Soundings

This website holds the sound files and visual images contained in my EdD thesis, A Stone Sings in the Stream: Sounding Timbral Lines in Principaling. (link to thesis)

Timbral Lines

My study offers three expansive timbral lines of interpretation that provide a methodological pulse to the work. Timbre derives from the Greek tumpanon, or kettledrum. In musical terms, timbre describes the colour, quality or character of sound, including resonances, releases, utterances, ambient silences, and durational moments.

The three timbral lines include a hermeneutical text contained in the thesis itself, holding stories, pedagogical narratives, sensations and memories; “(topo)graphic” images gathered from fragments of text, photographs and digital textures; and a third timbral line which releases the reader from the page, offering an aural landscape of “soundings.”

The timbral lines vibrate and flow throughout the study, carrying philosophical understandings, ongoing movement and potentialities. The three lines are abundant. They merge, fold and play one another. The timbral lines open space for hermeneutic ontological and epistemological meanings to arise. Each timbral line brings acoustic traces and aesthetic modes of being, which together sound a fuller story.

Soundings

As I composed the text, or was composed by the text, a musical terrain of “soundings” emerged. This spacious timbral line welcomes drum beats, swells of saxophone, ocean waves, ocean drum, murmurs of wind and river. I use the term “soundings” rather than “soundscape” to emphasize the generative quality of the sounds which arose as the text came into presence. Soundings are musical gatherings, layer upon layer of sounds from an array of people, places and spaces, repurposed, remade, accidental, improvisatory. Soundings are gathered in the wild. Pulled from the past into the present. Remnants. Soundings reverberate with history, place, memory, and time, slowed and stilled. They pulse with joyful and hard-won drumming practices, performances on stages, festival grounds, or temples. All of this. Continually arriving.

Soundings highlight the flux of the world, hold ambiguities, suggest possibilities. They reflect the hermeneutic circle, offering musical understandings of my particular situatedness at this school on this day, as well as worldly sweeps and bends.

As you listen to the soundings you may hear breath travelling through bamboo, wood, or metal. Breath warming the orange-pink smoothness of a conch shell. Japanese taiko and percussion such as the chappa[1] as well as Tibetan singing bowls offer unique timbres, awaken histories, and reflect my decades-long practice of taiko drumming. In Japan, the taiko has been used as an offering, following Shintō beliefs, to call, awaken or give thanks to the deities or spirits thought to be alive in all things. The taiko is played to “dispel evil spirits, ward off sickness, or give thanks for prosperity. In Buddhism, the taiko is considered the voice of the Buddha, along with the horagai, or conch shell.”[2]

The rattle of shakers, seed pods, chajchas,[3] the hum of insects, movements of forest and ocean release the soundings from the bounds of a particular genre or musical tradition. The soundings intentionally blur and meld conceptual boundaries of nature “out there” and all of us “in here.” Children’s voices reflect landscapes of schooling and add layers of practice and place.

A Different Way to Listen

Listening to the soundings outdoors with headphones offers a fluid, dynamic interplay of sonic textures as ambient sounds merge with recorded sounds. I invite you to find a place in nature, a forest trail, the water’s edge, or a walk in your neighbourhood, and listen deeply. Listening with intention through headphones paradoxically opens our ears to the ambient sounds around us – the crunch of gravel under our feet, wind angling across our ears, chatter from people nearby. As the sounds from the environment merge with the soundings, the experience of listening becomes amplified. The ma, or elements of space, serve as portals, openings for nature to enter and bloom in relation with the soundings.

Listening this way, the soundings become mutable even as you follow a familiar trail. When heavy nightly rainfall swells a creek, the tempo of moving water quickens the next morning. Every time you listen, you listen anew. Ichigo Ichie.[4]“In this moment, an opportunity.” This Japanese expression reminds us that each moment is unique, will not occur again, and that we must remain present to each moment.

The soundings open vast possibilities and reflect hermeneutic understandings of a world always arriving, a world in which we live “as historical beings.”[5] Gadamer teaches us that “hearing is an avenue to the whole, because it is able to listen to the logos . . . the hearer can listen to the legends, the myths, and the truth of the ancients.”[6] When we consider the nature of belonging, we find that belonging arises from German roots, gehören, or hören, to “listen to.”[7]

Listening to the soundings outdoors may help deepen your understandings of my research as you sense the world “worlding,” presencing.[8] Listening along the timbral lines we may share the joyfulness and burden of becoming enfolded into philosophical hermeneutics.

(Topo)graphic Images

(Topo)graphic images in the form of layered photographs, bits of graphic notation and textual fragments comprise this illustrative timbral line. Particularities of tone, texture, colour and line in the images are gathered from nature, from the ideas sounded in the study. Wrapping or bracketing the prefix “topo” or “topos” highlights the importance of the topic in hermeneutic research, which asks that we cultivate a “radical wakefulness”[9] as the topic draws near, presents itself or slips from view. Hermeneutic work requires a deep attunement to the topic, its trails and tracings.

As a scholar and practitioner, I summon the courage to keep the work in play, to live amidst the uncertainties, the missteps, the nascent openings and arrivals. Topos,[10] rooted in place, region and space,recalls the topic’s home ground, habitat and living fields of relations. The suffix “graphy” or “graphic” derives from writing or drawing, to “represent by lines drawn," originally "to scrape, to scratch."[11] Together the(topo)graphic images reveal imperfections, cracks and fissures, the qualities of impermanence, the Japanese aesthetic sense of wabi-sabi,[12] of beauty in imperfection. These images provide a visual expression of my hermeneutic understandings of this study, contingent on the passing of time and all that is yet to come.

Each chapter contains a single (topo)graphic image, paired with a sounding. Linger with the images. Fall into the scrapes and scratches. Listen to the soundings as you contemplate the image. How might you discover something of yourself among the unfinished lines, shapes and curves, the deep shadows and verdant spaces?

[1] Small brass Japanese hand held cymbals (TaikoProject, n.d., p. 6).

[2] TaikoProject (n.d., p. 3).

[3] “Chajchas” (n.d.).

[4] Japanese expression that may be translated as, “Once, a meeting,” or “In this moment, an opportunity” (García & Miralles, 2019).

[5] Gadamer (2013, p. 293).

[6] Gadamer (2013, p. 478).

[7] Gadamer (2013, p. xv).

[8] Heidegger (2013, p. 177). Heidegger writes, “The world presences by worlding. That means: the world’s worlding cannot be explained by anything else nor can it be fathomed through anything else. This impossibility does not lie in the inability of our human thinking to explain and fathom in this way. Rather, the inexplicable and unfathomable character of the world’s worlding lies in this, that causes and grounds remain unsuitable for the world’s worlding. As soon as human cognition here calls for an explanation, it fails to transcend the world’s nature, and falls short of it.”

[9] Heidegger (in Moules, 2015, p. 28).

[10] “Topos” (n.d.).

[11] “Graphy” (n.d.).

[12] “Wabi-sabi” (n.d.).

RHYTHM OF THE TIDES

(Topo)graphic Image 1

Breath inflates lungs. Drum awakens.

A little world arises atop a wooden piling in the mudflats of Tsleil-Waututh territory, also known as the eastern tip of Burrard Inlet. A tiny intertidal habitat nourished by sun and sea, bound by the rhythm of the tides. Barnacles, mussels and moss, blue-black periwinkles.

Symbiosis, reciprocity, dependent co-arising.

Ma.

Sounding 1

I inhale a world. Ōdaiko reverberates. Inviting ma.

Ocean pulses meet ocean drum. Hum of boat across salty waters. My father prepares the rods to fish. Practised movements, like breath. Achingly familiar.

Sounds of the duduk² enters. Echoes of our hospital room during labour, birthing our first child.

Tibetan singing bowl awakens.

The comings and goings of life.

Credits

Breath: Amy Newman

Duduk: Creative Commons cc0 1.0 https://freesound.org/people/ethnictune/sounds/352572 (Excerpt slowed for use in thesis.)

Tibetan singing bowl: Elaine Ginn

Chinese gong: Amy Newman

Shime³ accents: John Endo Greenaway

Conch: Amy Newman

Ocean Drum: Amy Newman

AWAKENINGS

(Topo)graphic Image 2

Centre of Sansho Daiko’s large Chinese gong. Nodal points of energy and connection.

Tensionality and movement. Sliver of forest. Hyoshigi[1] marks an awakening. Cassandra’s hair rushes past her rutilant cheeks as she bends towards me, offering her hand.

[1] Hyoshigi: “Wooden blocks used as clappers, similar to Latin clave, but struck at the tips,” rather than middle of the instrument (Togen Daiko, n.d., para. 20).

Sounding 2

Slow breath. Hyoshigi calls to attention.

Children’s voices at play. Tibetan singing bowl sounds.

Shakuhachi melodies bend and pulse. The in-betweenness of notes. Breath enlivens the bamboo, arouses kami.

A fragment of Uzume Taiko’s “Grace” arrives, as insects and shakers, chajchas meld into sibilant shimmerings.

Saxophone wails. Angklung[1] chatters.

[1] “Angklung is an Indonesian musical instrument consisting of two to four bamboo tubes suspended in a bamboo frame, bound with rattan cords. The tubes are carefully whittled and cut by a master craftsperson to produce certain notes when the bamboo frame is shaken or tapped.” https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/indonesian-angklung-00393

Credits

Breath: John Endo Greenaway (Excerpt slowed for use in thesis).

Hyoshigi: Amy Newman

Tibetan singing bowl: Elaine Ginn

“Untitled”: Performed by Takeo Yamashiro on shakuhachi. (Excerpt slowed for use in thesis). ©Uzume Taiko, Chirashi. 1990.

“Grace” by Uzume Taiko: Composed by Leslie Komori, tenor saxophone by Amy Newman. Excerpt performed by John Endo Greenaway, Eileen Kage and Leslie Komori.©

Uzume Taiko, Chirashi. 1990.

Shakers, rattles, chajchas: Elaine Ginn, John Endo Greenaway, Amy Newman, Emiko Newman

Alto Saxophone: Amy Newman

Angklung: Elaine Ginn

Small gongs, wind gongs: John Endo Greenaway, Amy Newman, Emiko Newman

Spoken voice: Amy Newman (original text)

ŌROSHI RELEASES INTO MATSURI

(Topo)graphic Image 3

Ōroshi calls for attention, holds space for ma to sound. Stretched hide of taiko drum. Black tacks hold skin close to the body. Images of Rakuichi, Vancouver’s mikoshi group swirl across the drum’s hide.

Seiya Seiya! The rhythmic call and answer of the assembled men and women carrying the mikoshi at the Matsuri. At the centre of the skin, the tomoe arises, retelling the circular play of the sun, moon and Earth. Crow calls punctuate the air.

Sounding 3

Ōroshi begins. Angklung accents in-between moments. Shakers and tuned gongs punctuate space. Large Chinese cymbals answer the call of the drum.

Mikoshi bearers from Rakuichi parade and jostle the kami at Nikkei Place matsuri. They call out rhythmically to stay focused and gather energy to carry the heft of the mikoshi.

Shime and josuke rhythms arise from a taiko practice at the Gold Buddha Monastery in Vancouver.

Credits

Ōdaiko ōroshi: John Endo Greenaway

Chinese crash cymbals: Elaine Ginn

Angklung: Amy Newman

Shakers and tuned gongs: Elaine Ginn, Amy Newman, Emiko Newman

Voices of Rakuichi and festival participants

Shime and josuke: Elaine Ginn, John Endo Greenaway, Amy Newman, Kanata Soranaka

Crows and ambient forest: Recorded by John Endo Greenaway and Amy Newman

“Aiiro” based on Nagamochi-uta (Traditional) by Uzume Taiko: Performed by Boyd Grealy on frame drum, John Endo Greenaway on Chinese drum, Amy Newman on alto saxophone, Bonnie Soon on riq. ©Uzume Taiko, Every Part of the Animal. 1998.

ANCIENT RETELLINGS

(Topo)graphic Image 4

Round of tree in west coast rainforest. Broken by the wrath of the storm god. Smoothed by rain and wind. Herons nest in the tall trees above. Hatchlings chatter.

Don tsuku don tsuku, don tsuku, don tsuku. This underlying rhythm folds into itself, holding layers of sounds. Birthing a song.

The crack in everything. Cohen’s light. Openings into aletheia.

Sounding 4

Amidst the moist rumblings . . . the world falls into a reverberant darkness. Uchi-wa daiko[1], chappa, ōdaiko call out to one another. Trills of sparrow. Whispers of kami, sea and sky.

Mediative drone of the alto recorder. Ame-no-Uzume-no-Mikoto’s comedic, sensual dance on the overturned sake barrel births the first taiko drum. Rain, wind, assembled kami and the roosters awaken and join the lively ruse to lure Amaterasu from her cave.

The singing bowl carries light back to the world, keeping the story in play.

[1] Ucha-wa daiko or fan drum has a single skin “stretched over an iron frame, stitched and attached to a wooden handle” (Ben, 2014, para. 1).

Credits

Tibetan Singing Bowl: Amy Newman

Small and large wind gongs: Amy Newman

Young herons chatter with chipping sparrow trills: Recorded by John Endo Greenaway

Ancient Game Singing Bowl: Soundsnap. https://bit.ly/2WFQrNN

Studio Crowd Whispers: Soundsnap. https://bit.ly/2UXUCEh

Uchi-wa daiko: John Endo Greenaway

Ōdaiko: John Endo Greenaway

Chappa: Amy Newman

Laos river, early morning: Soundsnap. https://bit.ly/3C2cher

Taiko Jam: Elaine Ginn, John Endo Greenaway, Amy Newman, Emiko Newman

Spoken voice: Amy Newman (original text)

YET TO COME

(Topo)graphic Image 5

Yamadera. Japanese Buddhist temple rests on a mountainside. 1,015 stone steps.[1] We begin the ascent, purchase omikuji[2] (fortunes, or “sacred lot”) for five yen. Visitors who do not get a good fortune may tie their omikuji to a rope or wire in a wooden frame. This way, the bad luck will not follow us.

Blessings.

Curses.

10 levels of nuanced fortunes. In-betweenness.

We tremble in relation with all things.

[1] Live Japan (2021).

[2] Voyagin (2019).

Sounding 5

Ocean swells and sighs. The improvisatory ringing, tapping, clicks and buzzes of the chappa, in conversation with the ōdaiko and one another, punctuate the salt air.

Shakuhachi visits and recedes. Hermeneutic movement. Unexpected comings-together, pauses, folds and flutters. A sense of Gadamer’s being “completely there in it.”

Generative understandings, expressions of ma, the rumbling tensionalities of living every day with children, teachers, kin. All of us suffering the push and pull of letting go. The murmuring stream speaks. Vast unfinished worlding.

Yet to come.

Credits

Surf-close-up waves breaking on rocks: Recordist(s): Bruce Reitherman. Source: BBC Rewind - Sound Effects Natural History Unit https://bit.ly/3yj2kab

River/estuary Atmosphere - Spring, day. Many gulls calling over river: Recordist(s): Grace Niska Atkins. Source: BBC Rewind - Sound Effects Natural History Unit https://bit.ly/3C0b1sh

Alto Recorder: Amy Newman (Slowed for use in thesis.)

Chappa (small, medium, large): Amy Newman

Ōdaiko: John Endo Greenaway

Creek: Recorded locally by John Endo Greenaway and Amy Newman

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5