Podcast 1
Sonic Alchemy: Mixing Environmental Sounds with Music
What Students Will Do:
- Explore several examples of historical innovation in early electronic music
- Listen to environmental sounds and explore the modern recording techniques that allow arrangers to layer or combine them with music
- Recognize how environmental sounds, recordings, and music can influence other artistic creations, such as podcasts and movies
National Music Education Standards Addressed:
- Standard 6: Listening to, analyzing, and describing music
- Standard 7: Evaluating music and music performances
- Standard 9: Understanding music in relation to history and culture
Time/Materials Required:
- 15–20 minutes
- Digital media player or computer access to the Internet
Activity Summary:
Explore the ways in which recordings of environmental sounds, such as rain and thunder, can be combined with music using modern digital recording and mixing techniques, and how such arrangements can affect the emotions of the listener. Students will be asked to listen and carefully compare different versions of environmental sounds, and to make critical judgments regarding their placement within various musical contexts. The activity also examines the role of technology in the development of new instruments, innovative sounds, and composition techniques.
Download Audio Activity and Worksheet:
Click on the link below to download and listen to this activity. Print the student worksheet and distribute to students; instruct them to input their answers while listening to the activity.
Click here to download this podcast
Click here to download Student Worksheet
Click here to download Teacher Worksheet (Student Worksheet with answers)
Vocabulary:
Futurist: A group of activists in both the arts and politics in the early twentieth century who sought to incorporate industrial sounds into their music.
musique concrète: a system of electronic composition in which natural sounds are taped, edited, and shaped into a composition recorded on magnetic tape.
sampling: manipulating bits of prerecorded sound to form new sounds
stereo: designating sound transmission from two sources through two channels to achieve the effect of sound separation.
stereo panning: the spread of a mono signal in a stereo or multi-channel sound field.
theremin: an electronic musical instrument with two projecting electrodes, one that controls pitch and the other, volume.
Additional Teaching Strategies
Use the activity vocabulary and Web link resources as a discussion motivator, or the extension activity as an engaging, in-class project.
Extension Activity:
Ask students to consider whether urban sounds, such as those made from trains or traffic, inspire an emotional response similar to those evoked by sounds or recordings of nature. Then have students create a musical collage by combining a recording of a familiar urban sound with a sample of their favorite music. You can limit the time and scope of the activity by pre-selecting several environmental sounds or short musical samples for use in a composition.
Web Link Resources:
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