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Ever Dream of Winning an Oscar?
Well, me too. Evidently, so does did Trent Reznor.
Trent Reznor fully grunged out.
No, not that Trent Reznor.
Reznor and Atticus Ross accept the Oscar for Best Original Score. Personally, I think he's more intimidating in a tuxedo.
That Trent Reznor. Reznor was a surprise winner to some, even with the success he had at the Golden Globes. Truthfully, the surprise is that someone so famous for transforming American industrial rock gained access to the clean-cut, elitist Oscar stage. You don’t need to be a film or music expert to find the differences between Reznor and, say, Randy Newman – winner of Best Original Song this year. You also don’t need to be an expert to see that Reznor absolutely deserved his Oscar. And the Ross-Reznor musical pairing isn’t finished making their mark on the film world. The duo is working with David Fincher on the score for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
So, here’s the question: did James Franco get stoned and host the Oscars? Just kidding – but I’m not the only one asking that question.
Seriously, let’s take a closer look at Reznor’s career. We all already know Nine Inch Nails and, whether industrial rock is your thing or not, I think we can admit that what he did was groundbreaking and took a lot of talent. So, how did he do it? The answer, at least for the band’s fifth album, Year Zero: with a laptop in hotel rooms after rocking out on tour. No, not everyone loved Year Zero, but then again it seems like it’s always hard to please Pitchfork. The larger point here, is that Reznor built this album on the go, on a laptop, mixing sounds and beats outside of a multi-million dollar studio.
When you’re sitting at home, mixing your audio for this year’s competition, just think, I am Trent Reznor. I mean, it gets me through my day.
"Cacophony of Mind-altering Sound"
I was surfing the web for unique art this Sunday – random Google searches really free up the mind. And pass the time between NFL games. I believe I was specifically thinking of Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain when I got the idea. 
I like Duchamp’s Fountain because of the way it re-appropriates everyday meaning. The people in the art biz are probably shaking their collective heads at me, now. ”We have a word for that,” they say. “Readymades.” In fact, Duchamp started “readymade” with Fountain. Readymades take an object lacking any significance in the art world and, poof, art. Maybe it’s not so much a “poof.”
What I found was proof of more than a poof. The picture above is the creation of Andre Fernandes Avel s, found on this blog. The blog itself has long been abandoned – over two years, actually. Thankfully, this picture of 500 pairs of disposable headphones, wired together to constantly produce sound, set up in Stavanger, Norway was cool enough to stick around on Google image searches. Cleverly, Avel s set 40 of the buds as microphones, which picked up the sounds produced by the other 960. The blogger described the Headphones art project as “a controlled cacophony of mind-altering sound.”
Thanks to the most recent issue of Poets and Writers, I came close to experiencing what this blogger felt. Naturally, I was drawn to the “Indie Innovators” section. Blame it on my generation, video games, text messaging, instant messaging, whatever. I’m a bit impulsive and impatient so of course I went to feature story, really a combination of mini-reviews. The piece on textsound led me to the audio-zine’s site. I like the idea of user generated audio content – kind of reminded me of TMR’s Audio Contest (check the site for contest details soon).
textsound has compiled 10 issues of submitted audio content. The issue reflects the opening line of Anna Vitale’s editor’s note, “I have always loved listening to almost everything.” Issue 10 is packed with almost everything. I couldn’t help but click on the track titled “Seasonique” by WOLVERINE ACCESS – it was the all caps and, like I said, I’m impulsive. “Hey, Logical” – “Hey, Emotional” repeated, back and forth, elevating into screams of nonsense. The speakers on my computer buzzed with the noise. I quickly retreated from the impulse and started at the beginning. The issue starts off smoothly, opening with “I Am Not Now,” a soothing musical track, by Mikolowski and Carlberg. Then, it leads into poetry by Lucy Carnaghi. “Quiet Allergy” by MC Trashpedal interrupts Carnaghi’s poetry with inconsistent and constant noise, however.
Issue 10, and textsound‘s other issues, are experimental, following its mission. Many of the pieces remind me of readymades (e.g. Jason Voss’s “wtf,” which seems to be a looping lines with changing tempo). Unfortunately, I missed the POOF! with many of the tracks. I found myself immersed in “mind-altering sound,” instead.
An Abusive Relationship
Technology and I. Well, our relationship is a little rocky, but I’m in love. I’m the type of person that can’t live without it.
I have a smart phone.
I read eBooks and eMags.
And I like to have Studio 54 dance parties with my iPod. Respect the dancing skills.
But I’m convinced technology doesn’t love me like I love it.
I scheduled a phone interview with Scott Russell Sanders last week and the remote telephone mixer decided it wanted to misbehave. Then, Studio 54′s sound booth decided it wanted to get in on the action. I battled with XLR cables and input/output plug-ins and microphones for hours. They won. I lost.
Needless to say, someone will be stopping in next week to put this equipment back in its place (or tell me something is seriously broken – not just broken but seriously broken). Here’s hoping the technological gods will notice my unrequited love.
Antique Audio
Rob forwarded an Utne reader article to me today, which proposed an idea to save the short story: vinyl. I started reading and found myself thinking, “Oh, how nostalgic – the book is to Kindle as the vinyl is to digital audio.” I imagined a dozen people huddled around a turntable in a small coffee shop on a cold night sipping chai and pumpkin spice lattes. Then, I thought about the turntable in my apartment.
Yes, I am a 22 year old college student and I have a turntable in my apartment. Let me explain. I have a roommate who enjoys old and useless items – useless in so much that they are outdated. So, for his birthday, I drove to a local vinyl shop and purchased a record player. He loved the gift and also happened to uncover a small office at the university that sold vinyls on Wednesdays for 50 cents each. His first trip to the record sale seemed harmless: a Gershwin vinyl, some random jazz I’d never heard of, and Ludwig van’s 9th (we had recently Netflixed A Clockwork Orange). That same Friday, he returned with a stack of 20 records. Evidently, the recorded sound office on campus had decided to upgrade its record sale to every day of the week. I think they did it just for him.
In the end, it seemed like we listened to everything on the turntable, good and bad. I enjoyed the classical music and Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited and The Beatles’ Abbey Road. Unfortunately, listening to the records didn’t induce the “sense of occasion” Nathan Dunne hopes to achieve with Underwood: Stories in Sound. Honestly, it wasn’t really different from plugging my iPod in to the Bose dock. And Toby Litt – author of “The Hare,” recorded and pressed by Underwood – doesn’t exclusively address vinyl recordings in his commentary on the ease of recording without an audience. I have never recorded anything for TMR in front of a live studio audience and that’s all digital.
I’m not sure I buy the idea of short stories on vinyl. Is it really going to be much different from the digital audio tracks you find on the TMR online issue or on your favorite podcast? Or is it just more of a pain?
"'Passed before his eyes'"
In our next issue our reader’s will find a short story, “First Meeting,” by R.T. Smith. “First Meeting” may surprise the TMR faithful as it is a short-short or, as it is now commonly referred to in workshops, flash fiction. No empirical parameters seem to exist for flash fiction except for brevity. Make it short.
I wrote briefly about my experience recording this story in my last post, which inspired me to think even more about this method of storytelling. What makes it work? Better yet, what happens in the 10 minutes it takes to read a piece like “First Meeting” that makes you think for hours?
To ground myself and attempt to answer these questions, I revisited my first real experience with flash fiction. In an intermediate fiction workshop – not too long ago, actually – Marly Swick assigned Tobias Wolff’s short-short “Bullet in the Brain.” She said something like, “and we’ll be discussing Wolff’s flash fiction piece next time so your reading load will be a little light.” Finally, a night of “light” reading so I could concentrate on my own writing – why creative writing workshops are not writing intensive courses is a total mystery to me. Undoubtedly, I took advantage of the short-short, circled a few nice adjectives and wrote a marginal comment on the unique medical specificity.
With this most recent read of the story, I feel I’ve come a bit closer to answering my questions about flash fiction. I don’t think Wolff – or Smith – does anything markedly different in his flash fiction than in his short stories. They key, to me, comes with a sense of reader assumptions or allowing the reader to make correct assumptions, at least at first. Consider the title of Wolff’s story: “Bullet in the Brain.” Guess what someone is probably going to receive. If you’re still unsure, the first line of the story should provide some rather thick foreshadowing: “Anders couldn’t get to the bank until just before it closed, so of course the line was endless and he got stuck behind two women whose loud, stupid conversation put him in a murderous temper.” The reader quickly finds out Anders’s “murderous temper” is ironic foreshadowing two or three pages later (depending on the print) when “the man with the pistol raised the pistol and shot Anders right in the head.”
Wolff’s utter frankness, wonderful adjectives, and reader-friendly plot make “Bullet in the Brain” work. What happens after Anders is shot makes you think for hours. Go out and read the story, if you haven’t already. Don’t forget to check out R.T. Smith’s piece in our next issue and let me know what you think about both.
Also, I found an interesting two part Youtube “Bullet in the Brain” adaptation featuring Tom Noonan.
Enjoy!
Look At All That Audio
As you know, the deadline for TMR’s audio contest is tomorrow. Early last week, I began to think about how to inspire people to submit to the contest. Working with audio from scratch, especially creating your own work, can be a daunting task. I was still stumped as the editor’s prize winning authors rolled into town this weekend. Then, during an in-studio interview (look for podcasts soon!), it hit me. Why not show you how we do audio? And here’s what I came up with:
We use Pro Tools LE for recording and editing all audio tracks.
After creating a new track, we adjust the gain to the appropriate level and begin recording.
We use a small, Whisper Room soundproof booth with a Neumann microphone and music stand.
A microphone outside the booth allows us to direct the reader during a recording.
Now, we edit. The cut, trim and mover tools are highlighted in blue in the upper left corner.
Finally, we transfer the file to iTunes to create an .mp3. That file is then uploaded to the digital issue for everyone to hear.
But you don’t need a professional studio to create your own work and submit. You can use software like Audacity or even iMovie and create great tracks, maybe even prize-winning tracks. Good luck and don’t forget to get your submissions in the mail by tomorrow. I can’t wait to hear all your great work.