Vox popping time!

The term Vox Pops comes from the Latin phrase 'Vox Populi', meaning the voice of the people. A technique often used in broadcasting, news programs, radio shows and podcasts, a vox pop is a sound byte of a person, usually picked at random, giving their opinion on a question asked by the presenter. It is a way of presenting differing opinions on a topic from a diverse range of sources, and is a technique that we will be using for our radio show on Revolutions and Music.

To practice collecting vox pops and getting over the nerve wracking process of approaching complete strangers to ask a question that to them would seem completely random, we were sent out last Tuesday to get vox pops of young people's opinions on poetry. After getting over the initial awkwardness, we started approaching people more easily and were able to get many varying opinions on whether poetry is relevant to young people today. We then uploaded all the vox pops and edited them using Logic Pro, here is the result:

vox pops 1.mp4

We also went out today to collect vox pops for our radio show, asking people on the street in the city centre questions such as favourite genre of music and what their opinion is on why music doesn't seem to be as revolutionary today as it has been in the past. The exercise definitely helped, in that we knew what we were getting into and made us more relaxed and confidant in asking the questions. We also were surprised at how many people really did have opinions and weren't afraid or nervous in sharing them, resulting in a lot of varying answers and viewpoints that we will definitely be using in our show.

Soundscape - A journey through cultures.

My idea for a soundscape was to create a journey through different cultures through sound, resulting in this finished product.

Soundscapes.mp3

You can download it here.

I used GarageBand to make this as that is the audio editing program I own and have used before. Through this project I actually learned a lot of skills that can also be used in Logic, etc, such as using audio control points to fade in and out of tracks and using effects and filters to enhance the sound. Here is a photo of the process:


When I first began this assignment I found it was a lot harder than I thought it would be to collect recordings of sounds of other cultures being stuck in one city in southwest England. Eventually though, using mainly my own recordings of buskers, transportation, etc but also some samples/loops and sound effects from GarageBand, I was able to find some ethnic sounds and music and sounds of transportation to evoke the feeling of going on a journey. There were also some bits where I recorded myself, such as the middle-eastern-sounding singing at 1:40.

Using sounds of western culture for the first 45 seconds, including church bells and a childrens choir that were singing 'Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye' (thought it was fitting) on the street one day, then transitioning through the sounds of transportation (a train, then an airplane taking off) to the sounds of crickets, African drums and singing, and so on, I wanted to create an atmosphere of traveling around the world and experiencing different cultures through sound. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the project and learned a lot through it.

Found film montage exercise - Panorama Ephemera

This exercise was based on American film maker Bruce Connor's work. Bruce Connor was known for making film montages using found footage, and in this exercise we used Final Cut Pro to make our own interpretation of a song he used for one of his montages, America is Waiting by Brian Eno and David Byrne (of American new wave band Talking Heads). We used footage from a film called Panorama Ephemera made by Rick Prelinger.


For some reason, when I uploaded this onto Vimeo the uploaded video contained a lot of footage I never intended to be in it and also cut the music short. The actual quicktime video before I uploaded it didn't have these problems, so I have no idea what could have caused it, but here it is:

Untitled from Esther Ridings on Vimeo.

This exercise was useful but a bit frustrating at times, as there were a lot of problems with FCP that had to be dealt with that also might have been the cause for the issues showing up once I uploaded it. That said, those problems themselves provided knowledge of troubleshooting that might be useful in the future. I was glad for the practice, as I've never used FCP or done any film editing of any sort before, having always focused more on the photography and journalism aspect of media. I've found it interesting to learn though and I'm sure I'll be using more of it in the future.

Interview for radio show + progress and minutes

As part of our radio show exploring the reasons for music not being as revolutionary today as it has been in the past, we've decided to interview some contacts in the music industry to get some professional insight. My interviewee is my brother-in-law, Adam Rosenfeld, who is a recording artist, a music producer and CEO of Men of Israel Records. Here is a sample of questions I'm planning to ask him:

How long have you been in the music business?

What are the reasons you decided to switch to completely digital music release and distribution?

How do you think the advent of the digital age affects music production/consumerism today?

Do you think that the quality of music has changed over the years? If so, how?

In your opinion, what are the possible reasons you think music is not as revolutionary today as it has been in the past?

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Apart from this, we've all been looking for samples of music and sound bytes to use for the radio show - Mandy is looking up songs from the dance/rave movement, Simon's looking for samples of songs from the rock and roll revolution such as Elvis, the Beatles, etc, and I'm looking for samples of music (punk, etc) that made political statements and were the voice of the generation at that time. An example of this is the anti-war song by Edwin Starr, called War:



During our last team meeting, we took the 'minutes', with Simon noting (very enthusiastically) the action points, ideas, and estimated timeline for our project:

Present: Esther, Mandy and Simon J

Location: Gatehouse Bath Spa Date: 10/11/09

Action point!!!!!! Each group member finds samples of music which they think is suitable for our production

Simon – Elvis music
Esther – Political music – punk, protest

Mandy – Trance/Dance

Mandy says she has found a thing on her blog about punk philosophy

How do you think the advent of a digital age affects music production and consumerism today? – Technical dudes!!! – Esther’s bro, Si’s producers, Mandy’s music guy and lecturer

ACTION POINT!!!! Mandy e-mail lecturer!!! Esther e-mail Bro!!!!!! Si talk to producers!!!!

Is the quality of music to blame for no music revolution? – General public, music students – VOX POP TIME! – 2 weeks time

Favourite genre of music question – good suggestion Esther!

ACTION POINT!!! – Mandy book Mirans and boom mic for Thursday 19^th

ACTION POINT!!! – Book gatehouse for 25^th Nov for post production

ACTION POINT!!! – Simon – Album sales, Mandy – Internet uploads, Esther – Live music

Timeline –

- 19^th November meet in City centre for vox popping

- 20^th November all recordings complete

- 25^th November Gate house – 10:00

- 4^th December Post production complete

Radio Show!...of music and revolutions

The theme of our radio show is:
Why is music not as revolutionary today as it was in the past?

The assignment was for us to split up into teams and write, direct and produce a 5-minute radio show on a subject of our choice. Along with Mandy and Simon, we first had the idea to do a broader theme of how music affects culture, going through the last century of music movements, such as the jazz and blues era, rock and roll, punk and ending with dance/rave music. Through this we wanted to illustrate how music was instrumental in many of the cultural revolutions of the last century and had the power to shift mindsets and paradigms on a massive scale, as well as how, or if music could have the same effect on culture today.

However. We soon realised with Mike's help that the idea, although one that we all were interested in, was more of a series than a 5-minute radio segment and we decided it would be best to narrow down the field. As we were brainstorming we realised that the main idea we were wanting to put across was that music has caused entire culture revolutions in the past - why doesn't it seem to do so on the same scale today?

This is the discussion we want to put forward in our radio show, exploring different possibilities and raising questions as to what's changed. We thought of two main possible reasons that we decided to focus the show on; first, could it be because of technology and the possibility of instant access to any song of any sort of music rather than one genre of music defining a decade and entire generations as it has in the past; or the second, is it because the quality of music has deteriorated to the point where it's simply not as good, becoming too formulaic rather than new, revolutionary sounds packed with meaning?

The way we'll do this is by first establishing how music revolutionised culture in the past by giving examples such as The Beatles and their role in bringing about the hippie/free love revolution. We would then interview people in the music industry world, music students and professors and balance it with vox pops of people on the street to get as many opinions as possible, as well as people who might have lived through and been part of a music revolution in the past. We would ask questions such as:

1. How do you think the advent of the digital age affects music production/consumerism today?

or

2. In your opinion, has the quality of music changed over the years? If so, how?

...and so on. We would also want to use sound bites of interviews that revolutionary music artists have done themselves and samples of songs that had enough influence to change the mindset of an entire generation, contrasting them with songs from today. We would want to end by leaving the question lingering in people's minds: Why isn't music as powerful in causing massive-scale revolutions today as it has proven to be in the past?

Photo Montage - Modern Day Slavery

I decided to do my photo montage along a theme of issues of social justice, especially modern day slavery as this is a subject I feel passionate about. I used excerpts of three songs, "Beloved (Thievery Corporation remix)" by Anoushka Shankar, "Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime" by Beck, and "The Earth Will Shake" by the band Thrice. Using the narrative effect of combining images, I used photos of people that I've taken over the last few years of traveling through some of the countries most affected by human trafficking and modern day slavery. I also found some archival photos of slavery, to contrast what we know as slavery to the modern form happening today that most people know nothing about. Links to found photos below.

Untitled from Esther Ridings on Vimeo.

Contrast - human

Animal

Slave family

African Slaves

Handcuffs

Oxen

Slave advert - 1829

Modern Slavery - BBC News

Proposal for soundscape

My proposal for a soundscape is based on the second type of soundscape in Barry Truax's paper, the moving soundscape. It is also influenced by the opening sequence of Orson Welle's film Touch of Evil, where the sounds followed a couple walking through crowded streets, with changing music and sound effects to create the effect of a journey using sound, shown below:



I would like to create a journey through cultures using sounds, contrasting western and eastern cultures - perhaps starting in an urban, western environment using sounds of traffic, buskers, trains, and then a sound of an airplane taking off, transitioning into soundmarks and traditional music such as folk dancing, chanting, singing, etc from cultures all across the globe.

To do this I would use sound bites filmed from my own travels or those of friends, record sound founds such as traffic or footsteps, perhaps use found sound bites on the internet if copyright laws allow and try to find international experiences in the city to record the music and sounds of different cultures.

The point of this would be to signify a journey across the globe, experiencing and creating the illusion of being immersed in different cultures through sound.