Noise generator on an ARP synth, set to "on"

''I tell you: one must still have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: ye have still chaos in you.''

Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra

Writing takes work, but writing together requires play. Here's a chance to play around with the very idea of music. Words notoriously fail to describe music very well, so as you play around at the Freesound site (or youtube doubler or any other online space that facilitates free play with sound elements) you might consider how interaction itself creates diverse distinctions between organized sound and noise. Where, and how, does noise become music? To explore this matter first-hand, listen to each other's freesound compositions (instructions, below), and add layers of sounds in response. While you listen, write. Or, read. Mute the sound. Turn the sound on again. Actively making music will help us focus our collective attention on important steps in collaborative rhetorical processes and teach us the art of premise-matching. All you'll need is an internet connection and a web browser.

Step 1

Sequencing and layering sound can alter how you feel and where you focus your mind. Go to the Freesound site. Check out soundtransit, too.  Of course, there are plenty of online music-making sites cropping up these days--feel free to compose with any sound technology of your choosing. Some of you may want to create a mix in Audacity (or Reason, or ProTools, etc), even. But if you are a novice to the idea of composing with sound, Freesound and soundtransit make it easy for anyone to play around with and layer different sounds. Using the Firefox web browser, you can play and loop different sounds in different tabs in the same browser window. "Record" your composition by creating a wiki space for your composition, and placing the freesound urls that you selected at that space. At this stage, you might want to blog a bit about the recording process. Think like a composer (your are writing a "score"), or even a game developer (you are creating the rules of play): listen to the layers of sounds you've selected, and tell (performers, listeners, and fellow composers and players) about them (give us directives, establish rules, write out liner notes, share associational thoughts, etc). You may be compelled to place images, links, and previously composed text (prose or poetry) on this page, as well. Upload. Now, your peers can all open the tabs you selected and concatenated, and in doing so, read, edit, or add to your writing while they listen to your composition.

Step 2

 Listen again to your classmate's compositions. At your blog space, post links the two you liked best. What effect does the music seem to induce in listeners?  Are the compositions you selected musical or just plain noisy? Write a couple hundred words and post to your blog.

Step 3

Mash Them Up!

Step 4: Technical Stuff/playing with different embed codes

to use the following embed code, simply replace the url with the url for the mp3 you intend to embed:

<embed src="http://www.meringueband.com/share/Frog/meringue_2009_%28first30%29_3rdtry_mp3.mp3" autoplay="false">

then, your readers will be able to press play and pause without leaving the page you are designing for their attention and intentions:

**ok, and there's also sites like podomatic: these sites let you easily make podcasts and embed them.

Yoko Ono remix contest!

UbuWeb Sound database

Bullhorn - USF radio