exploring sound

The pandemic has allowed me to get back to focusing on sound. For the moment I’m not talking about editing the sound and making into a playable composition I thinking about recording the sound of the environment. recording with analogue cassette tape. During the first snow snow we had this winter I was driving around with a Marantz PMD-201 mono cassette recorder. I recorded a snippet of Terry Gross interviewing Jonny Greenwood who probably best know as member of Radiohead. Gross was asking Greenwood about the soundtrack he did on The Power of the Dog. (I’m paraphrasing him) Greenwood talked about how he liked to be imprecise and keep mistakes in the what he was doing. He said one of the pianos he was using was out of tune and he decided to not have it tuned. Made me think about the Koln Concert by Keith Jarrett. I played the snippet of the Greenwood interview for my students. I then slowed down the tape with the pitch knob of the Marantz and played it for them again. Then I played the recording a third time with the pitch slowed and used a another switch on the tape player to slow down the recording even more. The result was a super slow molasses of sound not recognizable from the original. But it was the original recording. I hadn’t made any edits of the tape. or do you count the pitch ajust and the other switch an edit? I did this demonstration for my students to show them anything can be made into something else with minimal equipment. I’m trying to illustrate for myself something honest in the minimalism of a creative act.