Why does your page look like this?

Your browser was unable to load our style sheets. Most modern web browsers support Cascading Style Sheets. If you're using an old browser, you can download an updated one from:
Mozilla, Netscape, Microsoft, or Opera.

If you are already using one of the above browsers, you may have your security settings too high, or you may simply need to refresh/reload this page.


Nashville, Tennessee

.

Summer Guide
May 17, 2007


Nash-Up
Don’t let something as trivial as lack of musical ability get in the way of making your own music

by Jack Silverman

For local ambient-sound freaks, Nashville isn’t so much Music City as city music. Take a walk downtown sometime—go alone, don’t talk to anyone, shut off your cell phone and, if you’re capable, tune out that incessant internal blabbering that you use to shield yourself from living in the moment.

And just listen. Focus on the sounds. There’s a never-ending symphony of noises, blending into and bumping up against each other, sometimes rhythmic, sometimes cacophonous, sometimes soothing, sometimes jarring—but always fascinating, if you open your mind to it. Cars, trucks, construction, conversations, doors opening and closing, sirens...they all seem like sonic artifacts of isolated incidents, but really, the sound waves commingle into one ceaseless stream, the hum of a city as one big organism.

Photo
Photo by Eric England

If you’re really paying attention, even a walk through a quiet neighborhood reveals that it’s not nearly as quiet as you first thought. Whether it’s bird chirps, dog barks, lawn mowers or rustling leaves, there’s always something going on.

So, in the DIY spirit, I set out to create a musical montage of the other “Nashville Sound.” With my trusty Zoom H4 handheld recorder ($300) in hand, I wandered through downtown Nashville and my own East Nashville neighborhood in search of sound bites to use as raw materials. I let the recorder run for five or 10 minutes at a time, then listened back at home, isolating interesting snippets of sound, many of them auditory remnants of mundane events: squeaky doors, footsteps on a gravel road, store clerks, train whistles...even a peacock (which, admittedly, is only mundane if you live in Bombay or, of course, East Nashville). Other sounds incorporated into the final piece, titled “Anything Else,” include a street musician on Lower Broadway, a clerk at the Peanut Shop in the Arcade (as well as the sound of her pouring nuts onto the scale), a voice on the intercom at Gruhn Guitars, a crossing guard’s whistle and a clinking water glass at Marché Artisan Foods.

The entire project was assembled using GarageBand software, which comes free with any Apple computer. If you have a PC, you can download Audacity, free multi-track recording software, at audacity.sourceforge.net. And most digital recorders, even the ones built into laptops, can be used to capture the sound files. All it takes is some imagination and a little patience. (Most of the recording programs have a slight learning curve, but if you’re at all computer-savvy, within a couple of hours you can be on your way.) From there, the sky’s the limit—create free-form compositions, or assemble morsels of sound into repeating loops for a more rhythmically accessible piece, as I chose to do. Finally, you can give up those frustrating guitar lessons. After all, the world is your instrument.

To hear the finished piece, "Anything Else," please click on the link below.

---------------------------Advertisement---------------------------
---------------------------Advertisement---------------------------


RSS/XML — Subscribe to the SceneCast RSS Feed
MP3 Audio File — Download Nash Up (5.2 MB)
.





.