Sound and radio practices in first grade
Radio workshop in Serge Selvestrel’s first grade class at the Lacordaire school, 15th arrondissement, Paris, led with the artist Frédéric Danos
This workshop offers to work in groups on sound, in four steps: Record, Select, Assemble, Broadcast.
It considers “sound” as ranging from silence to the most saturated noise. The sound registers explored therefore include ambient sound, sound portraits and interviews alike. The work focuses as much on the documentary and/or narrative content of a sound as on its musicality and its potential for abstraction.
Each workshop starts with an editorial meeting that defines the areas and themes to cover. It ends with the live FM broadcast of the sound objects made, in an installation offering a broadcasting place (studio) and a listening place (transistor radios).
Each session begins with the collective making of a moment of silence inspired by John Cage’s piece 4’33, in which the composer asks the performer not to produce any sound for four minutes and thirty-three seconds. A way of actively listening together to what surrounds us.
The steps
- Record – Paying special attention to the sounds produced by a situation, a place, an object, an activity, a person, then capturing these sounds.
- Select – Choosing among the recordings those that will be used in an assemblage imagined during the editorial meeting.
- Assemble – Establishing and making the sequences in which the sounds are arranged; defining the framework on which the sequences are hung during the broadcast.
- Broadcast – Defining a listening space in which all the recorded, selected and assembled sound material is arranged. Paying special attention to the notions of narration, musicality, document, abstraction and listening, through the live production of an FM radio show inside the school, for anyone willing to listen to it on a transistor radio.
Notions and equipment
Each step puts specific notions and dedicated equipment into practice.
- Record: What does it mean to “frame” a sound? How do you “set the levels”? When should you stop a recording? – Microphone, windscreen, recorder.
- Select/Assemble: End to end and/or layering? – Editing software, mixing software.
- Broadcast: What is FM broadcasting? How do you set up the broadcasting space? - Performing live as a group: listening and proposing. – Mixing desk, mp3 player, transmitter, set design.
The radio show
