Many years ago, in Richmond, Virginia, a friend taught me how to hop a train. If you can count the number of bolts on each wheel, the train is going slow enough to attempt a run and jump. If you can’t count them, the train is going too fast. Under my friend’s tutelage, I successfully hopped on one, rode 100 feet, and hopped off. It was thrilling. There’s not a ton of time to make this leap, if you hesitate too long you’ll miss it.
I hopped on the Experimental Sound Practice train just as it began to really pick up speed. It is similarly thrilling. I don’t know where the train is headed but I’ve definitely traveled more than 100 feet at this point. The landscape is really starting to change, and I am changing along with it. I will attempt to catch you up.
In the coming weeks, I will post one assignment per week (maybe two), in the order that I created them. I have my opinions about the varying success of each work but I will present them all to you as objectively as possible so you can come to your own conclusions.
I will also include a series of invitations at the bottom of each post that you can ponder or act upon if you are moved to do so.
Assignment 1: Create a soundwalk
136 Sunday’s Well Road is a first-person journey that brings the listener along as I lock up my bicycle and enter the UCC music building at the top of Sunday’s Well Road in Cork city. The basis of the piece is one continuous recording, interspersed with various clips taken from different moments and places in time. In some ways, it is an exploration of the tension between my trad musician self and my experimental artist self -- something that is not new but that I am observing play out now in a new context. The various beginnings of song performances sprinkled throughout the piece evoke the feeling of a false start. Beginning again, once more with feeling.
This soundwalk is meant to incite some amount of discomfort, angst, and confusion, but with a steady undercurrent of curiosity and calm that ultimately gives way to pure joy and play.
(Featured voices, apart from my own, in order of appearance: Indiana Franklin, Bryan O’Leary, Avery Levine, various unknown passerby, Rosie O’Neil, John Godfrey. Fiddle playing by Judy Murphy.)
September 29, 2025
Invitations
Listen to a soundwalk
Hildegard Westerkamp, Talking Rain
Hildegard Westerkamp, Kits Beach Soundwalk
Field Notes: A Beginner’s Guide to Soundwalks, Bandcamp
Take yourself on a soundwalk
You can record the soundwalk in some way — with the voice recorder on your phone, with notes, drawings, and a rough map of your path — or you can just walk, sans headphones, paying extra attention to all of the sounds around you. How many sounds can you hear? Are they human-made sounds, sounds made by other animals, sounds made by objects, machines, systems, etc.? What sounds are you making? Which sounds change due to your presence? Which sounds are in the foreground, background, middle ground? Do you like some sounds more than others? Why?
If you choose to accept one or both of these invitations, I would love to hear how it went, however briefly. What did you hear? How did you feel?
Until next time… stay kooky, curious, and irreverent!
