Capturing the Sounds of Campus

Stand on the University of Washington’s Red Square and close your eyes. What do you hear? The clack of boot heels on brick. Snippets of conversation as students spill out of Kane Hall. Skateboarders attempting tricks. Sounds so familiar they often go unnoticed.

UW senior Leo Freedman celebrates these sounds. For an ethnomusicology capstone project, he recorded and stitched together sounds from all over the UW campus into a cohesive seven-minute “University of Washington Soundscape.” The project was inspired by a musical genre known as “musique concrète.”

Here Freedman, an ethnomusicology and international studies major with a minor in environmental studies, answers questions about his soundscape project.

What is “musique concrète” and how did it inspire this project?

Musique concrète is a genre that treats ambient sound as music. It’s a new way to think about a place. My specific inspiration was Luc Ferrari's album “Presque Rien.” He records a small town in Europe. When I heard it, I thought of it as a form of ethnography, encapsulating a certain time and place in the culture. I essentially replicated that for the UW. It’s like taking a photo of campus but with sound.

Were there specific places on campus you wanted to capture?

I wanted spaces that people would recognize, so I didn’t record anywhere too obscure. The most iconic spot was Red Square, because it's so unique with the reverb you get in that big open space. Another good spot was inside Savery Hall. I like the elevator sound in there. I tried to remove any recognizable conversations from the soundscape — I was not going to ask every single person for consent to record them — but there are snippets that are just regular college conversations that could be said by anyone. I like how those came together.

Your recording equipment records directionally in 360 degrees. Why was that important?

When people listen to the soundscape, I want them to be immersed. Everyone should listen with headphones. A listener wearing headphones will sense the sound all around them. You literally are the microphone. You can hear skateboarders crossing around your head and a bird yelling in your ear — because a crow walked right up to the microphone and started cawing.

But the soundscape isn’t just recordings linked together. There’s artistry involved.

There is some human influence that goes into recording and editing. I didn't want too much repetition. I wanted a variety of sounds, and I also didn't want it to be super long. So, while I wanted authenticity, I did have my hands in it, weaving together recordings and bringing certain sounds up or down to make sure things were audible. That's the artistry, I guess. It’s not like looking at photos one by one or listening to clips one by one. You're in this place that doesn't really exist — a place where all the sounds of the UW exist in one spot and it's all just wrapping around you.

Had you done anything like this before?

Two years ago I did something similar for a different class, where I made recordings just walking around my house. And even earlier, right before I graduated high school, I went around the school recording the sound of the bell ringing, the tables at lunch, things like that, because I probably would never experience those sounds again.

Most people would be more likely to photograph their school than record it.

Exactly. Everyone's walking around snapping photos on their iPhone so they can look back at them later, but nobody records the sounds.

Any plans to explore this “musique concrète” approach further?

It would be cool to do these all over the world and have a series, but I'm fairly confident that people have already done it. I haven't investigated that too much because I don't want to break the illusion of this being my original idea.

What do you hope people feel when they listen to your “University of Washington Soundscape”?

I hope people enjoy it and maybe think about spaces at the UW differently. As I said, everybody goes around taking photos of cool things they see, but most people don’t appreciate the sounds that they hear. And those sounds are just as special.