings are my favourite!




Here are the sounds in a SoundCloud list:

"The creative gesture or intention of recording provides a result, a document, certainly from which seemingly endless possibilities stream."

St Barnabas Sound Map 02 (Year 5)

Year 5 at St Barnabas took their turn at recording and mapping sounds in their school towards the end of 2013. Many took to the idea of an 'archive' in rather touching ways, leaving spoken testaments to their friends and introducing spaces and people vocally when they were in charge of the microphone. Although these poignant eulogies will be archived as part of the whole project, most of the intentionally narrated spoken aspects have been left out, because initially the idea is that all sounds are 'secret' (i.e. we don't know who the recordist is..), and that we are listening to the natural ambience, and naturally occurring sounds...



You can also listen to the sounds (on their own or mixed with the locations above) in the SoundCloud list below...