I had a wonderful time co-leading a two-week workshop with the sound studies students at Bauhaus-UniversitƤt Weimar in Germany. We had a deep and expressive time exploring Deep Listening, Field Recording, and Sonic Art with a very gifted and interesting group of students.
I also had the privilege to discuss my work on their radio station over at Bauhaus.fmĀ on the show called āEvery Dreaming Body is a Listener?!ā with Brandon LaBelle. You can find a recording of the conversation on their website (in English).
I’m announcing an exciting new sleep music listening experience and I would love if you were a part of it.
In 2016 I started doing Sleep Concerts. During these concerts I play soothing ambient music for 6-12 hours while people sleep. They are very fulfilling and often moving experiences for me, but they are also exhausting often requiring several days for me to physically recover. During once such concert in 2017 in Brooklyn, NY I had an idea: what if something natural could trigger the notes while people sleep? Biorhythm sensors? Air temperature? A music box?! What if the stars in the sky could trigger sounds like raised dots on the metal cylinder of a music box? During the wee hours of the morning while emerged the clear meditative state that often arises from playing controlled, gentle music for so many hours, Celestial Music Box was born. It took several years of thinking and research, but itās finally ready!
Imagine listening to music that uses the coordinates of the overhead sky at night to trigger notes while you sleep. Imagine going back in time and listening to the night sky the day you were born, your child was born, you met you soulmate or someone you loved left this planet? Imagine listening to the night sky over GreenlandĀ the night Amelia Earhart flew over the Atlantic ocean?
WithĀ Celestial Music BoxĀ you can choose the date and location to generate the star map above and listen tot he music that star map generates.
If you are having difficulty sleepingĀ or would like to hear a system of music supported by the sacred geometry of the universe itself, this is for you!
Celestial Music Box will be released on June 20, the Summer Solstice, the longest night of the year. This music will be exclusively available to my Patreon supporters.
So in addition to the free music from Meditative Soundscapes I post there, you will be able to listen to generative sleep music system that I am sure will resonate deeply with many people.
Be a part of the community of Celestial Deep Listeners.
At long last, a project I’ve been working on for over four years has arrived!
Recreating the sounds of extinct animals is a call to listen in the present.
EchozooĀ is an audio portal to the past, an invitation to the present, and an urgent message to the future. Ā Reimagining the sounds of earthās ancient history beyond a human scale, reconstructing the sound of extinct animals and their habitats,Ā EchozooĀ connects listeners with the sounds of the distant past. Created with field recordings of living animals, these are digitally processed to re-create the sounds of their now-extinct relatives and recomposed into immersive audio experiences. These long-silenced voices are re-sounded and heard within an imagined soundscape of their habitats, encouraging us to hear imagined ecosystems together with these ancestors in a powerful meditation on nature and the current loss of biodiversity in our natural world.
Echozoo Promo
Explore the Echozoo Portal here at echozoo.org. You can listen to samples of creatures on the interactive map showing the region where these extinct creatures once lived.
You can support this largely self-financed project by buying one or more of the three-volume collection of extinction songs.
Good morning or evening friends. Happy
Thanksgiving to everyone in the US! I hope this day is filled with the
feelings of gratitude and abundance for the collective interdependence
of life. I am halfway through my three-month residency at GlogauAIR in Berlin and I just wanted to share some projects in my life for which I am grateful.
Spektrum Performance
When I arrived in Berlin, I performed at one of my favorite venues in Berlin: Spektrum. I gave a concert of my field recording landscapes sounds where I created a surrealists collage of environmental sounds from around the world during my travels. I also made a video of found footage from around the world wide web that I showed at the performance. I am very grateful to Aude FranƧoise from SCOPE, Ienke at Spektrum and DJ Solitue who presented a mix of former Liebig12 residents and for connecting me with Spektrum last year.
Scope Sessions
The second event I did was a talk on my work and process at Scope Sessions. I focused on my work synthesizing Deep Listening, meditation, Buddhist philosophies, field recording, and ambient music. I also played some samples of my work. It was very well received and help crystallize some things for meĀ in my world. I am also very grateful to meet the host Tobias Raayoni Last.
Speaking at SCOPE Sessions
Red Bull Session
Last week was very busy for me here in Berlin! I welcomed two close friends to town at the same time. My collaborator from Mixes from the Field, Sharon Renee Stewart was in town. We met some Deep Listening friends, did some walking and field recording. At the same time, my old buddy and music legend King Britt was in town. We hung out for three days, recorded an episode for my podcast, and recorded at Red Bull Studios Berlin. Iām super grateful to King for inviting me to the recording session with Hainbach, Christina Wheeler and Clara Hill where
I got to play one of my favorite instruments, the Fender Rhodes piano!
The sessions were magical and the sound at Red Bull was extraordinary. I
canāt wait to hear the final mixes of this collaboration.
Sharon recording at Templehof
The crew at Red Bull Studios
Listening Bodies Project
This time in Berlin has allowed me to deepen my working relationship with choreographer/dancer/movement researcher Monica Genitle.
We organically came together to develop a teaching framework that
combines my music and Deep Listening practices and her somatic body
practices. Weāve done two classes here in Berlin. One at Lake Studios Berlin for dancers and one sound walk workshop at GlogauAIR and SomoS (we had a fairytale-like sound walk in the first snow of the season at night). We will do one more class exploring synesthesia and ASMR as listening body practice at Liebig12. And on Dec 10/11 we will offer a two-day workshop at Tatwerk in Berlin. We will have more exciting Listening Bodies news next week about our plans in 2019!
From the Listening Bodies Sound Walk along the Paul-Lincke-Ufer ListeningBodies.com for more information…
Once again, thank you all for your support.
Greetings from Yangon, Myanmar! Iāve had an amazing two months in Southeast Asia. In January I was Artist in Residence at ComPeung
in northern Thailand where I was making field recordings, sound
designing for some upcoming projects and experiencing the beautiful
landscapes, people, smells, sights and sounds of the regionā.
recording the landscape in Bagan, Myanmar; photo by Monica Gentile
Hereās a piece I made inspired by the landscapes of Thailand and
Myanmar. Traveling in the land thatās home to Theravada Buddhism has
been profoundly powerful. Thereās so many temples, stuppas, pagodas,
monks and lots of psychedelic Buddha shrines! To see all this first hand
has changed me and given me perspective on the practice, dhamma and the
nature of connection.ā Click below to hear and download this new piece
of music “Once You Hear This You Will Always Be a Part of the Song”.
My next stop will be a residency in North India at PECAH in the Uttarakhand region in the foothills of the Himalayas. There Iāll be working on Echozoo,
playing and collaborating with North Indian musicians and artists and
working on upcoming projects for a very busy April when I return to
Philadelphia for a month. If youāre in Philadelphia Iāll be involved in a
number of projects including:ā
Sound design for an installation with the SPACES Artist Residency at Village of Arts and Humanities
Happy holidays to everyone reading this! Thanks for being a part of
an amazing year of sonic adventures. Without the connection I get by
sharing these sounds, moments and memories with you all, this would be
meaningless. In the midst of the busy holiday season I hope you’re all
finding moments of connection and peace.
If you’re looking for a tonic to the holiday sensoral overload, I recommend two Mikronesia ambient albums I released this year. :dibba-sota is a quiet sonic meditation on Deep Listening and natural spaces and Dissolve is an hour long continuous piece of music that was described by music legend King Britt
as “sonic sage”, great for clearing and cleansing a space. In the
spirit of the season all the albums on my Bandcamp (including the Landscapes series) are “name your price”. So you can download for free or pay any price that’s good for you š
Also this year I released three albums in a series called Landscapes.
These albums were created at artists residencies around the world this
year. The intention of these albums is to allow the listener to
experience a sense of place through listening and explore the sonic
character of a geographic location. The environmental recordings are
augmented with subtle effects and “sonic photography” techniques to
represent our own coloring of sound through listening consciousness.
In 2018 I’ll be continuing my nomadic life with residencies at Com Peung in Chiang Mai, Thailand and PECAH
in Uttarakhand, India. I’m very excited to travel to Asia for the first
time and focus on the soundscape recording, creation and Echozoo at these residencies.
In addition to traveling and releasing music this year I was glad to begin a new collaborative project Mixes from the Field,
with fellow Deep Listener Sharon Stewart. This project seeks to connect
people of all ages to explore modes of Deep Listening and the work of
Pauline Oliveros through field recording, sonic meditation and music.
Our initial project was supported by American Composers Forum for workshops in Philadelphia at Village of Arts and Humanities.
My connection with VAH will continue in 2018 in an exciting community
project around a basketball court in North Philadelphia that’s being
renovated by the Philadelphia 76ers. More on this early next year….
Mixes from the Field also led workshops and soundwalks in Berlin,
Germany and Arnhem, Netherlands. We’re hoping to continue the work in
2018!
A quick note for anyone in Philadelphia on New Year’s Eve. I’ll be leading a dharma talk, discussion and silent meditation
at Springboard Studio in Mt. Airy from 10pm through midnight. The theme
for the night will be intention and the infinite potentials found in
the ground of being. Hope to see you there! It will be my last night in
Philly as I fly to Thailand on Jan 1!
Again, thanks for being a part of an amazing 2017 and I look forward to keeping in touch with you all in 2018.
with MettÄ,
Michael
Hello everyone. Hope you’re enjoying these final weeks of summer here
in North America. I have a few outdoor events coming up I wanted to
share with you.
Nightscape
I’m very proud to have been asked to create a piece of music for Klip Collective’s award-winnning garden, light, sound and video installation at Longwood Garden’s called Nightscape. For this show I created a variation of the first movement of Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” (one of my favorite pieces).
The show opens August 3 and runs through October 29 Longwood Gardens
1001 Longwood Road, Kennett Square, PA 19348
Also there’s a vinyl record release of the music from this and last year’s show which is for sale at Klip’s bandcamp.
Deep Listening Soundwalk
As part of my studies in Deep Listening
with Pauline Oliveros at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute I’ve started a
Philadelphia Deep Listening Study Group. The group meets to discuss
Deep Listening concepts, practice sound-based meditations and perform
Deep Listening scores. Member William Fields has come up with the name “Sound Sangha” which I rather like š
This month’s meet-up will be a Soundwalk through the Wissahickon
Woods on Thursday August 11. We’ll explore the sound field of the
southern most section of the Wissahickon, practice listening meditations
and perform two of Pauline’s scores along our walk.
*Note this a make-up of the rained-out Soundwalk from July 23.
Please email michael@soundoflistening.com to sign-up.
We’ll meet at the Wissahickon Septa Train Station on Rochelle St. and
walk north through the woods. The entire walk will be about 3 miles
roundtrip.
Soundwalk through the Wissahickon
Thursday August 11, 6pm-9pm Wissahickon Station
5100 Rochelle Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19128
Echozoo Thank You!
A huge thank you to all the people who successfully funded Echozoo.
Those people who backed the project will get a special thank-you inside
the smartphone app once it’s developed as well as access to exclusive
content like: A sneak peak track of the sound-world of the Golden Toad
from South America which went extinct in the 1990s. Also I’ll be
recording some field recording footage and vlogs on my upcoming trip to
Washington and Montana to record animals and habitats for the App that
will go out to the Hatchfund backers. So if you didn’t get a chance to
back Echozoo, the good news is the site will be live and you can still
become a backer to get this exclusive content and help support the
development of this ambitious project.
Now let me take a couple more lines of this email to specially thank
all the backers for Echozoo! It means so much to me to receive this
support of my work. THANK YOU!!!!!!
Darcy Lyons, Steffan Schulz, Cory Neale, James Falconi,
Jason & Emmalee MacDonald, Melissa & Carl Franke, Mary Kalyna,
Kevin Brown, Carla Willard, M Eckstrom, Dave Di Lullo, Es Pisarek,
Zornitsa Stoyanova, Mary Niewood, Ian Nauroth, Sharon Stewart, Benjamin
Warfield, Patricia McDermott & Jack Malgeri, Pearson Constantino,
Brian Wainwright, Jebney Lewis, fidget, Francis Markey, Emme McDermott,
Glenn Benge, mauri Walton, Richard Baybutt, Patrick OāConnor, Delia
Tash, Jonathan Moniz, Robin Rosecky, Nora Gibson, Katinka Marc,
Thomas Reliey, Kim Epson, William Clarke-Fields, Anne C. Cecil, Steven
Peltier and two Annonymouses.
This week Iāll be traveling with biologists and researchers to record
sounds of animals. Iām super excited and hope to post lots of photos
and sounds when I return.
Today, Iāve launched a Hatchfund to raise funds for my next big
project (which ties in directly with this Artist Residency) called Echozoo.
Those of you who know me, know that Iāve been talking about this project for a while and asking these questions:
What did extinct animals sounds like?
What would our current landscape sound like if some of these animals were still alive?
How connected are we to our current sound world?
Echozoo is going to be a smartphone app that uses geo-location to
determine where you are in the world and will play re-imagined
sound-design of the calls of extinct animals that lived in your region.
If youāve ever watched behind the scenes features for some of your favorite films (like Jurassic Park and Star Wars)
you know that sound designers like Ben Burtt would mix the sounds of
many creatures together (like the slowed down croak of a frog, the
pitch-shifted quack of a duck and the reversed growl of a tiger) to make
the other worldly sounds of the creatures in the film. This is
essentially what Iāll be doing. I will take field recordings of living
creatures to try and extrapolate the calls of extinct animals from
them. What would a dodo bird sound like? No one really knows for sure, but I imagine like a deep percussive penguin chirp mixed with an ostrich.
This Hatchfund
will go to pay for the expenses of this artist residency at Ayatana,
travel expenses to Canada and other sites around North America this
summer and studio time spent sound designing and developing the iPhone
and Android applications.
There’s some great rewards for backing the project including downloads
of exclusive creature calls not found in the app, having a variable
named after you in the code or even adding your own voice to the
synthesized creature calls!
My hope it have it released by the end of the year.
Thank you for taking time to read, watch and listen. Any support you can give is much appreciated.
Also all Hatchfund donations are 100% tax deductible.
Like Kickstarter and other platforms, Hatchfund is do or die! If we donāt make the goal, the project wonāt be funded. Please spread the word. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
