Soundwalk the Spit with me!

Join me on Saturday morning, November 7, 11 am at the gate of the Leslie Street Spit in Toronto for a morning of listening.

Just for fun, no charge. Bring your recorder or just bring your ears. You can even bring a camera if you turn off the Click sound.

The Leslie Street Spit is a piece of land in Toronto which juts out into Lake Ontario. I have not soundwalked the spit before but figure it will be a great place to listen to nature meeting the cityscape.

I figure we will walk for about an hour, then go to a coffee shop or someplace for lunch and talk about sound, media, film making, photography and all these things us media artists do. No cost .. just a chance to get together.

Best to RSVP in case it rains and I have to send an update.

Appalachian podcast coming! Promise!

My goal is to do a new podcast every two weeks. I’m not there yet but I really have to practise some self-discipline and do a new one every month.

Just to let you know I am just about done the new one. Just have to package it (which means do the intro, the extro and mix it in with the theme). The content is done.

And I’m really happy with it. I’ve done a new piece called You Can’t Miss It … a composed piece about getting lost in the mountains of Appalachia, and the surprises I found. Music, praying, bug sounds, coal sounds. And a collection of directions from people I met about how to get from here to there. You’ll hear why I got lost so much.

And wrapping up with a wonderful interview with the amazing Katie Dollarhide, a mountain woman who is able to combine the best of tradition with the forward thinking of a contemporary thought. Katie is an inspiration and speaks of her mountains with love, tempered by a sense of realism.

This weekend. For sure!

What Else I’ve been Up To

It’s been a busy summer. In addition to recording, I’ve also written a couple of on-line articles and have been planning some fall workshops.

First of all, I am delighted to be a contributor to a couple of web magazines. I just wrote an article on recording in conflict zones without being arrested or having your gear confiscated. This was for the Indie Travel Podcast blog, an adventurous and fun site by intrepid Kiwis Linda and Craig Martin (that’s somebody from New Zealand, for those of you not yet in the know.

Here’s the article
http://indietravelpodcast.com/article/record-travels-secure-regions/

And, a slightly different twist — I was asked by Cyndi Ingle, one of the chief philosophers of Soul’s Code — to write an article about how I use Soundwalking as Meditation.

Much as I love recording, there’s something really gratifying about seeing my words too, not just hearing them.

About the workshop, heck, this is getting too long, so I’ll do another post about that. Can’t let these blog posts ramble on too long, y’know.

Two From South Asia

Whew, it’s been a whirlwind of a month. A week in Toronto touristing around with my nieces. Also enjoying the final days of summer (now that summer has arrived .. it’s been a very cool summer here in southern Ontario)

And in between all the vacationing, I’ve managed to produce another podcast AND write a couple of articles for fellow travellers’ websites (more about that in the next post)

First news: The Podcast. In 2006, I had the great pleasure to travel to India, Nepal and Sri Lanka to produce documentaries for the radio/podcast series The Green Planet Monitor. On Episode 6 of The Roaming Ear, I play two of my favourite docs —

a) how the harvesting of medicinal herbs in South Asia is generating health and profits for some of the continent’s poorest people.
b) a celebration of Dasain, Nepal’s highest holidays at Falcha, a local gathering place for social change.

These documentaries have special resonance for me right now .. in August of 2006, I was getting ready for the big trip. Wish I was going back THIS September!

Organizations/issues mentioned in this podcast (with links)

South Asia Partnership – a social development organization with branches throughout South Asia
Falcha – A meeting centre for social development in Patan City, Nepal
Medicinal and Aromatic Plants Program in Asia – The International Development Research Centre in Ottawa was a partner in the Aromatic Plants Program in Asia.
International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development – a major partner in the Aromatic Plants Program.
Mitracure – Ayurvedic Health Centre in Kerala

The Green Planet Monitor

Housesitting Gigs Wanted

I am having a really good time planning my next Roaming Ear adventure. The plans are slowly evolving, and involve (so far) a housesitting gig in Toronto, a month long trip to Guatemala, back to Bear River Nova Scotia and then ..???

A few years ago I went on the road and supported my travel habit by housesitting. That’s what I’m planning again. I’ve been researching housesitting sites .. the most promising thus far is called Housecarer.

I get the impression it’s still a new site .. there aren’t a lot of listings yet. But I was pleasantly surprised. I was amazed to see a listing for Comber, Ontario, which is a small (very) southwestern Ontario village 5 kilometers down the road from Ruscom, the even smaller village where I was born.

So I’m going to register and keep an eye out for possibilities. Right now I’m thinking Montreal might be nice so I can practique ma francaise (I really need to, don’t I?). But if a good possibility comes up in Greece or Uzbekistan, maybe I’ll consider that too.

As long as there are good sounds to be found.

And speaking of good sounds, production of Roaming Ear #5 begins in 7 minutes. This one is abstract soundscapes of Ottawa, Canada’s capital city.

My Next Episode

It’s always a tough decision trying to figure out what to do next. There are lots of topics I want to do and lots that I have already done just waiting to be packaged and uploaded.

A lot of people have asked me about the art-based compositions I do. So I’ve decided to show you next time around.

I did a sound suite at the turn of the century up in Ottawa called Capital Resoundings. The purpose of the project was to document what the city sounded like at that point in time, and then take those sounds and turn them into compositions that were my subjective impressions of four locations.

So I’ll play a couple of the pieces in the Capital Resoundings suite. I’ll have it done and posted by July 15. Stay tuned. (And if you don’t want to wait, go to the link above and you can hear some of the compositions and read my soundwalks on line)

Soundwalking the Red Light District

Oh, okay, I’ll admit I used that headline to get ratings. Only 4:00 of the newest episode of The Roaming Ear is from Sin Strip in Phuket.

It’s really pretty tame .. but because I am submitting it to Itunes, I needed to flag “Explicit” lest somebody get offended and Itunes boots me off. So, somebody says “big boobs” and “lesbian sex” .. what’s the big deal? It’s a soundwalk .. my soundwalker had no time to stop ..

The rest of the podcast is pretty tame. It’s my introduction to soundwalking and how you can do one yourself.

Go to my blogroll (on the side of this screen) for the link to the Rabble Podcast Network.

A New Approach to Soundwalking

I’m thinking a lot about soundwalks these days .. my next episode of The Roaming Ear is a conversation about my ideas on soundwalking, and also a couple of my friends.

I’ll post the link once I get it uploaded later today. In the meantime, here’s another take on soundwalking.

I got an email from a company in New York City that sells soundwalks … if you’re going to be going to NYC and a few other places in the world, you can download a map and an mp3 so you can walk the route yourself. They charge for a soundwalk, but it’s only $12.00. Great that they’ve found a way to pay themselves for their hard work ..

These pieces are highly composed and beautiful and well worth the modest price. They’re not just your standard audio tour “and on the left we see the place where the Bastille was stormed in whatever date”. It’s not dry narration. They’re stories of places, locations, sounds that you won’t necessarily hear in real time … worth listening to even if you’re an armchair traveller.

Good work! Oh yes, you can find them at www.soundwalk.com