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Blue Hill Moon: Bone Flutes, Forest Gifts, and Soundscapes

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A Blue Hill Moon   Bone Flutes Forest Gifts and Soundscapes The Start - We began this project with a strong desire to work with foraged material. - One rainy day, shortly after the ground had thawed, we went looking for morel mushrooms. On our  journey, we found the skeletal remains of a male deer, but did not find any mushrooms. - We waited some time before deciding to use the bone to create an instrument. - Confirmation came to us in the forest when we found some morels while looking again for the skeletal remains of the deer. - After locating the deer, we offered the remains the finest morels we found in exchange for a leg bone, and an antler. Dryad's Saddle Mushroom Morel Mushroom & Slug Friend Deer remains with morel Offering Processing - We found the bone and the morels at an intense time! Spring was springing and the ground was shifting. It was important to us to to process our findings emotionally and otherwise, so enjoyed some mor...
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Noises of Oberlin Spring:  A Soundscape Composition For ETHM 212, Spring 2019 ETHM final write up “Noises of Oberlin Spring” is a soundscape composition and video that was created using original recordings from the area. Focusing on vocal bird populations, the piece used production techniques in Ableton Live, and was designed to highlight the prevalence of noise pollution in our everyday lives in the small town of Oberlin, Ohio. The town has a population of roughly 8,000 people, but the sounds of traffic remain prominent in the soundscape. The project was inspired by the compositional works of Hildegard Westerkamp, who utilized sound production techniques in order to explore humans relationship to the sounds around them. The notable soundscape composer views the field of acoustic ecology or soundscape studies as being, “the study of the interrelationship between sound, nature and society,” and this was a key goal of the project (Westerkamp 51). “Noises of Oberli...
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Music and Ivory: Artifacts of a Destructive Past

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Music and Ivory: Artifacts of a Destructive Past What do you think about when you hear the word ivory?   Maybe your first thought is of discomfort, with ivory’s violent history of elephant poaching and the near extinction of all species of elephant or maybe you also think about a beautiful piece of art in a museum.  Most likely, your mind does not jump directly to “music.” However, ivory was used in the production of musical instruments from various musical practices around the world. As we know, music is an important part of human society and culture.  Historically and in our modern age, music is an integral part of our daily lives- from storytelling to religious practices and rituals to advertising and pop culture. Much like all human practices, music is tied to the production and use of tools- in this case, instruments- made from our earth’s materials such as wood, stone, bone, and especially ivory.   While it is often unsavory to think about h...
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Location: 77 W College St, Oberlin, OH 44074, USA
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Lo-fi Oberlin For my Music and Ecology Final, I chose to compose a piece using only sounds recorded around Oberlin in an attempt to increase people’s aural awareness and to blur the lines between “sounds” and “music”. With the right mindset, anything can be music. Process I recorded all the sounds on my phone and then imported them into FL Studio. I began by creating the drums and percussion of the song. The “snare drum” is actually a rock being tossed at a plank of wood. I pitched it down a bit and then EQd it to get a nice snare sound. The kick is actually two “kicks” layered on top of each other. The first is simply me hitting a bench in the arb with my palm. It gave a pretty kicky sound, so I didn’t have to manipulate it much. I did trim it to a bit to remove some of the ringing from the bench. The second kick is a rock being thrown at the same bench. This gave a sound that was higher pitched than I wanted, but after some trimming, pitching down, and EQing, I managed to g...
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Black River Soundscape Podcast

Black River Podcast This podcast is a mix of Hildegard Westerkamp's Kits Beach Soundwalk and an informative podcast on environmental awareness.
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oberhear.com - Noise Pollution at Oberlin

Check out my website oberhear.com , which addresses noise pollution in specific dorms at Oberlin and dissects the issues that make it so dangerous for students!
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Podcast on Birdsong in the Northern Ohio Region

https://soundcloud.com/user-728740685/bird-podcast/s-IYvSH Bibliography Feld, Steven. 1991. Voices of the Rainforest: A Day in the Life of the Kaluli People . Rykodisc RD10173 Kaplan, Sarah. “ Some birds are so stressed by noise pollution it looks like they have PTSD.” The Washington Post. January 9, 2018 . Accessed May 14, 2019. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2018/01/09/some-birds-are-so-stressed-by- noise-pollution-it-looks-like-they-have-ptsd/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.fbe04c09b6d3 . Krause, Bernie. 2012. Excerpts The Great Animal Orchestra: Finding the Origins of Music in the World’s Wild Places. New York: Little, Brown. Ma, Yo-Yo Impressions . “Saint-Saens, Camille, Le carnaval des animaux: Le Cygne (the Swan) (version for cello and piano).” accompanied by Gaby Casadesus. Sony Classical 884977835441. 2011, compact disc. Accessed May 17, 2019. Spotify. Organic Nature Sounds.   Pieceful Wildlife. “Sunny Field with Bi...
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