Sound Studio 1.0

Met Korhan at Studio Drum & Bass, located in a building whose name, Çinili Han, translates to Tile Building as its lobby is decorated with beautiful Art Nouveau tiles (will return for images).

Çinili, it seems, refers to China, the origin of porcelain. Three floors up

is the studio where we are greeted by Burhan Hasdemir.

He and Korhan are old friends and they chat about cables and microphones 

while I, on the balcony,  gaze at the view of the Haliç (Golden Horn) and

 Ayasofya in the old city on this hazy hot day.

My first time in a recording studio so am fascinated by the variety of acoustic control materials: grey fabric-covered panels, triangular profile closed cell foam extrusions packing all four corners, black textured wall covering,

even textured mesh filtering shades to reduce sound bounce off the glass window dividing the performing space from the engineering space. I sat on a high stool speaking into this mike, the first few trials with a pop filter between me and it. Then we tried it without the filter and that seemed to work. We did about four full run-throughs of the 10 min. text. Happy to say I only stumbled twice, but maintaining consistent volume was a problem for me.

Korhan, surrounded by all his equipment, checking that all is well with the takes.

The text simply is me speaking what I see watching the video of walking down the street, eyes focused on the pavement surfaces (see this Post). We will try a few versions: layering the text over the recorded street sounds; and/or two different takes layered, since each was an improvisation, not a reading of a script, and therefore different; and/or another layer of sound words not included in the original recording. I found it very difficult not to speak in cadence with the original soundtrack, so watched the video with no sound while speaking. In my original text

I included sound words, such as 'motor, diesel, cry, clang, echo, laughter' and these may be added in as well, with the tracks fading in and out of each other.

I have no idea how this will turn out but I trust Korhan as he is more than sensitive to over-working a piece.