Field Recording: History and A Practical Introduction with Paula Schopf

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Everything we hear can become music. But are we still able to listen?
Active listening can teach us to recognise and articulate sonically what is happening around us. Especially now, when the possibilities of music production seem endless, it is worthwhile as a musician to consciously dedicate oneself to the sonic environment and ask oneself, what is everything that makes a sound? The visionary, musical and philosophical reflections of Henry David Thoreau (“Every sound is music now”) formulated in the 19th century and the compositional experiments of Pierre Schaeffer, who made a music of sounds and defined it as musique concrète in 1948, as well as the groundbreaking works of R. Murray Schafer and his collaborators in the World Soundscape Project (1970s – 80s), are some of the topics we will address in the course of the workshop.

In this workshop (for all levels of experience with recording technology) participants will produce their own sound works based on their field recordings; recordings made in various on-site locations. We will pay attention to parameters such as amplitude, timbre, frequency as well as silence, noise, distortion etc.. Likewise, natural, acoustic phenomena such as spatial sound or echo will be consciously integrated as artistic elements. In addition, we will work with excerpts of field recordings as samples.

All participants should please bring the following:
1) Laptop (Mac or PC) with music software. For example, free audio software: • https://www.audacityteam.org/download/

2) Field Recorder (such as the Zoom Handy Recorders, Yamaha Recorder/Players etc.)
If you do not have such a device, please email us, we may have a limited supply to lend.

3) Headphones

Paula Schopf (*1970 Santiago de Chile) is a DJ, musician and sound artist. She lives in Berlin. In 1997 she started her DJ career under the stage name Chica Paula and became a key figure in the city’s then emerging dance music scene. Invited by Gudrun Gut, she became part of the Berlin-based artist collective Ocean Club, a community of musicians, DJs and visual artists born in the German capital, which later gave rise to a radio show of the same name. In 2017, she completed her master’s degree in Sound Studies (with Hans Peter Kuhn) at the University of the Arts in Berlin.

Already in her first music productions Paula Schopf works with electronic sounds and uses recordings of natural /urban soundscapes, so-called field recordings, as aesthetic and compositional source material. In recent years, her artistic work has increasingly focused on sound research. Her main interest since then has been the close examination of sound, especially in urban space, and its inherent social, historical and political realities. https://paulaschopf.de/

Espacios en Soledad EP

https://paulaschopf.bandcamp.com/track/espacios-en-soledad-2

Break The Silence

https://paulaschopf.bandcamp.com/track/break-the-silence

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