The art of noise
Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen
PRX
4.6 • 675 Ratings
🗓️ 22 March 2018
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A show about how sounds from household items and nature get turned into something else. First Kurt Andersen talks with Ben Burtt, the legendary sound designer who came up with the iconic noises in “Star Wars,” “WALL-E” and more. Then Kurt gets a lesson on the theremin from a master of this out-there instrument, Pamelia Stickney. Many people find the cacophony that comes from old steam radiators to be aggravating, but the writer Henry Alford hears music in his, and sets to work to make a symphony from the clanks and hisses. And then it all goes to the birds: Artist Nina Katchadourian replaced her car alarms with recordings of bird calls … and Ben Birin fuses birdsong with beatboxing.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From PRX |
| 0:03.0 | This is Studio 360. I'm Kurt Aniston, and I'm sitting on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. |
| 0:12.5 | This first level of garden. |
| 0:13.9 | This is Thomas Jefferson's vegetable dog. |
| 0:15.7 | I like to have the roasted chicken biscuit. |
| 0:17.5 | Very well done. |
| 0:18.5 | Editing is all about timing. |
| 0:20.2 | I try to get a little bit away from the actual subject. |
| 0:22.9 | You must get sick of your own voice, right? |
| 0:25.2 | Studio 360. |
| 0:27.3 | It's Kurt Anderson. |
| 0:29.9 | Do you know what this is? |
| 0:37.1 | We're hearing a wonderfully odd record from 1953 called Strange to Your Ears. |
| 0:43.3 | It's a guy named Jim Fassett. |
| 0:44.9 | The source of that sound is perfectly familiar to everyone. |
| 0:48.5 | But you don't recognize it now because it's three times lower in pitch than you ordinarily hear it. |
| 0:55.1 | See how soon it will dawn on you what it is. |
| 1:24.2 | Oh! Facet, it turns out, was a pioneer in what we came to call experimental music. |
| 1:29.3 | Every sound in this musical composition, every note, chord, background, solo, every sound and every combination of sounds was emitted originally from the throats of birds. |
| 1:35.3 | In 1960, using field recordings of birds' song, he made his best known work, the Symphony of Birds. |
| 2:02.5 | More than half a century later, we are still taking all kinds of sounds and using them in ways that can be beautiful and scary and fun and mysterious. |
| 2:07.1 | And today on Studio 360, we are looking at today's sound pioneers. |
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