Monday the 17th of October’s guest lecturer was Composer, musician (intuitive), artist, field recordist, listener, curator, publisher, lecturer, instrument & specialist audio device builder Jez Riley French.

A large portion of the lecture covered things like hydrophones and contact microphones. While I’m not using either of these things I found it very interesting how buildings and other huge objects have their own sounds that aren’t audible with standard microphones. The ambience of buildings is something that can be related to my LO3, which concerns the sounds that different rooms can create. Jez gave me an understanding of how ambient and other-worldly sounds can be created using very standard objects and how important the sounds of spaces can be.

One of my aims for LO3 is to capture ambience used on Muse’s Absolution, which was recorded in some very interesting recording spaces, such as a swimming pool for example. This lecture was useful therefore in demonstrating how important recording spaces are.