teach

NOTE: This webpage provides resources for this course. It is NOT the course syllabus and DOES NOT provide information about course assignments, requirements, or expectations. Please consult the course syllabus for such information.
DTC 338.01 Special Topics: Digital Sound for the Web—Podcasts, Radio, and Performance focuses on theory and practice associated with producing and using digital audio in various multimedia applications from web pages to performance to Internet radiophony to soundscapes and sound art. This course is integral to the overall vision for The Creative Media & Digital Culture Program and so is aligned with the CMDC Program Goals and Objectives. The specific CMDC program goals this course is intended to meet, as well as the objectives for each, are detailed below.

• Program Goal #1
  Demonstrate competency with computers for designing, distributing, retrieving, and preserving digital works in various mediums for effective human-computer interactions.
  • Objectives
    1. Producing web pages and other digital interfaces or environments for effective and functional human-computer interactions
    2. Applying Extensible Hypertext Markup Language (XHTML) and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to hand-code web pages
    3. Employing web pages and other digital interfaces or environments that respond to specific audience needs, as well as usability and accessibility issues
• Program Goal #2
  Synthesize media forms for multimedia contexts
  • Objectives
    1. Organizing multimedia and other digital interfaces or environments using various graphics, sound, and video authoring tools
    2. Developing a multimedia project that incorporates various media objects, such as video, animation, sound, and still images

Download a copy of The Ten CMDC Program Goals and their objectives

The assignments and activities for this course reflect and assist students reaching these program goals.
Course Readings

• Web Radio: Radio Production for Internet Streaming
  Chris Priestman (Focal Press, 2001 ISBN-10: 0240516354)
  Available online 24/7/365. Once past this information page, paste or type the book title in the "Search for" box in the upper left corner of the webpage. You may need your Network ID and Password to access this book.
  
  
• A Digital Audio Primer
  Provided by Adobe Software as part of their Audition audio editing and production software program (see below). Introduces the fundamentals of digital sound. Download as a .PDF file.
  
  
• Cutting Edge Web Audio
  Ron Simpson (Prentice Hall, 1998 ISBN-10 0-130-807-532)
  Provides information about voice recording; Many other books talk about music only.
  
  
• Audio on the Web: The Official IUMA Guide
  Jeff Patterson and Ryan Melcher (Peachpit Press, 1998 ISBN-10: 0201696134)
  File formats, techniques for converting files, optimizing sound files for Web performance, uploading audio files, audio streaming. Includes a CD with sound files and utilities. Dated and out of print, but still a useful reference.
  
  
• Designing Web Audio
  Josh Beggs and Dylan Thede (O'Reilly & Associates, 2001)
  Information about microphone placement, levels, equalization, and other techniques. Encoding and broadcast tools. Embedded audio, Macromedia Flash, and synchronized audio-video presentations are also explained.
  
  
• Streaming Media Bible
  Steve Mack (John Wiley & Sons, 2002 ISBN-10: 0764536508)
  
  
• Streaming Media Demystified
  Michael Topic (McGraw-Hill Professional, 2002 ISBN 007-138-877-X)
  
  
• The Streaming Media Handbook
  Eyal Menin (Prentice Hall, 2002 ISBN 013-035-813-4)
  
  
• Internet World Guide to Webcasting: The Complete Guide to Broadcasting
  Peggy Miles (John Wiley & Sons, 1998 ISBN-10: 0471242179)
  Dated and limited in its information, this book still provides good background regarding webcasting of events for business or entertainment.
  
  
• The Rough Guide to Internet Radio 1
  L. A. Heberlein (Rough Guides, 2002 ISBN-10: 1858289610)
  
  

Audio

• Cables and Connectors
  • Visual Guide to Audio/Visual Connectors and Cables
    A support page provided by Radio Shack
  
  
• Digital Audio Production/Processing Software
  • Synth Zone Digital Audio Software
    Provides a short description for MANY digital audio software programs for both PC and Macintosh computers. Additionally, provides information and links for an extensive list of digital audio processing software. Extensive links to digital audio related websites are also provided, many of which feature tutorials. This portal could well be your one-stop for information about digital audio production/processing.
  
  
• Professional Audio Equipment Suppliers
  • B&H Photo-Video-Pro Audio Corp
  • BSW
  • Bradley Broadcast
  • Broadcast Warehouse
  • Full Compass
  • Oade Brothers Audio
  • Sweetwater
  • World Music Supply
  
  

• Third Coast International Audio Festival
  Created by Chicago Public Radio in 2000. Inspired by the popularity of international film festivals and motivated by the lack of attention given to outstanding audio work, The Third Coast International Audio Festival is a celebration of the best feature and documentary work heard worldwide on the radio and the Internet. "Our mission is to enrich the opportunities available to veteran and rookie producers who are working to perpetuate this craft in fresh and vital ways."
  
  

• Apple Pro Techniques
  A series of articles exploring how audio can be used to create richer features on websites and other multimedia portals.
  • Microphones 101
    • A Beginner's Guide to Macs and Mics
    • Microphone Types
    
    
  • Audio in Rich Media
    • Telling Stories with Sound
    • Audio Gear for Rich Media
    • Field Recording Techniques
  
  
• Art of Foley
  Since the early 1930s, the work of the Foley artist has been important for both television and film soundtracks. Before that, the art of creating realistic sound effects was important for radio as well. This website tutorial focuses on the art of Foley sound effects.
  NOTE: several videos about Foley work are available on YouTube.
  
  
• Ament, Vanessa Theme. The Foley Grail: The Art of Performing Sound for Film, Games, and Animation (Focal Press, 2009).
  
  
• Getting Started with Garage Band '09
  Garage Band is an easy to use, yet full-featured audio editing and production software package available for the Mac OSX operating system. This manual will help you get started with the program. Download as a .PDF file.
  
  
• MP3 and Streaming
  From the Transom.org Tools column (see link to Transom.org, below, under "Web/Internet Radio" subheading). Explains streaming, bit rates (and provides audio samples), how to upload encoded files, and how to link and stream audio files.
  
  
• Reese, David E. and Lynne S. Gross, Radio Production Worktext, 3rd edition (Focal Press, 1998).
  
  
• Take Control of Recording with Garage Band (2.0)
  An easy to follow manual from Take Control eBooks focusing on producing audio recordings with Garage Band. Download as a .PDF file. Get the latest version (3.0) HERE
  
  
• Thom, Randy, Audiocraft: An Introduction to the Tools and Techniques of Audio Production, 2nd edition (National Federation of Community Broadcasters, 1989).
  
  

Auditory Culture

• Bull, Michael and Les Beck, eds., The Auditory Culture Reader (Oxford, UK: Berg, 2003).
  By investigating how auditory culture subtly and profoundly impacts our daily lives, this collection of essays attempts to address the imbalance of sight over sound, and how the visual overly influences the way we relate to and think about our lives.
  
  
  Thesis
  Provides a template for the production of an "acoustemology" for investigating "the primacy of sound as a modality of knowing and being in the world" (borrowing from Steven Feld's essay, "A Rainforest of Acoustemology", 223-239; see below).
  
  
  Notes from introduction
  Advocates "deep listening," or "agile listening," both of which involve "attuning our ears to listen again to the multiple layers of meaning potentially embedded in the same sound." Deep listening also involves "practices of dialogue and procedures for investigation, transposition and interpretation" (3-4).
  
  Argues that several factors are at stake in deep listening
  • Sound makes us re-think the meaning, nature and significance of our social experience
  • Sound makes us re-think our relation to community
  • Sound makes us re-think our relational experiences, how we relate to others, ourselves and the spaces and places we inhabit
  • Sound makes us re-think our relationship to power (4)
  
  Murray Shaffer (Tuning the World New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977) introduced the term "soundscape" to denote the auditory terrain in its entirety of overlapping noises, sounds, and human melodies. The soundscape is not a flat terrain that can be mapped, but rather a fluid field changed with the introduction of each new sound (11).
  
  In city and urban environments, the soundscape can become overwhelming, especially with "noise"—that which is considered outside the culturally accepted notion of "civilized." Personal audio devices (Walkmans, mp3 players, and now, mobile telephones) permit users to construct their own individualized sound world wherever they may be. Experience is thus aestheticized and, as she moves through it, the world becomes whatever the user wants it to be. These individuals are not urban flaneurs, but rather individuals preoccupied with the management of their own environment. Sound transforms public space into private property. Jean-Paul Thibaud suggests the term "sonic bridge" for this phenomenon ("The Sonic Composition of the City" 329-341). (9)
  
  Sound provides a place in which embodied social and cultural traces can be carried, often without the awareness of their bearers. Therefore, it is good to choose to actively and deeply listen to the sounds of the world in which we live. By moving "into sound" we open new ways of thinking about and appreciating the social experience, memory, time, and place—the auditory culture—of sound (16).
  
  
  Part 1: Thinking about Sound
  Theoretical and epistemological questions . . .
  
  "Open Ears" by Murray Schafer (25-39)
  Three questions to ask
  • Who's listening?
  • What are they listening to?
  • What are they ignoring or refusing to listen to?
  
  Big noises, like cannons, church bells, steam engines, and jets have changed history. So have small sounds, like whispers in clandestine meetings. In every case someone is listening and understands what is happening. In other cases, persons are not listening, and so miss the revolution, or the social change (26).
  
  "Most of the sounds busy people listen to are signals of activity. This explains their immunity to the sounds of nature. One of the essential differences between the natural environment and the engineered environments in which most people live is that nature can't be shut off with a button. Things that can't be generated or shut off with buttons or switches attract little attention in the modern world. . . . The power of technology really comes down to a fascination with buttons and switches in an attempt to modulate information intake. . . . The cellular phone, which the Germans appropriately called the 'Handy,' is the latest installment in this drama" (38).
  
  "Beyond what fascinates your ear today is something else, incessantly and obdurately present, although you cannot or do not hear it yet—but whoever hears it first has a good chance of inheriting the future" (39).
  
  "Hearing Loss" by Leigh Eric Schmidt (41-59; first published Schmidt, Leigh Eric. Hearing Things: Religion, Illusion, and the American Enlightenment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000. 15-28.)
  Argues that "a hierarchy of the senses, with sight vastly ennobled and hearing sharply diminished" (48) is "deeply ingrained in Western religious and philosophical traditions" (43). This results in "a marked dichotomy between eye and ear cultures that has commonly drawn on radicalized constructions of Western rationality and ecstatic primitivism" (48)—most notably the work of Walter Ong and Marshall McLuhan.
  
  "Auditory Imagination" by Don Ihde (61-66; first published Ihde, Don. Listening and Voice: A Phenomenology of Sound. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1976. 133-139.)
  "In the most general terms, auditory imagination as a whole displays the same generic possibilities as the full imaginative mode of experience. Within the active imaginative mode of experience lies the full range from sedimented memories to wildest fantasy. . . . Within the range of the imaginative, auditory imagination may accompany other dimensional presentifications." (61)
  
  Between the imaginative and perceptual modes of experience there are "distances and perceptions" regarding copresence, a dual polyphony of perceived and imagined sound (61-62). There is, in auditory imagination, "the possibility of a synthesis of imagined and perceived sound" (62). These distances and perceptions can create the sense of there being an "echo" between, or because of the alternation between perceived and imaginative sounds (64).
  
  
  Part 2: Histories of Sound
  Historical studies of sound . . .
  
  "Tuning into London c. 1600" by Bruce R. Smith (127-135)
  ". . . most of us live immersed in a world of sound" (127). "Sound is at once the most forceful stimulus that human beings experience, and the most evanescent" (128). Three principles of studying sound
  • Sound, as an object of study, has been neglected
  • Knowing the world through sound is fundamentally different from knowing the world through vision
  • Most academic disciplines are vision-based, not only in the materials they study, but in the theoretical models they deploy to interpret those materials (129)
  Problem with studying sound from an historical perspective is that many sounds, unless they have been recorded in some way, are no longer available for study, or are difficult to study. One manner of recording historical sounds, and then for studying them, is through literature. Authors, as well as travelers, journalists, etc. have recorded in writing their impressions of the sounds of new or historical contexts. The speech of persons living in these contexts is, naturally, a primary concern, and we can study these writings to learn something of historical speech. Hence, most historical attention to sound has focused on the narrow range of sounds involved in speech. Less researched are the ambient sounds of a particular context which often mark or define the boundaries between that particular context and another, between class, gender, or race relations, for example.
  
  
  Part 3: Anthropologies of Sound
  Cross-cultural examples of sound . . .
  
  "A Rainforest Acoustemology" by Steven Feld (223-239; an earlier version first published as part of "Sound Worlds," Sound. Particia Kruth and Henry Stobart, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 173-200).
  Reacts against the notion that soundscapes are separate from the "pervasiveness of human invention." Says, "Soundscapes, no less than landscapes, are not just physical exteriors, spatially surrounding or apart from actors who attend to them as a way of making their place in and through the world. Soundscapes are invested with significance by those whose bodies and lives resonate with them in social time and space. Like landscapes, they are as much psychical as physical phenomena, as much cultural constructs as materials ones" (226; from Edward S. Casey, "How to Get from Space to Place in a Very Short Stretch of Time," Senses of Place, Steven Feld and Keith Basso, eds. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, 1996. 13-52.)
  
  Defines "acoustemology" as "a union of acoustics and epistemology"; a way to "investigate the primacy of sound as a modality of knowing and being in the world" (226).
  
  Argues that "sound both emanates from and penetrates bodies; this reciprocity of reflection and absorption is a creative means of orientation—one that tunes bodies to places and times through their sounding potential. Hearing and producing sound are thus embodied competencies that situate actors and their agency in particular historical worlds. These competencies contribute to their distinct and shared ways of being human; they contribute to possibilities for and realizations of authority, understanding, reflexivity, compassion, and identity" (226).
  
  "Nostalgia and Radio Sound" by Jo Tacchi (281-295; first published as "Nostalgia, Radio Listening and Everyday Life," Media@LSE Electronic Working Paper, No. 1, December 2000.)
  Argues that sound may be "easily equated with depth perception, interior understanding and dynamism" and that, despite sound being devalued by vision, may provide more creative ways in which to work (288).
  
  
  Part 4: Sounds in the City
  Sounds of urban life and popular culture . . .
  
  "Aural Postcards: Sound, Memory and the City" by Fran Tonkiss (303-309)
  "Cities provide a soundstage for the dramas of modern life" (304). [I would substitute "narratives" for "drama".] With all their sounds, however, city soundscapes can be overwhelming. "It is easier and more effective to shut your eyes than it is to cover your ears. Ears cannot discriminate in the way eyes can—as with smell, hearing puts us in a submissive sensuous relation to the city. And yet still we glance at sounds in the city, we don't glaze. Individuals' relation to sound in the everyday spaces of the city tends to be one of distraction rather than attention. . . . Acquired indifference is both the side-effect of and the best defence against" the overwhelming effects of a city's soundscape (304). The personal stereo or mobile telephone allow users to create private, personal soundscapes that are "smaller, tamer, more predictable" (305). Sound souvenirs, the relation of sound to memory, promote the audible presence "in the moment of recall, the melding of space, sound and memory there in the concept of resonance; a movement in the air like sound you can touch" (307). "The past comes to us in its most unbidden, immediate and sensuous forms not in the artifice of the travel photograph, but in the accident of sounds half-remembered. This is something like the difference between record and memory. There is a quality of those sounds not quite recalled that has the texture and the delicacy of memory itself" (307).
  
  "The Sonic Composition of the City" by Jean-Paul Thibaud (329-341)
  Argues that urbanites use of personal stereos transforms their experience of the city by creating a balance between what she hears and travels through. This reconfiguring of the urban space by unsettling the relationship between sound and vision produces new ways of experiencing the city. Listening to music via headphones not only protects from "the sonic aggressions of the city" but also "enhances the events that give the place its meaning" (330).
  
  "How Many Movements?" by Caroline Bassett (343-355)
  Argues that users of mobile telephony, walking about in a city, are "no longer embedded in [their] immediate locality or environment." Instead, they are connected simultaneously to other people in remote places/spaces. One then can discover new perspectives because they can both be reached and reach out via their mobile telephones (344-345). The mobile telephone offers then, different from the Walkman or other personal stereo device, "the possibility of remote intervention" (345). For the mobile telephone user, travel/discovery is no longer a broken connection, a separation between the mode of travel and the environment in which one travels. There is no dislocation between the traveler/flaneur and the world beyond. Instead of a boundary, mobile telephones provide an interface (346).
  
  Use of mobile telephony creates/facilitates a sense of space/place different from the physical space occupied by the user. "Regarded as a practice of space, and as a practice that makes space, the mobile phone draws up the cultural conditions under which it itself is made—all the species of space—unto itself: like a map, a dream, or even like a prayer might do" (354). These spaces are neither individual or private, but rather socially collective constructions that offer a sense of "being there" of "being live" (351, 354).
• Corbin, Alain. Village Bells: Sound and Meaning in the Nineteenth-Century French Countryside, Martin Thom, trans. (New York, 1998).
  An essay, drawn from this book is included in The Audiotory Culture Reader, above.
• Erlmann, Veit, ed. Hearing Cultures: Essays on Sound, Listening, and Modernity (Oxford, 2004).
• Hoffer, Peter Charles. Sensory Worlds in Early America (Baltimore, 2003).
• Miller, Andre. America on Record: A History of Recorded Sound (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
• Rath, Richard Cullen. "Hearing American History," Journal of American History Vol. 95, No. 2 (September 2008).
• Rath, Richard Cullen. How Early America Sounded (Ithaca, 2003).
• Schama, Simon. Landscape and Memory (New York, 1995).
• Smith, Mark M., Listening to Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill, 2001).
  An essay, drawn from this book is included in The Audiotory Culture Reader, above.
• Smith, Mark M., ed. Hearing History: A Reader (University of Georgia Press, 2004).
• Sterling, Bruce. "The Dead Media Project: A Modest Proposal and a Public Appeal"
  First published in Boing Boing magazine, this is Sterling's request for help establishing a virtual library dedicated to past forms of media.
  Sterling, a science fiction writer based in Austin, Texas, also made his request in a speech on dead media at the International Symposium on Electronic Arts, Montreal, Canada, 19 September 1995. His speech is available HERE
  Visit also the Dead Media Project website. Check out the link to "dead media working notes" for detailed information about specific examples of dead media.
• Sterne, Jonathan. The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003).
• White, Shane and Graham White. The Sounds of Slavery: Discovering African American History through Songs, Sermons, and Speech (Boston, 2005).

Aural History
Aural history is a method of gathering and preserving historical information through recorded sounds. Aural histories may include voice recordings where a speaker tells her eye witness account of some historic event or way of life but they also include additional sounds to provide context, background, and deeper, richer information about the topic or event. In this sense aural histories differ from oral histories (see below).

• The Sonic Memorial Project
  SonicMemorial.org is an open archive and an online audio installation of the history of The World Trade Center that collects stories, ambient sounds, voicemails, and archival recordings to tell the rich history of the twin towers, the neighborhood and the events of 9/11.

Copyright
Copyright is a straight-forward document prepared by the WSUV library staff. Features sources for public domain or "some rights reserved" visual, audio, and video media that you can use for your projects.

Copyright is a major consideration for any audio installation or performance.

With copyright, the owner/creator/designated agent(s) has the exclusive right to copy, distribute, display, and perform their work.

Copyright is automatic. No notice of copyright is required.

Copyright lasts a LONG time—70 years after the death of the author or 95 years for works owned by companies.

There are exemptions to the exclusive rights built into the copyright law—Fair Use is one—but they can be tricky to figure out. For example, here are my notes from a discusson of Fair Use in which I recently participated.

Copyright Act of 1976

Section 107. Limitations on Exclusive Rights: Fair Use

Nothwithstanding the provisions of Section 106 and 106A the fair use of copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction of copies or phonorecords or by any means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is fair use the factors to be considered shall include:

1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commerical nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes
2. The nature of the copyrighted work
3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work

The Association of Research Libraries maintains web-based information on "Copyright and Intellectual Property Issues" including further information about Fair Use.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (enacted into law 28 October 1998) was intended to stop illegal copying of digital content (digital piracy of movies, recordings, and software). Read an overview of The Digital Millennium Copyright Act

Read the final version (Enrolled Bill) as passed by both Houses

Download a copy of The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (in PDF format)

Among the Act's provisions is one that protects internet service providers from copyright infringement in digital contexts, including allowing service providers to remove content from individual web sites that appears to involve copyright infringement (the so called "safe harbor provision").

While supported by the software and entertainment industries, as well as internet service providers, The Digital Millennium Copyright Act was opposed by librarians, scientists, and academics. In a report entitled "Unintended Consequences: Four Years under the DMCA," The Electronic Frontier Foundation argues the Act has

1. "Chilled" the legitimate free-speech activities of journalists, publishers, scientists, students, programmers, and members of the public
2. Granted copyright owners "the power to unilaterally eliminate the public's fair use rights"
3. Impeded competition and innovation. For example, Sony uses the Act to protect their monopoly on Playstaion video game consoles as well as their "regionalization" systems that limits users from playing games legitimately in other countries

Read the report "Unintended Consequences: Four Years under the DMCA"

The Anti-DMCA website archives information opposing The Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Learn more HERE

A report released 3 August 2007 by MCPS-PRS Alliance, which represents music rights holders, and Big Champagne, an online media measurement company, concluded that the music industry "should embrace illegal websites" because torrent and peer-to-peer filing sharing sites and services could not be stopped. Brand loyalty (and revenue) could be built through increased concert ticket sales as well as the sales of licensed products at digital sources (YouTube, Google, etc.) currently beyond the reach of the record industry. Read the article, "Music Industry "Should Embrace Illegal Websites'," at the Financial Times.com website. Digital Sound Basics

• A Digital Audio Primer
  Provided by Adobe Software as part of their Audition audio editing and production software program. Introduces the fundamentals of digital sound. Download as a .PDF file.
  
  
• Audio File Formats
  Explains all of the major audio file formats and provides samples. A useful resource.
  
  
• Bit = BInary digiT
  • 8 Bits = 1 Byte
  • 1000 Bytes = 1 Kilobyte (KB)
  • 1000 Kilobytes = 1 Megabyte (MB)
  • 1000 Megabytes = 1 Gigabyte (GB)
  • 1000 Gigabytes = 1 Terabyte (TB)
  • 1000 Terabytes = 1 Petabyte (PB)
  
  
• CD Size
  • 74 Minute = 650MB
  • 80 Minute = 700MB
  
  
• A standard raw audio file (.wav format) recorded at a 44.1 kHz sampling rate and 16 bit depth will run 10MB per minute
  
  
• The Basics of Digital Audio
  Covers sound theory (frequency and level), sampling theory (sample frequency, dynamic range, and digitizing sound), and step-by-step instructions for recording your own digital sounds.
  
  
• Digital Audio
  Part of the free Audacity Tutorial offered by Guides and Tutorials.com, section introduces working with sound and digital audio. Browse through the rest of the tutorial, and see the "Audacity Tips." Learn more about Audacity, the free, open source software for recording and editing sounds HERE
  
  

Digital Storytelling

• 7 Things You Should Know about Digital Storytelling
  A helpful tutorial, especially if you are planning an audio narrative or documentary project. Download as a .PDF file.
  
  
• Digital Storytelling
  
  

DJ Culture / Practice / Cut Up / Mashup / Sampling / Appropriation / The Remix / Sound Collage

• BobOstertag.com
  Ostertag is an early audio sample artist whose work predates many modern samplers by several years. His website features information and his music and recordings, his writings, and provides many photographs.
  
  
• Brewster, Bill and Frank Broughton. Last Night a DJ Saved My Life. New York: Grove Press, 2000.
  The first comprehensive history of the disc jockey, from radio station announcer to superstar music creator. Argues that the DJ revolutionized the way in which dance music is conceived, created, and consumed from counterculture to mainstream. Traces histories of radio record play, reggae, Northern Soul, disco, hip hop, house, and techno to the current global underground.
  
  
• Burroughs, William S. is credited as the inventor of "The Cut-Up Method," even though he adopted the technique from painter and writer Brion Gysin, and the technique had been used since the 1920s by Surrealist/DaDa visual artists in their collages, images, and textual compositions. As Burroughs argued, consciousness is cut-up, a montage of fragments. For example, a walk down a city street will present bits and pieces of street signs and advertisements, reflections in windows, objects partially obscured by others, a random mix of images.
  
  According to Burroughs, writing was artificially confined to a linear straightjacket, forcing words to follow one another in orders prescribed by rules of language and grammar. For Burroughs, the cut-up method involved physically cutting linear passages of printed prose, both by himself and other writers, and then pasting them back together again at random. The results, he claimed, were far more interesting than the original. Examples of this cut-up method are found in Burrough's novels The Soft Machine (1961) and The Ticket That Exploded (1962).
  
  During a 20 July 1976 lecture at the Naropa Institute Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, Burroughs talked about the origins of the cut-up method. The lecture also includes a tape recorded experiment called "Paranormal Voices," a cut-up experiment with Brion Gysin, experiments with Ian Sommerville, dream speech, The Last Words of Dutch Schultz, and phrases of minimal context. Burroughs also discusses Shakespeare, computers, Homer, Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, and Carl Jung. The lecture ends with questions and answers. The entire lecture is available in two parts at Internet Archive.
  • Burroughs' Lecture Part 1 (Note: there is 3:00 of silence before the start of Burrough's lecture)
  • Burroughs' Lecture Part 2
  
  An edited segment of this lecture, "The Origin and Theory of the Tape Cut-Ups," was included on the album Break Through in Grey Room. Although the album was first released in 2001, all its contents were recorded between 1960 and 1976.
  
  Another good source of early Burroughs/Gysin recordings is the album Nothing Here But the Recordings, which Genesis P. Orridge released on Industrial Records, after Burroughs gave him access to his tape archive.
  
  Both albums are available in the four disc Best of William S. Burroughs box set. Burroughs expanded his cut-up method into other media, cutting and splicing audio tapes, films, and mixed media (audio tapes, television, film, and actual events). His exploratory work has informed many artists since.
  
  A number of videos featuring Burroughs and his cut-up method are archived on YouTube. The Cut Ups provides a good example. Explore others from here.
  
  
• Detritus.net
  A website dedicated to recycled culture, making new creative works out of old ones, whether fine art or pop culture. Check out the "Projects" link for ideas about what various artists are currently creating, and the "Archives" link for some groundbreaking past works. For example, you can hear the controversial 1991 album "U2" by Negativland (see link below) in which they include recordings of the band U2 and the host of the syndicated radio show "American Top Forty," Casey Casem like you've never heard him before.
  
  
• DJ Solovox
  Solovox (aka Carl Tietze) is a Portland, Oregon, based DJ, teacher, and lecturer.
  
  
• DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid (aka Paul D. Miller) — the unofficial spokesperson for remix culture.
  • DJ Spooky.com
    The official website for DJ Spooky, offering multimedia performances and a whole lot more remix.
  • DJ Spooky interviewed for the NPR program "To the Best of our Knowledge"
    • Listen to the MP3 stream here
    • Listen to the RealMedia stream here
  • Miller, Paul D. aka DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid, ed.Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2008.) As a writer, visual artist, and recording artist, he says artists regard sound as a language they may freely sample to construct new compositions.

    Lay one metaphor onto the other, remix, and press play. The sampling machine can handle any sound, and any expression. You just have to find the right edit points in the sound envelope—it's that structure thing come back as downloadable shareware for the informationally perplexed (6).
    
    Form and function, fact and fiction, art and architecture—all woven into a testimony of human reconstruction in media (8).
    
    The remix becomes "faction" (9).
    
    We live in an era where quotation and sampling operate on such a deep level that the archaeology of what can be called "knowledge" floats in a murky realm between the real and the unreal. Look at The Matrix as an updated version of Plato's cave, a parable piece in his Republic written more than two thousand years ago, but still resonant with the idea of living in a world of illusion (11).
    
    Think of DJ culture as a kind of archival impulse applied to a kind of hunter-gather milieu—textual poaching, becomes zero-paid, becomes no-logo, becomes brand x. It's that interface thing again, but this time around the mind-brain interface becomes an emergent system of large-scale economies of expression (13).
    
    (Paul Miller aka DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid. "In through the Out Door.")

  • Program 12: Radio Radio: Paul D. Miller, aka DJ Spooky
    DJ Spooky demonstrates his combination of street credibility and critical sensibility and discusses "the mix" as culture as as metaphor. Archived at UbuWeb Sound. See link below.
  
  
• Evolution Control Committee
  A group of audio collage artists doing great work since 1866 and offering samples throughout their website.
  
  
• "I Found a Sound: A Brief History of Sampling and Appropriation in Music" by Dr. Zomb and DJ ManRich
  "A chronological look at sampling, from its roots in Musique Concrete and Avant Garde, through the pioneering LP by Brian Eno and David Byrne, and on to culture jamming artists such as Negativeland, John Oswald, Evolution Control Committee, as well as Turntablism in Hip Hop and finally, recent mashup masterpieces." Wow! Check it out. Also, check out the many other broadcasts archived here. Lot's of great DJ work and sounds.
  
  
• Illegal Art
  Devoted to releasing legally unreleasable albums by a variety of artists. Features many themed compilations. Features both downloads and CDs.
  
  
• Karlheinz Essl
  Website for German composer and audio software designer, Essl. MANY of his sound works are available for download.
  
  
• Ken's Last Ever Radio Extravaganza
  Despite the name "last ever," Ken keeps on making, and archiving amazing sound collage radio shows at this website. Listen live or download MP3 archives of past shows, all the way back of 1994! Scroll to the bottom of page and follow the tiny "links page" link for even more information and archives.
  
  
• LAFMS
  The Los Angles Free Music Society (LAFMS) has explored sampling and appropriation since the 1960s. This is the official website.
  
  
• Negativland
  A group of artists who create "records, CDs, video, fine art, books, radio and live performance using appropriated sound, image and text. Mixing original materials and original music with things taken from corporately owned mass culture and the world around them, Negativland re-arranges these found bits and pieces to make them say and suggest things that they never intended to. In doing this kind of cultural archaeology and "culture jamming" (a term they coined way back in 1984), Negativland have been sued twice for copyright infringement."
  
  "Over the years Negativland's 'illegal' collage and appropriation based audio and visual works have touched on many things—pranks, media hoaxes, advertising, media literacy, the evolving art of collage, the bizarre banality of suburban existence, creative anti-corporate activism in a media saturated multi-national world, file sharing, intellectual property issues, wacky surrealism, evolving notions of art and ownership and law in a digital age, and artistic and humorous observations of mass media and mass culture. . . . Negativland is like a subliminal cultural sampling service concerned with making art about everything we aren't supposed to notice."
  
  Negativland produces and broadcasts a live weekly radio show, "Over the Edge," on KPFA FM in Berkeley, California, every Thursday at midnight, Pacific Time. The three hour show, features found sound mixing.
  
  The group was the subject of Craig Baldwin's 1995 feature documentary "Sonic Outlaws" and created the soundtrack and sound design for Harold Boihem's 1997 documentary film "The Ad And The Ego," an excellent in-depth look into the hidden agendas of the corporate ad world and the ways that we are affected by advertising.
  
  Negativland promotes creative commons and serves on the advisory board of a Washington, D.C.-based intellectual property lobbying group called digitalfreedom.org
  
  Lots of information available through the website on copyright, sampling, and fair use.
  
  
• People Like Us
  Vicki Bennett, since 1991, under the name People Like Us, has made CDs, radio, audio-visual multimedia, and found footage animations and collages. Her work is archived here, at the official website.
  
  
• Plunderphonics
  Created and maintained by John Oswald, Canadian composer and sonic collage artist. Oswald coined the term "plunderphonics" to express his creation of new work using samples from existing recordings. A link is also provided to three of Oswald's Mystery Tapes (circa 1980), sound collages recorded on cassette tapes and distributed with neither sources noted nor explanations given.
  
  See also Radio Radio introspective and interview with John Oswald
  
  
• "Raiding the 20th Century" by DJ Food
  An incredible attempt to catalog the history of cut-up music and popular culture. Archived at UbuWeb Sound. See link below.
  
  
• Rick Emerson Show
  Airs live on 101 KUFO FM, Portland, Oregon, 5:00-9:00 AM. A "collective of like-minded souls who embrace Pop Culture as the one, true faith." Outside his regular show, Emerson is involved in the production of a radio drama about zombies called A.Z. Listen to these sample episodes
  • Episode 3: "Winter of Our Discontent"
  • Episode 6: "Preludes, Part 2—No Mercy"
  
  
• Some Assembly Required
  Tape manipulations, digital reconstructions, turntable creations . . . work by a variety of audio artists "working with bits of their media environment, giving back to the cultural landscape from which they so enthusiastically appropriate." Since 1999, host Jon Nelson has put together weekly shows and interviewed everyone who is anyone, providing insights into this daring and creative style of expression. All interviews and shows are available for free download, along with notes and profiles. A tremendous resource, inspiration, and proof that Girl Talk didn't invent this form of collage.
  
  
• Tellus #11: The Sound of Radio
  Extracts from contemporary radio plays and works by contemporary radio artists, this collection is "a paean to the disc-jockey turned storyteller, an ode to radiophonic schizo-politics, an over-the-top throwback to the golden era of 40s radio plays, and an exploration of documentary and narratological modes of radio production." See especially #11: "Cityphony" by Barrett Golding. Archived at UbuWeb Sound. See link below.
  
  
• The Tape-beatles
  A collaborative group of artists, formed in 1985, making audio art recordings and works in other media. Their goal was to create a new form of egalitarian pop music using no musical instruments, instead relying on tape recording and home stereo equipment. The Tape-beatles also espoused the use of plagiarism as a positive artistic technique and their work drew on previously "finished" works by others. The Tape-beatles sample such work, assembling fragments into new and original constructions. Archived at UbuWeb Sound. See link below.
  
  
• UbuWeb Sound
  An incredible sound archive featuring many examples of DJ culture. Get lost listening here for a few hours.
  
  
• Variations
  Curated by Jon Leidecker, this series of podcasts looks at music compositions based on pre-existing source music, sampling, presenting the milestones of sampling music from the 20th Century to the convergence of music, popular art, and mass media today. Leidecker, also known as Wobbly, is a well-known sound collage artist. Visit an archive of Leidecker's (Wobbly's) work at the Detritus.net website (see above).
  
  

Found Sound
"Found Sound" describes audio objects created from undisguised, but often modified sound files that are not normally considered art, often because they already have a non-art function. A good example is home recorded tapes or messages from telephone answering machines that often turn up in garage sales and thrift stores. Found sound provides an opportunity for both the artist and the audience to contemplate the original sound file(s), as well as their recombination. Much of the identity of found sound as an art form comes from the designation placed upon it by the individual artist.

• Documentary Sound
  A partial discography and guide to resources for unedited, unprocessed, publicly available field recordings and found sound.
  
  
• "Eavesdrop: A Wealth of Found Sound" is a collection of anonymous recordings taken from audio diaries, tape letters, telephone messages, and other sources, all curated by Jason Smigel. The work includes track notes, transcripts, background information, and a collage of found photographs.
  
  
• Sweet Thunder
  An archive for "found home recordings and other cassette deck oddities." Finds are contributed weekly by guests, or the curator. Check out the "Links" section for several interesting applications of found sound. For example, "The Voicemail Project" presents "a collection of weird/sentimental/interesting voice mails left on other people's phones.
  
  

Oral History
Oral history is a method of gathering and preserving historical information through recorded interview with participants of past events and ways of life. Generally, oral histories are voice recordings where a speaker tells her eye witness account. In this sense oral histories differ from aural histories (see above) which may use additional sounds to provide context, background, and deeper, richer information about the topic or event. Recently, the use of video recording has included gesture as part of the communication, thus expanding oral history beyond verbal form.

• Studs Terkel: Conversations with America
  Studs Terkel is noted for his books of oral history that examine working class America. This website provides access to his works through a wide selection of streaming audio.
  
  
• Flint Sit-Down Strike
  The focus here is on diversified, nonlinear access to digital audio content regarding the strikes in Flint, Michigan, in 1936-1937 that forced General Motors to recognize the United Auto Workers union. Users can choose multiple forms of media in order to learn about the strike in slightly different perspectives.
  
  
• Oyez: Supreme Court Media
  Provides Supreme Court case audio tied to transcripts and shows well the possibilities of combining audio and texts for online presentation.
  
  

• Talking History: Aural History Productions
  A production, distribution, and instructional center for all forms of "aural" history based at the University at Albany, New York. Its weekly radio show is broadcast over the air and via the internet.
  
  
• Radio Diaries
  "Radio Diaries works with people to document their own lives for [national] public radio; teenagers, seniors, workers, prison inmates and others whose voices are rarely heard. We help people share their stories—and their lives—in their own words, creating documentaries that are powerful, surprising, intimate and timeless." Their book, Teen Reporter Handbook: How To Make Your Own Radio Diary, is useful for anyone wanting to conduct interviews or document their lives. Download a copy as a .PDF file HERE
  
  
• Race with History
  "Seeks oral histories, music, dance, poetry and all forms of cultural expression that can help tell the untold stories of people whose roots are in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and all parts of the globe. Many such stories remain to be told, discussed, turned over in our minds for their meaning, like cave drawings or trail maps of broken twigs, like moss on the side of a tree or the drinking gourd in the sky."
  
  
• Whole World Was Watching: Oral History of 1968
  A joint project between South Kingstown High School and Brown University's Scholarly Technology Group, this archive provides access to transcripts, audio recordings, and interviews made in 1998 but focusing on events in 1968.
  
  
• Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World
  Following the end of the Civil War, mill towns were developed throughout the Piedmont areas of Virginia, North and South Carolina, Northern Georgia, and Northern Alabama. By the mid-1920s, this region had surpassed New England as the nation's leading producer of yarn and cloth. The economy and life in these mill towns began to change in the 1930s. The story is told here in the oral histories of former mill hands.
  
  

• MATRIX Equipment Recommendations
  MATRIX, a research center based at the University of Michigan, is devoted to the application of new technologies in humanities and social science teaching and research. These are their recommendations for audio recording equipment. Lots of downloads for further information as well.
  
  
• Vermont Folklife Center Archive: Field Research Guides
  
  • Digital Audio Field Recording Equipment Guide
  • Audio Recording Equipment Guide: Retired Equipment List
  • Field Recording in the Digital Age
  • Digital Editing of Field Audio
  • Resources on the Preservation of Materials in Ethnographic and Oral History Collections

• Oral History Tutorial
  A very helpful resource for all aspects of audio technology associated with recording and producing oral history.
  
  
• Smithsonian Folklife and Oral History Interviewing Guide
  Downloads as a .PDF file to your computer.
  
  
• Storyboard Tutorial
  
  
• Storyboard Images found on Google that you can download or copy for your project
  
  
• Storyboarding: Creating a Storyboard in Microsoft Word
  A storyboard may be helpful for planning an audio production, especially a narrative or documentary. It need not be complicated. This tutorial shows you how to make a storyboard using Microsoft Word. Download as a .PDF file.
  
  

Podcasting

• Take Control of Podcasting on the Mac (1.2)
  An easy to follow manual from Take Control eBooks to help you produce podcasts on Macintosh computers. Great in combination with the Garage Band information above. Download as a .PDF file. Get the latest version (second edition) HERE
  
  
• Creating Audio Podcasts on Mac OSX
  A brief tutorial for creating audio podcasts using QuickTime 7 Pro on Mac OS X.
  
  

Radio

• Smartphone To Outsell Standard Phones by 2012
• Independent Internet Radio Is Catching On
• Study: Radio Still Has Broadest Reach
• WiFi Internet Radio Puts Thousands of Stations in Your Palm
• Why Radio's Grand Plan Has Me Tuning Out
• Google Lifts the Curtain on Its New Music Service
• Apple TV 3.0 Update Adds Internet Radio
• Huge Surge in Mobile Internet
• Briefcase Broadcasting: The Smallest FM Station Ever

• College Broadcasters
  College Broadcasters represents students involved in radio, television, webcasting and other related media ventures and facilitates discussions of issues related to student-operated electronic media.
  
  
• College Media Advisers
  
  
• Innovation in College Media
  
  

• Chit Shun Enterprises
  A big part of community radio is that people listen. This manufacturer offers an exciting line of mini radios, any one of which would provide a great marketing giveaway, or low cost sale item, to support and promote the station (not to mention encourage people to listen). United States distributor located in Spokane, WA.
  
  
• Halper, Donna L. Full-Service Radio: Programming for the Community. Boston: Focal Press, 1991.
  Halper, a radio consultant, provides an insightful (although undocumented) overview of the development of radio in America, and especially the format known as "full-service radio." Stations following this format feature the following elements
  • A concerted effort to know their audience
  • Stable air staff known in and rooted to local community
  • A major commitment to in-depth local news and information
  • An emphasis on local weather
  • Traffic reporting
  • Extensive (image and actual) public service
  • Willingness to be visible though advertising, volunteerism, outreach, charitable appeals, drives, mobile broadcasts from community events, local coverage of community events and activities, etc.
  • Information and entertainment, both locally oriented
    • An excellent morning talk show
    • Evening talk show
    • Other talk shows focusing on issues important to community
    • "Shout outs" to listeners celebrating birthdays, marriages, job promotions, other life events
  • A unique way of serving the community
  
  The book's final chapters cover full-service as a radio format, how this format might meet the future needs of radio audiences, how to research audiences for full-service format, how to provide the right full-service programming, and finally, some "Do's and Don'ts in Today's Full-Service."
  
  
• KBOO FM Community Radio
  Volunteer-powered, non-commercial, listener-sponsored community radio in Portland, Oregon.
  
  
• McKinney, Eleanor, ed. The Exacting Ear: The Story of Listener-Sponsored Radio, and an Anthology of Programs from KPFA, KPFK, and WBAI. New York: Pantheon, 1966.
  
  
• Milam, Lorenzo W. Sex and Broadcasting: A Handbook on Starting a Radio Station for the Community. Dildo Press, 1972.
  The word "sex" in the title is designed to help sell the book and is not mentioned in the contents. Sorry. Although dated, this handbook does provide a very good idea of the mind-numbing delays and frustrations associated with applying for FCC permits to construct a radio station. The advice about how to proceed seems solid, even so many years after initial publication. As do the rewards.
  
  
• Realalchemist. "How To Legally Operate Your Own AM Radio Station"
  According to the author, "it is perfectly legally in the United States under current FCC law to operate a Low Power AM radio station with a range of about 1 to 2 miles radius." He then details what equipment is needed and provides instructions for assembling your station. Be sure and check out the related articles and videos in the right-hand side bar as they are very useful and interesting as well.
  
  
• Walker, Jessie. Rebels on the Air: An Alternative History of Radio in America. New York University Press, 2001.
  Argues for an alternative to today's tightly controlled (market forces and government regulations) media landscape, saying more opportunities to return radio to local, community voice and control will allow greater freedom to choose, to create, and to escape. Freedom to choose means more options: more formats, more channels, more publishers. Freedom to create means the opportunity to operate outside the licensed elite, to set up one's own radio station. Freedom to escape means the ability to withdraw from the overburden of mediation and interact and communicate more directly with others. "I wrote this book to show how and why these three liberties have been constrained. I also wrote it to describe those times and places where innovators have managed to break through those constraints and create genuinely diverse, expressive, or immediate radio" (11).
  
  "A great community radio station eschews bureaucracy, gives its volunteers wide latitude, and relies on its listeners for most of its funds. Its shows are neither standardized into a predictable sound nor rigidly balkanized from one another. Instead, a day's programs sound like an enormous conversation, where hosts comment on one another's show. DJs mix musical genres, and listeners feel like they're part of the family. It is radio as diverse, messy, and alive as the community it reflects" (170).
  
  Idea: Audience/contributors create their own shows and send music, newscasts, and promos, as MP3 files, via email. The community station then broadcasts them (239, see also notes for Chapter 11, below).
  
  Chapter 2, "The First Broadcasters" provides a solid overview of early efforts by individuals to use the medium of radio for communication purposes. With the establishment of the Federal Communications Commission, and various radio acts, the airwaves are taken away from these individuals and given to corporate concerns.
  
  Chapter 8, "American Pirates" provides a history of pirate radio stations and operators in the United States.
  
  Chapter 9, "Micro Radio: Every Man a DJ" provides a history of microradio in the United States, which until it was shut down by the National Association of Broadcasters and National Public Radio convincing Congress that multiple independent signals would cause interference for the signals of corporate giants and NPR, offered bright promise for the individual broadcaster to be able to start and operate her own small, locally based station and experiment with different forms of independent radio.
  
  Chapter 11, "CB, the Internet, and Beyond" introduces networked micro radio where stations use the Internet to share shows and content with each other. "Independent Media Centers" offer audio, video, and text. Each IMC is autonomous. One can take what content they want and leave the rest. The result is radio with the flexibility of email. These networks are cheap, benefit from increasing Internet bandwidth, are decentralized, headless, and constantly shifting their boundaries. "Call it molecular radio: a web of atom-sized stations, bound by the Net into a larger confederation" (279). Also discusses netcasting using playlist automation programs like Selector (the most popular of such programs) and custom Internet radio stations where users can interact with the music library to hear just the music they want. "Customized Internet audio streams are in many ways the opposite of molecular radio. One is private, the other shared; one is automated, the other participatory. But between them, they're a substantial challenge to the broadcast business and its accumulated habits" (281).
  
  Idea: Red Asphalt Nomad. Sound performance using CB radio Channel 23. See Zilm, Jeff. "Nomad Radio" in Radiotext(e). Neil Strauss, editor. New York: Semiotext(e), 1993.
  
  

• Radiologik
  Radio automation software for Macintosh
  
  

• Hendy, D. Radio in the Global Age. Polity Press, 200.
  
  
• Levinson, P. Digital McLuhan: A Guide to the Information Millennium. Routledge, 1999.
  
  
• Lewis, P.M. and Booth J. The Invisible Medium. MacMillan, 2000.
  
  
• Low, A. M. Wireless Possibilities. New York: Dutton, 1924.
  
  
• Strauss, Neil and Dave Mandl, eds. Radiotext(e). New York: Semiotext(e), 1993.
  
  

• Hilmes, Michele and Jason Lovigilio, eds. Radio Reader: Essays in the Cultural History of Radio. (Routledge, 2002).
  
  
• Squier, Susan Merrill, ed. Communities of the Air: Radio Century, Radio Culture. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003.
  Argues that radio, as both technological and social practices, has played a powerful role in shaping Twentieth Century Anglo-American culture. The essays in this collection explore a number of ways in which radio was constructed by, and in turn helped to shape, society and culture.
  
  Part 1: Radio Technology across the Twentieth Century focuses on the development of radio where certain aspects of its broad potential were foreclosed while others were enhanced. See Steven Wurtzler's "AT&T Invents Public Access Broadcasting in 1923: A Foreclosed Model for American Radio" and Nina Huntermann's "A Promise Diminished: The Politics of Low-Power Radio."
  
  Part 2: Radio Cultures focuses on the effect of certain uses of radio on gender, race, class, and ethnicity of its producers and consumers.
  
  Part 3: Radio Ideologies focuses on radio's power to harness, as well as resist, ideologies of gender, race, and nationality. See Susan Squire's "Wireless Possibilities, Posthuman Possiblities: Brain Radio, Community Radio, Radio Lazarus" for interesting speculation on the stereotype of the autonomous modern individual.
  
  

• Bext Corporation Radio and Television Broadcast Equipment
  
  
• Broadcast Supply Worldwide
  
  
• Harris Corporation
  
  
• Infocaster-2000
  
  
• Radio World
  
  

• The Free Radio Network
  The free radio movement has, for the last 2-3 decades, worked to remove control of radio broadcasting from the Federal Communications Commission and put it in the hands of the people, to whom the airwaves are said to belong. Often conflated with pirate radio and/or LPFM (low power FM radio), Free Radio makes no distinction regarding the type or genre of radio, only that it is free of governmental or corporate control. The Free Radio Network's website provides information, links to many free radios (some legal, others not), as well as the opportunity to join The Association of Clandestine Enthusiasts.
  
  
• Radio 23
  A freeform radio station "dedicated to providing an international artistic platform for innovative and creative home broadcasters." The schedule rotates every two hours with a different, live international broadcaster providing new programming produced in their home, on their computer. An extremely interesting and valuable concept and approach to radio.
  
  
• Sakolsky, Ron and Stephen Dunifer, eds. Seizing the Airwaves: A Free Radio Handbook. San Francisco: AK Press, 1998.
  
  
• Post, Steve. Playing in the FM Band: A Personal Account of Free Radio. New York: Viking, 1974.
  
  
• Weiner, Allan H. and Anita Louise McCormick. Access to the Airwaves: My Fight for Free Radio. Port Townsend, WA: Loompanics, 1997.
  
  

• Barnouw, Erik. A Tower in Babel. New York: Oxford University Press, 1966.
  
  
• Broadcasting History Links
  A collection by Elizabeth McLeod, noted historian of old time radio and early television, of the most useful resources for serious students of broadcasting history.
  
  
• Charles Herrold:America's First Broadcaster
  Charles Herrold started a radio station in San Jose, California, in 1909. He and his students broadcast music and information to an audience of homemade crystal radio experimenters daily up to 1917. In 1921 Herrold's station was licensed as KQW. It became KCBS in 1949. Learn the Herrold story, see (and hear) a Herrold broadcast.
  
  
• Douglas, Susan J. Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination, from Amos 'n' Andy and Ed Murrow to Wolfman Jack and Howard Stern. New York: Random House, 1999.
  
  
• Douglas, Susan J. Inventing American Broadcasting, 1899-1922. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987.
  
  
• Hilmes, Michele. Radio Voices: American Broadcasting, 1922-1952. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.
  
  
• History and Old-Time Radio
  An extensive collection of archival and first-hand information about radio and radio programs. The website is not well-designed, but scroll to the bottom of the main page and follow the link to the "Program Guide." Then start browsing through the information. Your effort will be well rewarded.
  
  
• Horst J. P. Bergmeir and Rainer E. Lotz, Hitler's Airwaves: The Inside Story of Nazi Radio Broadcasting and Propaganda Swing (Yale University Press, 1997). (Includes audio CD)
  
  
• Old Time Radio Moments of the Century
  Compiled by Elizabeth McLeod, noted radio historian, this web page lists the top 100 old-time radio moments of the last century.
  
  
• United States Early Radio History
  Articles and extracts about early radio and related technologies, concentrating on the United States in the period from 1897 to 1927.
  
  
• The Xtal Set Society
  Once upon a time folks interested in radio built and experimented with their own crystal radio sets. The Xtal (Crystal) Set Society maintains this webpage which seeks to provide information for those interested to return to those glorious days of yesteryear.
  
  

• AM 1710 Old Time Radio
  A micro-power AM radio station in Antioch, Illinois, also offering Internet streaming broadcasts of a variety of historic radio shows.
  
  
• Edward R. Murrow
  Many consider Edward R. Murrow to the greatest radio news commentator of all time, and he is still noted for his cogent point of view, deliberate speaking style, and strong visual images. Raised in Washington, and a graduate from Washington State University, Murrow traveled to Europe during World War II where he produced some of his greatest commentaries. Listen to his report on the London Blitz, and his report after visiting the Buchenwald Concentration Camp. The latter is noted as one of radio's finest moments.
  
  
• Freedom's People
  "Freedom's People" (1941-1942) was an 8-part series produced by the Federal Radio Education Committee in the U.S. Office of Education and broadcast over the NBC network. The program was the first major radio series focusing on African-American life, culture, and history. "Freedom's People" was created by Dr. Ambrose Caliver, a specialist in African-American education within the Department of Education, and enlisted a wide variety of African American intellectuals, musicians, and actors, including E. Franklin Frazier, Sterling A. Brown, Joe Louis, A. Philip Randolph, Fats Waller, Jesse Owens, Cab Calloway, Josh White, and Paul Robeson. The eight parts were: "Music" (21 September 1941), "Science and Discover" (19 October 1941), "Sports" (23 November 1941), "Military Service" (21 December 1941), "The Negro Worker" (18 January 1942), "The Education of the Negro" (15 February 1942), "Creative Art" (15 March 1942), and "The Negro and Christian Democracy" (19 April 1942). Listen here to the complete first episode, "Music," aired 21 September 1941.
  
  
• Honey, Where You Been So Long?
  An amazing blog focused on collecting, archiving, and presenting for listening pre-World War II blues music. This link takes you to the collection of versions of the blues standard, "The Saint James Infirmary Blues." Join the blog, get the password, and access a large number of blues music mixes.
  
  
• March of Time
  In the early days of radio, live, on-the-scene radio news broadcasting was technologically difficult, if not impossible, and news shows were often nothing more than dramatized documentaries of events. Actors used newsreels in their attempt to exactly duplicate the voices of newsmakers. One of the earliest examples is the "March of Time" show, which first broadcast 6 March 1931 on CBS. By 1940, such dramatizations were being phased out, and replaced with news actualities broadcast from this country and abroad. Listen to some examples here, especially the "NRA/Lindburgh Kidnapping" and "Pearl Harbor" reports.
  
  
• The Mercury Theatre on the Air
  A collection of audio files from the heyday of The Mercury Theatre on the Air, including the famous "War of the Worlds" broadcast. Speaking of the "War of the Worlds" broadcast . . .
  • War of the Worlds.org
    The official website
  • War of the Worlds Invasion: The Historical Perspective
    A massive website featuring lots of historical and current information about the radio broadcast, movie and musical version, and all things Mars. Subscribe to the newsletter and get the latest updates.
  • War of the Worlds: How Orson Welles Drew the Nation into a Shared Illusion
    Discusses the broadcast
  • War of the Worlds Online
    References to all things WOW
  
  
• Radio Fights Jim Crow
  "New World A'Coming" and "Destination Freedom" were two radio programs that aired political and racial issues in the U.S. military on on the home front during World War II. Listen to some examples here.
  
  
• RUSC (RU Sitting Comfortably?)
  Acknowledged as the best old time radio (OTR) websites available. For a small membership fee you can listen to 10,000+ OTR shows from the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s (comedy, detective, drama, science fiction, thrillers, westerns, variety and music shows, and more), 24/7.
  
  
• The Sounds of Slavery
  These audio files accompany the book The Sounds of Slavery: Discovering African American History through Songs, Sermons, and Speech (Shane White, Graham White. Boston: Beacon).
  
  
• You Are There!
  The CBS radio series "You Are There" provided listeners the chance to be virually present at significant historical events. Newscasters John Daly, Don Hollenbeck, and Richard C. Hottelet reported "live" from each event. The series ran 7 July 1945 - 19 March 1950 and included ninety episodes. Many are collected at the Internet Archives Website where you can listen. Try "The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln" episode.
  
  

• How Radio Works
  Straightforward information about the technical aspects of radio. This page leads to MANY others, each one explaining a different aspect of radio and how it works. Recommended.
  
  

• Radio World
  The news source for radio managers and engineers
  
  

• BBC Radio 4
  
  
• Air India Radio
  
  
• South Africa FM
  
  
• Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Radio National
  
  

• FCC: Low Power Broadcast Radio Stations
  
  
• Low Power FM
  
  
• LPFM World.com
  Follow, under "Recommended Links" on the home page, the links leading to "Digital Radio" and "Radio on the Internet."
  
  
• Micropower Broadcasting—A Technical Primer
  
  
• Prometheus Radio Project
  A nonprofit organization that builds, supports, and advocates for community radio stations. Website offers an incredible collection of resources. For example, see the "Library" for step-by-step instructions on how to wade through the FCC application forms for a community low power FM station. See also "Our Pirate Past" under the "About Us" section for information about setting up a basic radio station.
  
  

• American Radio Works
  Another major producer of public radio documentaries: "American Radio Works is public radio's largest documentary production unit. American RadioWorks creates documentaries, series projects, and investigative reports for the public radio system and the Internet. ARW is based at Minnesota Public Radio in St. Paul and also has staff journalists based in Washington and New York."
  
  
• Current
  Online version of Current, a biweekly newspaper that covers news about U.S. public TV and radio
  
  
• Engelman, Ralph. Public Radio and Television in America. Sage Publications, 1996.
  
  
• Kern, Jonathan. Sound Reporting: The NPR Guide to Audio Journalism and Production. University of Chicago Press, 2008.
  A newer, revised version of the Rosembaum book (see below), but by a different author.
  
  
• Lost and Found Sound
  From NPR's "All Things Considered." A richly textured, evocative collection of stories that chronicle mark the turn in sound at the change of the century. Be sure and check out the extensive resources link.
  
  
• This American Life
  From Chicago Public Radio. One of the best shows on radio. Features long and short form documentaries and more. Main focus is on contemporary subjects.
  • Abel, Jessica and Ira Glass. Radio: An Illustrated Guide. Chicago: WBEZ FM, 1999.
    A comic by award-winning artist Abel that explains from start to air the production of a program for This American Life. Includes information on equipment, interviewing, editing, and how to make radio at home with technology.
  
  
  
• Rosenbaum, Marcus D. and John Dinges, eds. Sound Reporting: The National Public Radio Guide to Radio Journalism and Production. Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, 1992.
  
  
• Soundprint
  A major producer of radio documentaries. "SOUNDPRINT is broadcast weekly on public radio stations nationwide, and is the longest-running documentary series on public radio. The SOUNDPRINT series provides a national vehicle for long-form non-fiction works by outstanding producers, while fostering the development of emerging producers to encourage innovation and new voices on public radio."
  
  
• Wertheimer, Linda, ed. Listening to America: 25 Years in the Life of a Nation, as Heard on National Public Radio. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1995.
  
  

• Carpenter, Sue. 40 Watts from Nowhere: A Journey into Pirate Radio. New York: Scribner, 2004.
  Carpenter built and operated, for nearly three years, what may have been the largest and most popular pirate radio station in Los Angeles, California. This book provides an account of the journey, but provides very little information about the technology of the station.
  
  
• Conway, Dave. "How to Start Your Own Pirate Radio Station."
  A blog entry detailing the steps Conway took to establish and operate his own pirate radio station. Straight-forward practical advice.
  
  
• Dunifer, Stephen. Seizing the Airwaves: A Free Radio Handbook. AK Press, 2001.
  Dunifer was one of the first to advocate for and operate an unlicensed radio station and his book is the first to document and emphasize the many facets of the free radio movement. The first part addresses the political economy of North American radio and provides a history and analysis of pirate radio. The second part includes interviews and commentary by some of the key participants in the micropower broadcasting worldwide. The third part provides comprehensive technical information for getting a free radio station on the air.
  
  
• HF Underground
  A website dedicated to documenting longwave, mediumwave, and shortwave stations, including broadcasters, utility/military stations, pirate radio and spy numbers stations.
  
  
• Keith, Michael C. Voices in the Purple Haze: Underground Radio and the Sixties. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997.
  
  
• Outlaw Radio
  "We cover all aspects of do it yourself broadcasting." Also information on carrier current, Part 15 AM and FM radio, micro-broadcasting, and streaming. Information about transmitters, antennas, studio to transmitter links, automation, and other goodies.
  
  
• Pirate Radio Central
  A clearinghouse for information regarding pirate (free or unlicensed) radio stations.
  
  
• Pirate Radio.com
  Unrestricted Windows-based Internet broadcasting software. All you need is a computer and an Internet connection.
  
  
• Pirate Radio—Its History—It's Culture
  A starting point, maintained by About.com, for information about pirate radio.
  
  
• Yoder, Andrew. "The History of Unlicensed Radio." Electronics Now 1 June 1999.
  
  

• Battery Radio
  Located below the cliff in St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada, where Marconi used a kite to fly his antenna and said he received the first transAtlantic wireless radio signals, Battery Radio is an audio production company specializing in radio documentary features. Their work is available online or via podcast.
  
  
• Listening Between the Lines
  "Dedicated to investigating and helping to correct historical inequalities in America" by producing radio documentaries. "Listening Between the Lines encourages listeners' to rethink their values and assumptions as well the way they live their lives."
  
  
• Panos London Illuminating Voices
  The audio portal for this magazine "reporting on development issues that are often neglected by mainstream media." The programs come from a "global team of local journalists [who] seek out the views of people on the edges of society and offer you fresh perspectives."
  
  
• Sound Portraits Productions
  "Dedicated to telling stories that bring neglected American voices to a national audience. Whether on the radio, in print, or on the Web, Sound Portraits is committed to producing innovative works of lasting educational, cultural, and artistic value." Sound Portrait's radio documentaries are broadcast on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" and "Weekend Edition."
  
  

• A Free Audio Theatre Script Template"
  This website provides a free downloadable template for a radio drama script. Provides background information on radio scripts and how they follow a format developed in the 1940s. Provides instructions on how to use the template to create your own script.
  
  
• Alien Voices Unofficial Web Site
  A company of Star Treck actors, led by Leonard Nimoy (Spock) and John de Lancie (Q), who perform audio dramatizations of classic science fiction literature.
  
  
• Audio Theater.com
  In the beginning it was called "radio drama": where a cast of actors read a script accompanied by music and sound effects. When television replaced radio as the predominant form of home entertainment, radio drama evolved into "audio theater," an evolving form of entertainment accessible both with and without radio access. Examples include audio books, audio dramas, and mind movies (sound effects and music give the impression of watching a movie with your eyes closes). This website provides a wealth of information about audio theater. Follow the link to "Sound Effects" to learn more about Foley sound, for example. Also, the "Resources" link provides information about "Audio software and hardware links," "Microphone information," "Streaming audio," "Recording on location," writing audio scripts, and much more.
  
  
• Blue, Howard. Words at War: World War II Era Radio Drama and the Postwar Broadcasting Industry Blacklist. Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2002.
  
  
• The British Broadcasting Company (BBC)
  The largest broadcasting company in the world, The BBC still invests heavily in audio theater, producing some of the best modern pieces. There are three channels producing this kind of work
  • BBC Radio 3 and BBC Radio 4 generally offer drama and more serious fare
  • BBC Radio 7 offers science fiction and comedy as well as miscellaneous programs
  
  
• Crazy Dog Audio Theatre
  A professional production company based in Dublin, Ireland, that regularly produces live radio theater shows for the National Broadcasting Company of Ireland. See especially the links to "Writing for Audio" and "Sound Effects" where you can learn to build your own sound effects gear.
  
  
• Dry Smoke &Whispers Holodio Theatre
  A mystery science fiction "cinema in sound" series set in a sprawling galactic civilization produced like a cinema soundtrack with intense special effects that make it seem like you are present on another world. Award-winning and highly recommended.
  
  
• The Fall of the City
  Presented by the Columbia Workshop, CBS radio, 1937, starring Orsen Welles as the live radio announcer. This work influenced Welles who, the following year, directed and starred in the radio dramatization of H.G. Wells' novel, The War of the Worlds, often cited as the finest example of radio drama. Written by Nobel Prize winning poet Archibald MacLeish in response to the rise of fascism in Europe, this radio drama proved, through the beauty of its speech and the power of its story, that verse plays and radio were a good mix. Today, this drama is considered one of the most socially significant, and boldly experimental, works in the history of radio. Read a review in Time magazine (19 April 1937), "Theatre: Fall of the City".
  
  
• Great Northern Audio Theater
  Features work by producers Jerry Stearns and Brian Price, individually and together, as well as a number of other fine resources for contemporary audio theater. See especially Radio Theater on the Web for LOTS of links to other radio theater organizations and resources.
  
  
• Huwiler, Elke. "Storytelling by Sound: A Theoretical Frame for Radio Drama Analysis." The Radio Journal—International Studies in Broadcast and Audio Media 3(1) 2005
  Argues that radio drama is a acoustic art form and presents a methodology for analyzing narrative radio plays by considering all acoustic features: music, noises, voices, and electro acoustical manipulation like mixing. Each, according to the argument, can be, and often are, tools that signify story elements. Downloads as a .PDF file.
  
  
• L.A. Theatre Works
  The mission of the L.A. Theatre Works is "to enrich the cultural life of the national community through the use of innovative technologies to produce and preserve significant works of dramatic literature on audio, and to assure the widest public access to these great works." Of their four primary programs, "The Play's The Thing" is a live, in-performance radio theater series with ten shows a year. Provides a free, customizable streaming service for its productions.
  
  
• Radio Drama Revival
  A weekly, hour-long drama produced at Portland, Maine's community radio station, WMPG. The show accepts submitted work. Something to think about . . .
  
  
• Radio Tales of the Strange and Fantastic
  Speculative radio drama from radio's classic era; stories of the supernatural and the supernormal dramatizing fantasies and mysteries of the unknown, adventure, fantasy, and science fiction. LOTS of great stuff here. See, for example, "A Gun for Dinosaur" and "Earth Abides."
  
  
• Willamette Radio Workshop
  The Willamette Radio Workshop is a professional theatrical organization dedicated to the creation of original material for presentation on the Radio, Internet, as Compact Disks or whatever audio venues are available or appropriate. They produce radio shows in their own studio, or at live venues. Each one acknowledges the influence and history of radio theater. Each one seeks to recreate / reimagine classic radio programs. See also the information about the Writers On-the-Air workshop.
  
  
• The Wireless Theatre Company
  A modern British troupe doing contemporary audio theater work.
  
  

• BBC Radio Courses
  Free, online courses and guides, as well as information about face to face courses from one of the best radio networks in the world. See especially the free selections on "BBC News Styleguide," "Interviewing for Radio," and "Microphones and Sound for Radio." Download the BBC News Style Guide as a .PDF file
  
  
• Handbook for the URN Advanced Radio Journalism Course in Political Reporting
  Download as .PDF files
  • Part 1
  • Part 2
  • Part 3
  
  
• The Recording Studio
  A series of tutorials focusing on audio recordings, including mixing consoles, microphones, and recording devices. See also the tutorials on mp3 compression and digital audio file formats.
  
  

• BlogTalkRadio
  A social radio network. Using a telephone and computer, hosts can create free, live, call-in talk shows with unlimited participants. These shows are automatically archived and made available as podcasts. No software download is required. Listeners can subscribe to shows via RSS and listen with iTunes or other feed readers.
  
  
• College Broadcasters
  College Broadcasters represents students involved in radio, television, webcasting and other related media ventures and facilitates discussions of issues related to student-operated electronic media. See especially Webcasting and Copyrights for Radio Stations—The Basics
  
  
• Hollow Earth Radio
  An Internet streaming radio station, broadcasting from a basement in Seattle, WA, features story-telling, field recordings, radio plays, local and global music, as well as found sound.
  
  
• Hosting services
  • RadioStreamHost.com
    Professional internet broadcasting and audio streaming with personal attention to clients
  • Live365.com
    End-to-end broadcast platform
  
  
• "How Internet Radio Works"
  From HowStuffWorks. Provides a basic introduction about how Internet radio works and how to create an Internet radio station. Links to other radio articles and other information.
  
  
• "How To Create an Internet Radio Station"
  A tutorial for creating an Internet radio station. PC/Windows-centric.
  
  
• "How To Create Your Own Internet Radio Station"
  A good tutorial about how to set up an Internet radio station using your own computer. LOTS of links to related resources.
  
  
• "Internet Radio Rates Face New Roadblock"
  A good companion piece for the resource above. Provides further information about the royalty rates proposed by Sound Exchange, and describes the roadblock at "stream ripping."
  
  
• KOUG.com Internet Radio
  The student-run radio station based on the Washington State University Vancouver campus.
  
  
• "Lawmakers Hope To Prevent Demise of Internet Radio"
  A website for Jay Inslee, Representative from Washington's 1st Congressional District. Discusses legislation introduced by Inslee and Representative Don Manzullo (R-Illinois). A link it provided to the full text of the legislation.
  
  
• Transom.org
  A showcase and workshop for new public radio that works to channel new work and voices to public radio through the Internet. Provides solid equipment reviews by radio producers (not marketing copywriters), shows, and guest and visiting artist pieces. This website is administered by Atlantic Public Media, an organization devoted to serving "public broadcasting through training and mentorship, and through support for creative and experimental approaches to program production and distribution."
  
  
• Radio College
  Part of The Association of Independents In Radio website, Radio College is an archive of articles about both the art and business of radio. Much of the material is dated, but still useful. Browse around. Some good starting points are provided on the front page, like "Getting Good Ambient Sound," "How to Mic A Field Interview," and "Interviewing Tips."
  
  
• A Roundup of Online Art Radio
  A list of art-related podcasts, online radio stations, and more compiled by Ceci Moss, 10 August 2010.
  
  
• SaveNetRadio.org
  A coalition of artists, music labels, listeners, and webcasters interested to save Internet radio from what they consider unfair royalty rates proposed by the recording industry. They believe in supporting artists through royalties, but feel those currently proposed will, because they are so expensive, destroy Internet radio as we know it.
  
  
• SoundExchange
  Webcasting licensing and music royalty payment
  
  

Professional Radio / Sound Organizations

• Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC)
  Provides information exchange surrounding all aspects of recorded sound.
  
  
• Association of Independents in Radio (AIR)
  An education and advocacy organization that promotes excellence in radio production work. See Radio College, an archive of articles about both the art and business of radio. Much of the material is dated, but still useful. Browse around. Some good starting points are provided on the front page, like "Getting Good Ambient Sound," "How to Mic A Field Interview," and "Interviewing Tips."
  
  
• Audio Engineering Society
  Engineers, scientists, and others devoted to audio technology. Publishes the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, the professional archival publication in the audio industry.
  
  
• The Canadian Society For Independent Radio Production
  Founded in 1998 to serve the needs of professional and amateur radio producers and sound artists in Canada.
  
  
• Society of American Archivists, Recorded Sound Roundtable
  A forum for discussing the role, needs, and care of sound recordings in archival collections.
  
  

Sound

• Polymorphous Space
  A website built and maintained by Tetsuo Kogawa, a leading sound artist and proponent of micro radio. Provides information on building FM transmitters, radio art, web radio, and much more.
  
  
• Sound, Music, Noise & related sites
  A collection of links to and short descriptions of websites focusing on sound, music, or noise. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the links on this page no longer work. The descriptions are interesting, however.
  
  

Sound Archives

• Absolute Sound Effects Archive
  This resource bills itself as "one of the largest collections of free sounds on the Internet." Indeed there are lots of sounds here, all categorized, easy to search, and free to download.
  
  
• Audiodocumentary.org
  A curatorial effort and information portal to all kinds of free, online radio and audio documentary content. "Basically we bring you links to stuff that we think is interesting and which might otherwise fly below the radar—that great piece from NPR, that unknown Podcast, or any other audio documentary content we want to bring to people's attention."
  
  
• The EASAIER Project
  A European research project addressing archiving of and accessing sound archives. Requires downloading a client.
  
  
• Internet Archive
  An Internet library that offers permanent access to historical materials and collections that exist in digital format.
  • The Audio Archive contains over 200,000 free digital recordings ranging from alternative news programming, to Grateful Dead concerts, to Old Time Radio shows, to book and poetry readings, to original music uploaded by users.
  • Open Source Audio is a collection of audio uploaded by users and available under a Creative Commons License.
  
  
• The Freesound Project
  The Freesound Project is a collaborative database of Creative Commons licensed sounds. A good archive for lots of different sounds that can be downloaded and used in your own projects.
  
  
• Funky16Corners Radio Podcast Archive
  A blog focused on funk and soul vinyl. In addition to individual MP3 tracks, Larry Grogan posts mixes under the title "Funky16Corners Radio." Titles, tracklists, and download links for all the editions of the Funky16Corners Radio podcasts are available, and, with each podcast, a link to the original blog post.
  
  
• The Library of Congress: American Memory: Sound Recordings
  Twenty four music and speech collections.
  
  
• Peter Copeland Manual of Analogue Sound Restoration Techniques (British Library, 2008)
  With the rapid development of digital technologies, analogue formats for recording and archiving sound files have all but disappeared. But, before digital, everything was analogue and there is a tremendous amount of important analogue sound files that need to be restored and preserved. This book provides a great deal of information about how to proceed with this task. The author worked as Conservation Manager for the British Library Sound Archive. Download this book (333 pages) as a .PDF file.
  
  
• PDSounds
  Free public domain and royalty free sounds.
  
  
• SoundBible.com
  "The Encyclopedia of Sounds." Free sound clips, sound bits, and sound effects.
  
  
• Sound Jay
  Free sound effects! Features background sounds, communication sounds, human sound effects, house and domestic sounds, machine and mechanical sounds, miscellaneous sounds, nature sounds, and transportation sounds.
  
  
• The Speech Accent Archive
  Uniformly exhibits a large set of speech accents from a variety of language backgrounds. Native and non-native speakers of English all read the same English paragraph and are carefully recorded. Designed for linguists and other people who wish to listen to and compare the accents of different English speakers. The archive is constructed by the Department of Linguistics at George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, as a teaching and research tool. (Submitted by Wu Tsung-Lien, Spring 2008)
  
  
• Western Soundscape Archive
  A soundscape is sound or combination of sounds from an acoustic environment and may consist of either or both natural (animal vocalizations, weather, etc) and human (music, conversation, work, mechanical, etc) sounds. Soundscapes feature all on an area's sonic components together, in concert and represent the total acoustic environment. This archive recognizes the connection between places and their soundscapes and features ambient and specific recordings of animals and environments throughout the Western United States. A large collection of the holdings are available through Creative Commons licensing HERE
  
  
• Wikimedia Commons
  Freely usable media files to which anyone can contribute. A special section is available for sound.
  
  
• Wikipedia:Sound/list
  An incomplete list of copyleft/public domain musical works available on Wikipedia or Wikimedia Commons.
  
  

Sound Design

• Bracewell, John L. Sound Design in the Theatre. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1993.
  Functions of a sound designer
  • Audibility
  • Music
  • Setting
  • Plot
  • Mood
  • Vocal alteration
  • Vocal replacement
  
  

Sound Installation / Performance

• Playing the Building, A Sound Installation by David Byrne
  Remember The Talking Heads? Byrne was one of leaders behind their greatness and he continues on the cutting edge with a series of sound installations in buildings where the building itself is used as a musical instrument. Devices are placed on the building's structure components and then used to make them create wind, vibration, or striking sounds. This website provides photographs and audio files.
  
  
• Playing with Words: The Spoken Word in Artistic Practice. Cathy Lane, ed. London: CRISAP, 2008.
  The power of words can "mobilise people, to wage war, to tell a convincing story to illustrate cultural and social imbalances of power. . . . Non-verbal communication is also identifed as a 'weapon' of power, as is the suppression of language by colonial powers and the subsequent dangers of the loss of both language and culture" (10). Voice-based compositions and performances involve precise demands for listening and learning, but the immense possibilities realized from "playing with words" are inspirational and informative.
  (Cathy Lane. "Forward." Playing with Words: The Spoken Word in Artistic Practice. Cathy Lane, ed. London: CRISAP, 2008. 7-11.)
  
  Voice is a technology immediately to hand, made from native materials. We need not seek some more remote technology (42). Writing, while an invaluable aid to memory, can be misleading (45).
  (Ansuman Biswas. "Sound and Sense." Playing with Words: The Spoken Word in Artistic Practice. Cathy Lane, ed. London: CRISAP, 2008. 41-47.)
  
  Speech context may be heard as music . . . "restaurant soundscapes turned into huge spoken word choral performances and the hushed tone talking before the start of a movie was akin to the tuning of an orchestra before an evening performance." One can hear musical aesthetics in the speech contexts that surround them (59).
  (Michael Vincent. "The Music in Words." Playing with Words: The Spoken Word in Artistic Practice. Cathy Lane, ed. London: CRISAP, 2008. 57-61.)
  
  "The voice also connects with so many things. When we speak we not only convey meanings but we portray things about ourselves, simple things like what gender we are or whether we are ill or healthy, but also, perhaps, what our intentions are, what our mood is. There are so many layers to the voice and once you incorporate language you can connect to traditions of poetry and drama and literature but also with the everyday use of speech" (71). . . . Qualities of personality come through voice as well (72). . . . This individual quality of voice can be captured (recorded) and abstracted with interesting results and implications (74).
  (Trevor Wishart. Interviewed by Cathy Lane. Playing with Words: The Spoken Word in Artistic Practice. Cathy Lane, ed. London: CRISAP, 2008. 70-77.)
  
  "Language is the primary repository of culture and history, and once a language is no longer spoken, the rich knowledge it carries is gone forever." Sound art may offer a "para-linguistic strategy for exposing cross-cultural experiences that language itself cannot achieve" (81).
  (John Wynne. "To Play or Not to Play?" Playing with Words: The Spoken Word in Artistic Practice. Cathy Lane, ed. London: CRISAP, 2008. 78-84.)
  
  Paul Lansky, recognized as one of the pioneers of computer music, notes that in using the computer as an instrument he is interested in "trying to project the image of the human performer behind the screen." He also notes a difference between works where the speech is recorded "everyday sound" and those that are written for the microphone. The latter, he says, is "performance" while the former is "eavesdropping" (109). Finally, "every composer is a story teller in a sense. Every time you write a piece you're telling a story in one way or another" (110). Lansky is speaking strictly of music composers, but we certainly could consider an expanded definition and role.
  (Paul Lansky. Interviewed by Cathy Lane. Playing with Words: The Spoken Word in Artistic Practice. Cathy Lane, ed. London: CRISAP, 2008. 108-111.)
  
  "Art is what happens when you take an object out of context and give it a new thought." (Marcel Duchamp, in Calvin Tomkins, Duchamp. London 1997)
  
  Leigh Landy, in his essay "Re-composing Words") calls this form of recycling "1% tilt" (142). Landy suggests the following project: use current radio broadcasts as found sound, take something known and change it ever so slightly (1% tilt) so that it becomes something new, and then present it as a work of art (144).
  (Leigh Landy. "Re-composing Words." Playing with Words: The Spoken Word in Artistic Practice. Cathy Lane, ed. London: CRISAP, 2008. 140-144.)
  
  Words are the most powerful weapons in the world because they allow us to tell stories. It does not matter that these stories are old, or even whether they are true. What matters is that they are good stories. Good stories, about a villain, or a treasure, or a promise, or a right (perceived or real), can start wars. How do you combat that? Tell better stories.
  (Laurie Anderson. Interviewed by Cathy Lane. Playing with Words: The Spoken Word in Artistic Practice. Cathy Lane, ed. London: CRISAP, 2008. 180-185.)
  
  
• The Sound Installation
  An unpublished academic paper by Manuel Rocha Iturbide in which he explains and details what is meant by sound installation. Useful for the theoretical overview. Download as a .PDF file.
  
  

Soundscapes / Sonic / Acoustic Environments

• New York Society for Acoustic Ecology
  This project describes itself as a container in which to hold many different processes and projects focusing on the city's shifting sonic environment and temporal, physical, and cultural contexts Among these projects are "Sound Seeker," a Google map-based interface for listening to the sounds of New York. Clicking icons on a map plays the recorded sound, and shows the address, date, time of day, author, and other information regarding the recording; and "City in a Sidewalk," where participants are invited to navigate a provided soundwalk, or create one of their own. Using an online forum, participants can exchange personal narratives, photographs, drawings, sound recordings, environmental data, historical details, maps, and other information about their walks.
  
  
• Gibbs, Tony. The Fundamentals of Sonic Arts and Sound Design (AVA Publishing, 2007).
  
  
• Phonography.org
  "Phonography" (literally, "sound writing") refers to field recordings that attempt to capture any event that can be reproduced and represented as sound. The capture/recording of the sound is privileged over its production, reflecting a bias toward discovery rather than invention. Learn more about phonography HERE. This website features a number of phonographies, as well as information about recording gear, and links to other resources, sounds, and recording labels.
  
  
• Schafer, R. Murray. The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World (Destiny Books, 1993)
  
  
• Schafer, R. Murray. The Tuning of the World: A Pioneering Exploration Into the Past History and Present State of the Most Neglected Aspect Of Our Environment: The Soundscape (McClelland and Stewart, 1977).
  
  
• WFAE: World Forum for Acoustic Ecology
  An international organization engaged in multi-disciplinary study of the social, cultural and ecological aspects of the sonic environment. Part of their mission is "protecting and preserving existing natural soundscapes and time and places of quiet."
  
  

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