I Am Sitting In A Room & Listening to a Gong

I had first heard "I Am Sitting In A Room" by Alvin Lucier a few years ago from a message board post without much of any explanation as to what it was I was hearing. Beyond the explanation that was given within the piece's text, I knew nothing about any of the factors that were at play in the making of it. With the information I had learned on the first course meeting, the ideas and physics of the process that went into were made much clearer, though the actual production of our own version was way more complex than I would have guessed it to be. Keeping the sounds from becoming too quiet, too loud, or too high pitched seemed very dificult, but in the end it was definitely a success. The idea that a recurring melody appeared regardless of whose speaking voice was used still amazes me, and it would have been nice to play around more with how the process would affect a singing voice or with shouting, and then also different sizes or shapes of rooms. Also, the example of bands or singers music being played back and recorded in a bathroom to get a more warmer sound intrigued me. Somehow the straight up recording being too sterile and using a somewhat artificial approach to make it sound more "real" and how the actual music should sound live was something that made me think about how so often music fans like it when stuff sounds more "raw" and often complain when a band with a previously more lo-fi sound makes something that, to them, sounds too clean or crisp. I found a link where a guy tried to recreate Lucier's experiment using a computerized voice and a simulation of the effects a real room would have here. I do not think it comes even close to capturing the feel of the original or anything produced using the regular method. By not picking up the subtleties of a real setting that can really affect the changes in the piece over time, it just doesn't develop into anything nearly as interesting, even though the same effects are at play.

With the banging of the gong last week, I was mainly astounded by the total variety in sounds that could be produced by different areas on the gong or methods in hitting it. The anticipation in the 4.5 minute build-up made me think that the second half would be far less interesting, but what I found was that I payed much more attention to the multiple sounds at work on the way down versus the first half. I did not hear the constantly-changing R2D2-ish sounds at all, but there was a point where some particular part echoed off the walls near the door of the room and I was curious as to what made that happen at only that point. There was also a part that, to me, sounded like an ambulance in the distance and at first tricked me into thinking maybe there actually was one outside of the building. This type of thought leads me to question how much the individual and their brain influence how they personally hear and interpret sound both biologically and based on their experiences in life.

-Aaron