I think, I grew up mainly surrounded by stereo products, probably the best years of stereo came before me but i was definitely brought up on it's legacy. "My first Sony" tape was (i think) stereo, we had a stereo system in the living room to see movies and I had my compact disc in my room. I remember that it had 2 speakers that could be taken a part from the main structure and put in satellite positions in the room. it pretty much felt like the future.
When I started singing and taking vocal training lessons, I wanted to record myself. Only then I encountered the words- mono/stereo while using cubase. I had no idea how to setup my microphone and as a result my first recordings were in mono.
I used to sit for hours, practicing different scales, trying to amplify my voice in different ways, singing in the shower, in the staircase of my building, singing while putting my head on my desk, singing into a microphone or the sound box of my guitar. My search for the different feedback that each surface could give me was never ending.
While thinking about the assignment this was my reference. I wanted to go back those experiences i had.
By pressing one ear to a surface, you can hear the resonance from the surface in a different fidelity. your other ear seems to become irrelevant. The ear that is pressed against the surface become sensitive/aware/tuned to the material , everything become much more intimate, clear, sometime can even become uncomfortable. I thought a lot about these moments. It feels almost like you are part of the material, the surface becomes an extension of your ear. The tones are much closer and direct. giving a mono experience.
I thought that it would be interesting to play on this idea.
So, I decided to use a long and narrow wooden surface as my resonator and place a condenser microphone on the far end of the surface. The user places his ear on the other end of the plank while a speaker hangs above his head
The plank and the speaker are hung separately from the ceiling.
In affect, I created a sudo musical instrument for a user and a performer. the performer will play with his hands/fingers on the surface and the user will hear both amplified sound and direct resonance from the surface. the user by default hears in stereo. but in fact its a closed circuit of the same mono sound channel, direct and amplified.
Actually, it's all i was missing those years training. I wanted to hear myself in a direct way, the way we hear ourselves speaking/singing in our head which equal to the single user experience while, hearing how others/surrounding perceive my voice.
a singular mono sound perceive in 2 ways simultaneously.
I really enjoyed the experience both as user and as the performer. there is something very intimate in the feeling of someone playing right into your ear with his fingers. you can almost feel their touch. It feels like i only scratched the surface with this project and would like to continue and explore it more.
Here is the documentation of 2 sessions i did:
Feedback and question that i got while testing it with my friends:
- can it happen while standing?
- its not comfortable to sit like this for a long time
- can you whisper to the wood more?
- can i play as well?
- the best ASMR experience i've had so far
- the wood smell so good (another sense that i haven't taken in consideration)
- delay, maybe i should do this experience completely analog.