Let's compose with sound--all we need is a web browser and an internet connection. Along the way, we will write in wiki.

gif animation of a selection from Marshall McLuhan's The Medium is the Massage

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I tell you: one must still have chaos in one, to give birth to a
dancing star. I tell you: ye have still chaos in you.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra

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Writing takes work, but writing together requires play. Here's a chance to play around with the very idea of music. Words notoriously fail to describe music very well, so as you play around at the Freesound site, you might consider how interaction itself creates diverse distinctions between organized sound and noise. Where, and how, does noise become music? To explore this matter first-hand, listen to each other's freesound compositions (instructions, below), and add layers of sounds in response. While you listen, write. Actively making music will help us focus our collective attention on important steps in collaborative rhetorical processes and teach us the art of premise-matching. All you'll need is an internet connection and a web browser.

Noise generator on an ARP synth, set to "on"

Step 1

1 Sequencing and layering sound can alter how you feel and where you focus your mind. Go to the Freesound site at http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/. Freesound makes it easy for anyone to play around with and layer different sounds. Using the Firefox web browser, you can play and loop different sounds in different tabs in the same browser window. "Record" your composition by creating a wiki space for your composition, and placing the freesound urls that you selected at that space. At this stage, you might want to blog a bit about the recording process. Think like a composer: listen to the layers of sounds you've selected, and tell us (performers, listeners, and fellow composers) about them (give us directives, write out liner notes, share associational thoughts, etc). You may be compelled to place images, links, and previously composed text (prose or poetry) on this page, as well. Upload. Now, your peers can all open the tabs you selected and concatenated, and in doing so, read your writing while they listen to your composition.

Step 2

2 Listen again to your classmate's compositions. At your blog space, post links the two you liked best. What effect does the music seem to induce in listeners? Are the compositions you selected musical or just plain noisy? Write a couple hundred words and post to your blog.

Step 3

Mash them up

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JanuaryTwentyThree

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