A Sound Thinking Poll

By Ah-Keisha McCants

Designed by ET Green / Instagram

Just last month, Whitney Edwards, CAT CUNY Service Corps member and City College student, attended the Audio Engineering Society (AES) conference with our Sound Thinking cohort. She and Ah-Keisha asked attendees who visited their table at the Education and Career Fair to answer the question, “What does the phrase ‘Sound Thinking’ mean to you?”

The responses were sonically thoughtful and deep – as one might expect from audio professionals, students and sound aficionados. 🙂

Check out some notable AES responses below!

“The phase sound thinking means to me, that you’re always thinking zonally. You’re always thinking in terms of sound, even in terms of engineering, sciences, biology, you always relate everything back to sound. Everything comes in the way of sound, vibration, air, and moving.”

“I would say that means innovative ways of being creative with sound technology and pushing the limits, trying new things and not being afraid of the results.”

“When I think of sound thinking, I think of when you’re brainstorming with a clear mind and you’re really focused on what it is that’s on your mind, but at the same time not letting other distractions get in the way or anything else that could sort of take your mind off the prize.”

“I guess it means like your interpretation of sound and what it means to you as a person, as an individual. Sound Thinking is thinking in a whole different universe. You’re just floating on the sound meridian and you just are able to experience it in your mind.”

“Thinking more in-depth into sound and thinking with sound, in a way. Thinking more in depth and really listening to sounds and figuring stuff out.”

“Sound thinking sounds like a solid thought process because it is sound.”

“I think sound thinking is a form of language, where maybe words don’t work but instead let sound speak it for us. It’s quite understated because we still can’t define sound into words that is easy for anyone else to hear because it’s complicated and it’s a language that we have to decode. It speaks to those who don’t know how to comprehend it.”

“I […] think that Sound Thinking is something that we need to improve on because my mom is a hearing aid specialist and she would always remind us that those who are blind, can still communicate but those who are deaf it’s actually a lot harder and they get overlooked more so that’s why Sound Thinking is another form of communication that we all need to be aware of, like how we listen and also what we see, and how we can use sound to help those who don’t hear us.”

“The phrase sound thinking means to me, contemplating audiosonics and the various amplitudes that you may hear when you think of sound, or emotion and ambience. Sound thinking makes me think of sound in various ways.”

We’re curious about your thoughts. “What does the phrase ‘Sound Thinking’ mean to you?”

Share your answer(s) to the question in the comments section below.

IN SOUND THINKING: Mrs. Butcher

by Keith Johnston 

young Keith

I was born and raised in Brooklyn NY to Cuban-Jamaican parents. We were exposed to a broad range of music during the 60s and 70s. The radio was always playing in our house. We listened and danced to everything from mambo, reggae and calypso to rock, R&B and Jazz. My mother played organ and sang in church. My siblings and I would sing in the youth choir, as I would hide behind choir members during performances. As an introverted visual artist, I spent most of my time drawing on everything. At nine years old my parents enrolled my two sisters and I in Mrs. Ray’s School for Music and Culture in Bedford Stuyvesant. Mrs. Ray was an extremely conservative dark-skinned woman. Her hair would always be in a tight bun and she dressed in navy blue and white old English attire. Her high-pitched operatic voice would really intimidate me as she taught us how to read and play music on the piano. She used a wooden ruler to smack our hands or to tap us on different areas of our back to develop effective posture and technique. It was a traumatizing experience for me. Every week I pleaded with my mother not to go but she insisted on raising “well rounded children”. After about six weeks of lessons every Saturday, and daily practice, I refused, cried and begged not to go anymore. As a way to get out of it I told my father I didn’t like the piano and wanted to play the guitar, so he released me from piano lessons.

For months I listened to my sisters practice and perform recitals playing “Moonlight Sonata” and other classics, as my father would take me to work with him. I couldn’t decide which was worse, Mrs. Ray or cleaning and mopping down a four story brownstone every Saturday. That Christmas my parents gave me a sunburst colored TeleStar electric guitar and amplifier. I was so elated, strumming the out-of-tune strings. Eventually the excitement deflated by the horrible sound and I went back to drawing in my sketchbook. My mother asked my father “How is he going to learn to play that thing?” My father said he found a teacher on Snyder Ave. The following Saturday, my father grabbed the guitar and we drove to East Flatbush. I was so excited, thinking about all those cool guitar players I’ve seen on TV or on my father’s albums, like Jimi Hendricks, Chuck Berry and Wes Montgomery. We pulled up in front of an apartment building with four rough looking teenagers, with headbands and Afros sitting on the stoop. In the window of the first floor apartment was a crooked written sign that read “Mrs. Butchers School of Music”.  The joy of my father taking me for guitar lessons faded into anxiety as we exited the car. Between the neighborhood and the trauma from Mrs. Ray I started to retreat. My father became annoyed, “Come on Boy! Don’t start! Carry this”. He handed me the guitar in a black plastic, vinyl-ish case.

As we moved toward the apartment building the teens moved out of our way. My father rang the bell and a woman with a big smile and round glasses looked out the window. She unlocked and opened the front door wearing a floral housecoat. I remember thinking “she plays the guitar?” She warmly greeted me, much different from Mrs. Ray who was very stern. “Good afternoon young man. I am your teacher Mrs. Butcher. What kind of guitar do you have there?” I proudly said “a TeleStar”. “Oh” she said, obviously not knowing what that was. Knowing my father it was probably the cheapest guitar he could find.

We entered her eclectic living room with shiny wooden floors, dim lamps and floral wallpaper. Her dusty old chandelier, much different than Mrs. Ray’s shiny elaborate one, provided a homey comfort. I was enthralled by the messy artistry; all the instruments around the room. Hanging on the wall was a big 36 inch saw with wooden handles on each end of it. The only furniture in the room was an antique couch with a plastic cover, a glass coffee table, wooden nightstand and two plastic covered dining chairs with a music stand in front of it. My father paid Mrs. Butcher for the lesson and book and said he would be back by 2pm.

After my father left I stood in the midst of the room amazed. Mrs. Butcher asked me to sit in one of the chairs. I sat staring at the different brass and woodwinds on the bookshelf and thinking, “Does she collect all these instruments or does she play them?”  In the right corner was an upright piano, in the left corner an organ; behind me was a series of string instruments, cello, violin, upright bass and a banjo in a corner next to a vacuum cleaner. “Are you ready?” she asked. I asked if she played all these instruments. She said yes, noticing how I stared at the saw on the wall. She asked if I wanted to hear it. I signaled “yes”, not really knowing what she meant by playing it. Noticing my distraction she removed the saw from the wall, sat on the couch, placed it between her thighs, grabbed a bow and began to play. It was the most remarkable thing I had ever heard. The saw sounded like a human voice. She made it sing. In that very moment I fell in love with the infinite possibilities of music. As a result, for the rest of my life, I never stopped studying and digging for the music inside me, living the musician’s endless journey of exploration and discovery through collaborating in this universal love language. From playing in bands at school, jam sessions, block parties and local clubs to recording studios, tours, recording artists and performing at Madison Square Garden, Rockefeller Center, and in front of thousands in venues and stadiums around the world.

Thank you Mrs. Butcher for those inspirational Saturdays of patient instruction, spontaneous jam sessions and a skillset that set me on a musical pathway to self-discovery and creativity.

Keith Johnston
Director, College & Adult Program
CUNY Creative Arts Team

The Artistic Life of Chris T.

In honor of National Arts Education Week, we asked our Senior Leadership Team to talk about their artistic lives, aside from their work here at CAT – and here’s what Chris Tokar, our Director of Resource Development, had to say…

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I serve as the Director of Resource Development here at CAT.

My job is all about bringing resources – typically money – into the agency, via fundraising and winning and managing contracts for our services.

But the personal resources I use to get the job done grew out of my personal development in the arts.

I was always an artsy kid, and my first job at age 12 was trading my labor as an assistant for art classes at a local museum.  Helping the younger students get their paints and watching the magic of red and yellow making orange never got old.  Then I could pick up my own brush in the afternoon and dig into trying, once again, to get the still life right.  I loved the cool ground floor studios, the smell of old paint and the shelves full of plaster models.  I felt like an important part of the professional art world!

Chris, working on a painting in high school

High school and college ceramics taught me that the process is as important as the product.  If you only pay attention to the final product, you miss out on a lot of the benefits of practicing the craft: the mesmerizing spinning of the wheel; the enjoyment of literally getting your hands dirty; the blurring of the lines between the creator and the creation.  Plus, if you are only thinking about that mug you want to make for Christmas, and ignore the opportunity to be deeply invested in each step of the process, your final product will probably be flawed. Paying attention to how you do something and being fully engaged in it makes life richer, and makes for better work. It also gives you the freedom to be proud of what you produce, because you have invested your best intentions and efforts into making it.

But perhaps the most important thing that all of these muddy, friendly, communal art spaces taught me is resilience. When your pieces blow up in the kiln, when the shape and color aren’t quite right, when you know that you haven’t really put the spout on a teapot correctly so you throw your masterpiece into the slip bucket and start again: these are all difficult things to face, but easier in a supportive community. To try again and again builds tremendous skill and ultimately teaches you how to get consistent, desired results in almost anything. And the act of trying again and again, with a bit of a ruthless standard, can also give you unexpected gifts. You know – and you act on it – that you can do better. You understand that mistakes are more common than successes. You make mistakes that are more beautiful than your initial idea, and you learn to use these mutations and errors on purpose to build your repertoire of skills and outcomes. Nothing beats that kind of educational experience. Especially when you don’t even realize it is an educational experience.

When I talk about these experiences with my colleagues, they are mirrored in every discipline – drama, music, and dance. There is a wealth of resources that children can tap into when they are given the opportunity to engage in the arts. I love the fact that my work at CAT helps provide opportunities for thousands of NYC students each year to open the door to their potential, to develop their abilities, and to start building their own resources.

IN SOUND THINKING: On Listening / We Are Music

by Keith Johnston 

I believe we are all born with gifts, talents and abilities.  On our journey, we engage in the great unifier, “music”, but the question is, are we listening to the ebb and flow of what this life is offering? Regardless of race, gender, culture or nationality, music is central to the human condition. We are sound personified, vibrating at specific frequencies that define who we are as living breathing instruments.

Music is all about listening, affecting and being affected, feeling and experiencing the power of orchestrated sound. Whether we are aware of it or not, we listen with all five senses and then some. At the heart of all music is listening. Whether we are playing music, or even unconsciously exposed, we are transformed by the sound in some way. It doesn’t matter how good of a musician we are as much as how well we listen and respond.

Life is all about making music. In our everyday activities, walking, talking, eating or dancing, we exercise the three elements of music; rhythm, melody and harmony. Take notice of how nature has its own orchestration with a plethora of instrumentation through all life forms. Even when listening to people speak—the tone, rhythm and melodies of their native language create a unique musical exchange, a conversation grounded in rituals that are foundational to their identity.

The power of listening is evident in the most remarkable displays of music; an African drummer’s ability to calculate a dancer’s next move in a split second, a jazz musician’s telepathy or the ability to spontaneously spit rhymes in complex rhythms and melodies is an example of this high science from the cosmos. If we are fearless enough to study, practice and observe we can reach new heights through the sound of music. This universal language is essential to our health and unifies people as nothing else can. It is also an effective way to enhance our academic facilities; math, science, literacy, etc.

Anything that breathes is music, shifting the atmosphere, making a statement or raising a question. Sound is the source of all life. As we venture on our personal path, interacting in various ways, we are making music. Our individual journey is orchestrated by choices, circumstance and relationships composing an original piece.

Music is sacred in whatever way each individual might define that term. So, as we create, let us strive to harmonize or at least find relevance in the dissonance in this improvisational jazzathon called life.