Monalia's World

Observations on a New Life in Spain

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Sound Design Gypsy

12 June, 2008 (10:07) | Living in Europe | By: admin

Mark does most of the online grunt work of our company. I help him with big decisions, but overall he does a lot without any help from me.

My job is mostly creative, plus balancing the books, doing payroll, etc. (which only takes up my time once a month.) I get to name the collections we put out by new composers. I get to write music whenever so inspired. Mostly I love to go out and embrace life in Barcelona, NAGRA recorder in pouch as I ride a bike around the city, recording any unusual sounds I might find … you never know when you might come upon a protest, or like last Sunday I came upon a Science and Mathematics fair at the Ciutadella Park.

There were several tents, one with a juggler juggling numbered balls and doing magic acts with the numbered balls that required kids to think, another in which the kids were interactively solving
3-D puzzles, another where kids are shaking vials of liquid vigorously. I was hoping, NAGRA in hand, that the result would be a hissy, fizzy sounding something I could record but instead the liquid gelled and a sticky, gummy, sparkly mass is what the kids plied out of their respective containers.

Although I didn’t get any sounds from that stall, I was able to record a man pretending to be Einstein, spouting off his theories in Catalan to a group of assembled kids. Although Einstein theories in Catalan might not be a sound many are looking for, I could have fun with it later when I transferred it to the music room studio sampler.

I have only recently taken up the reins of this blog, and I haven’t figured out how to do some things yet, but in the future I will figure out a way to come in here and transfer a fresh sound, like the Catalan Einstein, so ideally you can read of my day’s wanderings and also hear the sounds. This idea excites ne.