Cats In The Courtyard_Live improvisation

Kaamos(polar night)_Live looping and improvisation

Live looping and improvisation on an old harmonium rigged with microphones and guitar effect pedals

RKH_One_Live looping and improvisation

The Big Dipper

A track made during during a 'poetry-music' workshop at Poets translating Poets Festival, Mumbai, November 2016

Poetry recited by Nicolai Kobus
Background vocals by Carina Fenderich
Poetry and composition by A Bhaskar Rao

Words:

It’s scary,
how you make me write a song, everyday
how you make me think, is scary

A song, a day
for you, about you, without you
soon, you'll be my music and I'll lose mine

It scares me that soon
I'll forget the songs I remember
And you'll make me arrange a new playlist

It’s a tough job to do
arranging things, unknown, in the correct order

And to still make it worth, something

PLAYLIST_Music poetry

Poetry written and recited by Pramati Anand

कुछ मत कहो, सुनो _Music poetry

Audio recording location: Rumtek Buddhist Monastery, Sikkim, India
April, 2015

Listen on headphones for best output.

As I started to walk towards the Rumtek monastery, located on a hill top, a musical sound of horns was the first distinct thing I heard, in the otherwise quiet soundscape. A persistent presence of armed forces in the area and the high level of security, somehow added to the quietness. As I came closer to the monastery, the sounds of the horns, earlier appearing to be as high pitched humming from the distance, started sounding richer, accompanied by fat, low pitched sounds, which could be easily mistaken to be coming out of an analog synthesizer.

The entire soundscape was filled with this sound and one could easily find their senses getting ‘tuned’ to it, as they entered the monastery. Also, an interesting sonic element was the reverberation within the architectural structure of the monastery, which on one hand was facilitating the sound of the horns to be heard in all nooks and corners and on the other hand, making it difficult, rather mysterious to exactly locate the place where the horns were being played.

I followed the sounds where they could be heard the loudest. Although I was not allowed to enter the practice hall and so I had to record the sound from a distance. What can be heard in this audio is the initial tuning process of the horns producing sounds at different frequencies. But there is more to these sounds as merely being musical. What the monks believe is that the sounds, as far as they travel, spread good energy and vibes and is similar to their prayers being transmitted in the air, but through sonic means.

What also makes these sounds interesting is their relationship with the acoustic environment. The sound of the horns set a background over which the other rarely produced sounds of natural or man-made activities float over, at least for the time duration in which the practicing takes place. There were moments when the sound of the horns paused briefly, but to an ear listening to them with concentration, they were still present in the aural space, crisp and clear.

Is it then, fine to perceive this constant sound which was prominently present in the acoustic environment of the monastery as its ‘silence’?

How does, this establishes the subjectivity of defining silence according to a given space and the perception of sounds by the human ears, depending upon the depth of the soundscape; the foreground and the background?

Do we consciously notice that, how we define ‘silence’ is an interesting yet complex physiological and psychological process, which goes beyond the understanding of propagation of sound waves, as the textbooks quote it to be; compression and rarefaction of mechanical waves, depending upon the physical characteristics of the medium.

Questions, worth asking to ourselves?

Tibetian horns at Rumtek Monastery (Sikkim, India)_Field recording

Recording of sounds coming out of a tap due to varying pressure of water and modulations caused by turning the knob, with an added delay effect in post production.

TAP Delay

A track composed using electronic loops and acoustic guitar.

Lyrics are compiled from words and phrases, randomly picked out of a book called Motorcycle Diaries and A short story collection by Ritwik Ghatak

LYRICS:

I'll call out the firefighters
Waterfalls and other matters

Towards the navel of the world
Besides the lake of the sun
Let's break the last tie
Discover the ocean

A note in the margin
Ever northward
Arid land for miles
And curious objects

Towards the navel of the world
Besides the lake of the sun
Let's break the last tie
Discover the ocean

Or just call out the firefighters
Waterfalls and other matters

You've been white like the foam
On the crest of the wave
On the trail, far ago
At the milky way

Love sick pause
Flu, on the bed
Let's break the last tie
And discover the ocean

I'll call out the firefighters
Waterfalls and other matters

Vocals by Heloise Dravigney

Motorcycle Diaries_Music poetry

Afternoon In C Major

Evening Prayers, Tewali Village, Rajasthan, India

Paani Ri_Songs in Kandbari (Himachal Pradesh)

Suna Karo (A Poem by Kaifi Azmi)_Music poetry

Homelessness_Composition in Sonic Pi

Paper Moon_Composition in Sonic Pi (Live coding synth)

Epiphany_Composition in Sonic Pi

The track is composed, using field recordings from Matheran, a hill station in Maharashtra, India

MATHERAN_Composition from field recording

The following tracks were an outcome of a Sound workshop conducted at NID Andhra Pradesh in Chitrakatha International Design storytelling festival 2019, chaired by Sekhar Mukherjee

I co-conducted the workshop with Sound practitioner and Teacher, Thomas Gassmann from HSLU, Switzerland

Soundscape Two_Chitrakatha 2019_NID Andhra Pradesh_Advait Bharat

Soundscape One_Chitrakatha 2019_NID Andhra Pradesh_Kaushal R

At 5 PM on 22/03/2020, people across India came out to beat vessels and clap for doctors, health workers and others at the front line, defending the country against the Corona virus pandemic

This is recording from a place called Paldi, in Ahmedabad, India

Doomsday Paldi

Waiting For The Rain

Please go through the ALBUMS and PLAYLISTS section for a better compiled version of tracks

'Exploring Experiential sound and Experimental music'

E-mail: mustardlake@gmail.com
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/247adroit/featured

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