The sounds heard on this track were produced by the Springboard, a self-built instrument made of amplified readily available materials, such as wood and coil springs. These are activated most often with cello bows and friction mallets, and typically have a complex harmonic content, bordering between noise and definite pitches. Using a DigiTech Whammy® pedal enabled me to bend the pitch of the sounds I made up and down as I played.

Springboard Jan 14 2011 Woody Wham

A stereo reduction of an octophonic composition for Beyond Listening made on November 16, 2023 using field recordings, granulation, and analog techniques (filters and gates).

Auditory Respiration - Stereo Master - 44.1k

“The Frequent Listener” is a live performance with grand piano and recorded soundscape composition in the Joan James Harris Theater at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. The fixed composition for 2-channel stereo output, was composed by Eric Leonardson, a 10-minute, 12-second duration of the audio track. With student assistants from Stetson University, Professor Chaz Underminer provided sound reinforcement operational production support. Leonardson directed two artists and conference participants, Alex Braidwood and Lisa Schonberg to perform in rather than on the piano in real time, improvising their accompaniment to the fixed “media soundscape.”

The Frequent Listener 2023

Created by Steve Barsotti and Eric Leonardson at Experimental Sound Studio 1998. Engineered by Lou Mallozzi. Released on CD "rarebit," 2008. Mimeomeme/Transparency CD0125.

Rarebit

Near And Distant Relations

At approximately 9 p.m. on Thursday, June 30, 2011 an unusually intense and massive hailstorm ripped through the East Garfield neighborhood, shattering car windows, sky lights, and making deep impressions on car hoods and roofs. Extensive and devastating damage was caused to trees and shrubs as the massive amount hail stones pummeled everything outdoors. The nearby Garfield Park Conservatory had all of its historic glass smashed, causing extensive and costly damage to all the plants inside except for those areas where new, stronger glass had been installed several years earlier. Electric power outages occurred across the city. High winds from the storm tipped over a couple of sailboats in Lake Michigan. My photo of one melting hail stone more than one inch in diameter indicates how billions of these caused massive damage as they rained down in a few minutes time. This YouTube video conveys the scene: http://youtu.be/XpGVUyxPL2A. 

Hailstorm June 30, 2011

Recorded 11am Sunday, May 24, 2015 in Bremen, Germany with a Sony PCM-M10 44.1kHz 24-bit. We were finally feeling the start of spring and some sunshine. Having just arrived from Chicago, I found the new sense of place remarkable.

Church bells, door opens in Bremen May 24, 2015

Recorded on Saturday, September 5th for NPR’s Morning Edition invitation to share a minute of daybreak sounds from where you live, part of its Close Listening series http://www.npr.org/2015/09/03/436981928/what-does-daybreak-sound-like-where-you-live. My recording was not selected broadcast on the September 11th show. However, since it was made to be publicly shared and in spite of its shortcomings, I thought the recording provided something worth listening to. From the standpoint of energy transfer and acoustic communication, I hear the dynamic relationship of voices in the soundscape playing upon and within me. Its strength and weakness shift. 

As a regarding of the dawn chorus, only one gull's voice can be heard for a single, brief moment. There is no "chorus." For my verbal description, I spoke close and softly to the microphone. The sound of the waves on the beach obscure my voice, but the gull’s interruption is clear. Perhaps this shows simply that the source of sounds that define my sense of place are physically tied to my own proximity. Changes in this will effect their personal meaning and value.

Morning Edition’s call reminds me of a site-based micro radio event, “SoundTent at Camp Sherwin” for The Radius Episode 63 http://theradius.us/episodes. It was part of the real time streaming International Dawn Chorus Day event organized by soundCamp | REVEIL. 

Daybreak at camp Sherwin Sept. 5, 2015

Recorded with iPhone 5s in Jardín Botánica, site for Sounding Colombia, a workshop at the Universidad de Caldas, in Manizales, Colombia. Among the chorusing of frogs and city traffic a blue and green Andean motmot clucks a warning toward me. Later, a rufous-collared sparrow calls. Nearby, young people were rehearsing a physical theater performance.

Andean Motmot and frogs in Jardín Botánica

Recorded May 8, 2016 in Manizales, Colombia

6 PM Bells Over Manizales

Go Study #13

An audio montage composition for Go, a wonderful exhibition of visual art on the theme of speed in the Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago, Feb. 23–June 4, 2017. Some refer to this genre as a "mashup." Works quoted are from Scambi (1957), Henri Pousseur; Total Nervous Phenomenon, Test Dept.; Studies for Player Piano, Study #1, Conlon Nancarrow; Dripsody: An Étude for Variable Speed Recorder. Mono Version (1955), Hugh Le Caine; L'oeil Ecouté (1970), Bernard Parmegiani; Cinq Etudes de bruits: Etude aux chemins de fer (1948), Pierre Schaeffer; Chase (1996), Eric Leonardson; Williams Mix (1952), John Cage. Real world sounds include domestic car approach and skid, Pilot-to-Air traffic controller communication, Radio and TV sounds, High performance car burn out, Ambulance passing with siren, Old movie camera in operation, Jet overhead flyby, Lift-off of Apollo 11 at Cape Kennedy, Florida on July 16, 1969, 16mm film projector playing looped clip from film (Fred Astaire dancing), Stuka JU-87 dive bombers and explosions, Horse gallops by.

All Systems Go

This work for Radiokunst - Kunstradio ÖRF Vienna reimagines and reflects the diversity and relationships of acoustic communications I personally hear and create in urban and suburban soundscapes. My recent travels and residencies in Chicago, Austria, and Germany serve both as a theme and a source of sounds. These tones and noises come from simple handheld and handmade electronic instruments, field recordings, and computer-based audio manipulation. 
Over a month-long residency at AIR Krems, a week in Augsburg, and early this year, at the Ragdale artists community, I experimented with many physical and digital objects and materials, and even a piano. Featuring prominently are resynthesized sounds of a public address announcement and passing trains in Vienna, fireworks in Krems, and my tabletop experiments with voice, inductors and electromagnetic fields, and a self-built light-sensing oscillator. Piezoelectric vibration sensors on my larynx and pencil amplified the bodily movements of writing and speech. A friend's accidental cell phone call and long recorded message, made while she walked steadily at 120 bpm, provided a rhythmic, noisy and humorous artifact of everyday experiences in mobility and wireless transmission. 
Some sounds conceal their origins once recorded. The idling boat engine on the Danube River could be a low note on contra bass. Cold winter wind blowing through brittle dried burdocks in the prairie, with a faraway train horn, offers an odd perspective; such extremes of distal and proximal sounds, recorded in one place at one time, make it seem artificial. 
Two summer outdoor soundscapes also appear. Now in Chicago, different species of cicadas produce a whine very similar to electrical transformers and my digital processes. They mix with the flyovers of air traffic approaching O'Hare International Airport. While both are relentless, soon the cicadas will pass. Outdoors in Augsburg, trams, cars, and lawnmowers dominated while I played my oscillators harmonized with the machinery. My newly invented instrument, the Schaschliktstäben Violin leads us out at this piece's conclusion.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to EMERGE, Kunstradio, SAIC and the AIR Krems staff. Thanks also to open source and free digital tools made and shared by Nobuyasu Sakodna and Michael Norris.

Moving Between Two Or More Places

Solo Springboard performance for the Association for the Advancement of Phonography and Experimental Music at the Institute for New Media. Recorded live on July 21, 2012 in Frankfurt, Germany. More info: http://www.phonographie.org

PHONOPHON Konzert at Institut für Neue Medien

Leonardson is a composer, radio artist, sound designer, instrument inventor, improviser, visual artist, and teacher, who has devoted a majority of his professional career to unorthodox approaches to sound and its instrumentation, with a broad understanding of texture, atmosphere and micro-tones. As a practicing artist and educator he has an interest in the elusive lines that separate art media and disciplines; the promise of technology to enable new possibilities in art, discovering connections between physical action, sensory perception, and ideas.

Leonardson performs regularly on the Springboard, an electroacoustic percussion instrument made from readily available materials. Applying his percussion skills and a piezo pickup to coil springs, wood, plastic combs, and rubber bands he creates rich tones and timbres that, in the words of Nicolas Collins, “evoke the sound world of a Balinese Gamelan orchestra.” Others compare these sounds to industrial vibrations and animal voices. 

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