Personal Sound Concepts - Making Music with the Everyday

Personal Sound Concepts is an online class focusing on using the full breadth of the sound around us to make musical compositions, a practice embodied in the idea of music as organized sound. Noninstrumental and nontraditional sound from the physical world, whether it be field recordings, objects from within the home, the air of a specific space, or anything imaginable, offer a different approach to production and can inspire new ideas and new directions. This course works through the process of recording, editing, and arranging with these types of sounds, through lectures and hands-on activities.

The ultimate goal is to orient towards thinking of the world as sample material, to listen to it differently, to change how one conceives of music and the potential of the everyday - of random objects and settings - and to take a step towards finding a unique voice, a personalized sound in an increasingly crowded creative and cultural landscape.

There are many classes that teach one how to use specific software or workstations. Personal Sound Concepts is focused on what to do once you know how to use the technology. It is rooted in how to find inspiration and individualization. Technology is an extremely important piece of the puzzle, but only a piece, and it doesn't bring one to where they want to be creatively without other ideas and practices.

By the end of the course you will have a better understanding of how to approach sound in a different way, and you will have practiced and developed this understanding in audio work.

The class is designed and facilitated by Ezekiel Honig, who has been steadily exploring and concretizing his approach to nontraditional sound sources in musical works since 2003. Beginning with an infatuation for using the sound one encounters in daily life, and the potential in creating a set of tools with greater personal association, developing these instincts led Ezekiel to creating the curriculum for Personal Sound Concepts in 2012 and completing his first book on sound production ideas in 2014, Bumping Into a Chair While Humming: Sounds of the Everyday, Listening, and the Potential of the Personal.