R Murray Schafer Quotes

Today all sounds belong to a continuous field of possibilities lying within the comprehensive dominion of music. Behold the new orchestra: the sonic universe! And the musicians: anyone and anything that sounds!

Still the noise in the mind: that is the first task - then everything else will follow in time.

The soundscape of the world is changing. Modern man is beginning to inhabit a world with an acoustic environment radically different from any he has hitherto known. These new sounds, which differ in quality and intensity from those of the past, have alerted many researchers to the dangers of an indiscriminate and imperialistic spread of more and larger sounds into every corner of man’s life. Noise pollution is now a world problem. It would seem that the world soundscape has reached an apex of vulgarity in our time, and many experts have predicted universal deafness as the ultimate consequence unless the problem can be brought quickly under control.

The loudest noise heard on this earth within living memory was the explosion of the caldera Krakatoa in Indonesia on August 26 and 27,1883. The actual sounds were heard as far away as the island of Rodriguez, a distance of nearly 4,500 kilometers,

For a child of five, art is life and life is art... but once the child is in school they get separated--art becomes art and life becomes life.

The final question will be: is the soundscape of the world an indeterminate composition over which we have no control, or are we its composers and performers, responsible for giving it form and beauty?

To take some obvious examples: the territorial calls of birds are reproduced in automobile horn blowing, their alarm calls are reproduced in police sirens and their pleasure calls in the beach-side radio.

Time after time I have heard this item portrayed by a sudden welter of earth-shattering sound and ear-splitting screams. This is way off the mark. The earthquake effect is done in four separate parts, with a few seconds pause between each. Start with a low, shuddering rumble, bring up the gain slowly, hold for a second or two, then drop it back almost to zero. Make the sound itself by shaking two rubber balls around in a cardboard box and recording the sound at double-speed or, if you are able to do so, recording at 15 ips and playing back at 3¾ ips. Having recorded the first part of the “quake” (or “prelude” as it is known), follow on with one or two isolated crockery-smashes and mix-in once more to the rumbling effect, louder this time. Now bring in a sudden sliding, crashing sound, with a tearing metallic “ring” about it. This can be achieved by dropping a quantity of small stones on to the sloping lid of a cardboard box. The lid should be held about a foot above the table surface with a glass jam-jar (lying on its side) at the lower end of the slope. The sound sequence, thus, is that the stones strike the lid of the box, slide down its surface and strike against the side of the jam-jar before coming to rest on the table top. Record the sound at absolute maximum gain. Double-speeding may improve the item still further by both lengthening the sound and giving it a “heavier” quality. Lastly, fade in the rumbling noises once more, hold, then fade to zero. Incidentally, a most uncanny yet effective impression of brooding silence can be obtained between the individual portions of activity by recording very faintly, the sound of distant voices alone. “Panic” noises such as screaming and shouting, if desired, are best recorded ehind the third “falling-debris” section which may be superimposed over it.

The gorilla is the only primate to have discovered a nonvocal sound mechanism: it drums on its chest with its fist, producing a loud, hollow sound. This is done both when making vocal sounds and on its own. The gorilla has discovered the property of resonance, independent of the natural mechanism of the voice box. It seems forever on the verge of discovering the musical instrument without being able to make the transition from personal to artificial sound. So far as we know only man has done this.