sije

may 18, 2003.

'Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.'
[ Caliban, Tempest - Shakespeare ]

[4.]
Thursday night I captured sounds in the 'light' version of Pro Tools, installed on my tita-book, once more marvelling at the wealth of the sounds that surround us every single moment of every single day.
I listen to the recordings made, and created a Pro Tools session per day in which, for the moment I simply put the parts that at this first 'cueing' appear to be worth while using.

It 's a bit of an over-charge really. Recording, archiving and onlining all of this more or less in parallel. More so, as also recordings made by other 'geluidjutters' this week will be arriving, of which I'm supposed to 'take care' as well.

Got the first of these today, from Jet van Boxtel, who's doing a programme for Dutch national radio (VPRO), aimed at children (aged 0 to 100+), called Oren Wassen (which should translate to something like both 'Clean out your ears' and 'washing your ears', but having a fun 'double sense' in Dutch that I suppose both these translations are lacking, as the Dutch 'oren wassen' used when adressing children is a euphemism for 'punish', sort of like 'punish verbally', which accounts for the washing of the ears). Jet brought in an MD full of recordings she made yesterday on a 'geluidjutten' day she had organised for children of one of the isle's primary schools. It'll be part of next week's edition of the programme.

In the evening she dropped in again, with yet ('Jet') another MD, this time with recordings done by her during the day.

Moody weather.
In the morning I went to see a demonstration of the action of the 'paardenreddingsboot' [ horserecueboat ], a (motorised) lifeboat pulled by a span of eight horses, all the way from the village, over the top of the dunes and then launched by the horses straight into the sea. I set myself up with my microphone, covered by a small umbrella (which btw turns out to be a pretty valuable piece of equipment, protecting against both rain and wind) in the corner where the contraption turns from the Tjetteppad (the small road leading out of the village) and the horses accelerate in order to pull the enormous weight up the dike.
Sounded like a tank passing.

In the afternoon I got soaking wet, but then later on stumbled upon one of the breeding-grounds for sea-gulls, a small stroke of green between sea wall and sea. There must've been several thousands of them, and the noise they made definitely counts among the most impressive I've recently heard.

In the evening I decided to look into the sonic qualities of the local pub, Herberg de Zwaan. It might've been a one beer quickie, where it not for Jet, who entered de Zwaan after earlier field investigations in bar de Griffel, where she had been able to convince a group of middle aged locals to let her record them singing high-lights from Bizet's Les pêcheurs de perles (The Perl Fishers).

It then was many hours, beers and several tapes later, and only after some extraordinary performances by Sije de Vries, a member of de soos from Sneek over for a week-end on the island, which included his bigger-than-life rendering of the sounds made by farm animals, belly-dancing, other acrobatics and more - accompanied by an endless stream of highlights from sixties & seventies popmusic -, that de Zwaan's management made us call it a day and we all went down the vilage's main street back to our respective hotels, singing in the rain.

Seriously.

may 19, 2003.

[5.]

[Timo & de DJ]

More cueing and capturing on sunday - I selected the parts of Jet and the children's recordings that I'd like to use. Also made a couple of recordings in and around the galery. In the afternoon a truly fierce wind started blowing, making outdoor recording pretty much impossible, but producing a whistling sound through window cracks that simply begged to be snapped. For this I put the microphone right next to the window pane, on a ledge. The result is pretty amazing, as it mixes the whistling of the wind with sounds from the outside and from the inside.