Original German text by
Conrad Schnitzler
Translated into English by Gil
Schnitzler
(30.4.07)
When I was asked in the past how I listen to sounds and how I emphasize and record
them I always explained my first experiences with sounds and soundpatterns.Never
before my explanations were written.
How do I listen? What do I feel? How do I react to sounds?
At first there is the single sound.What means a single sound for me?
The single sound for example is:
The sound of the cockcrow I filter out of the sounds surrounding me awakening in the
morning.Even then I realize there`s quite no existing single sound.With the cockcrow
come the taking up of planes, my beloved blackbirds singing, barking of dogs, trucks, children`s
laughter,the `Good morning calls`of neighbours.
There is nearly never the single sound without a neighbour-sound except from the speakers
in the electric studio.
I hear the single sound through headphones,although I have to fade out the cracking of my
bones.
So actually there doesn`t exist a single sound without company of other sounds.
The dream of the single sound remains a dream.I compensate with the totality of sounds,
Mix Solos. Means to accept what comes together, unlikely sound constellations.
Of course I do not speak of music combined from 12 tones of the tone scale that should be
understood. It`s a question of sounds not of music.I´m concerned of sound events,not of
music.What I produce on CDR are sound events no music.
I forges sounds. In this world of sound events I am the coarse smith who combines the
sounds in its brutal form using fire and hammer.
Often I`ve told my old stories of sounds.
What did impress me in sound events?
Do I transfer it in my work?
Yes, of course,what I heard was manifested in my (sub)-conscious.
I consciously compose no programme music for one theme.
What I heard in my childhood and youthtime is burned in my brain.
It is present in the results of the combined sound events I do.
The bulk of Mix Solos is in general the result of the memory in sound I experienced.
I woke up and heard a driving car in the rain, means driving sound and rain.
I heard bells and knew it snowed through the night.
I woke up during the war with its sounds.
I heard bomb shells sitting in the basement seeking for shelter.
I heard the city burning,people screaming,machine guns shooting,tanks driving.
I slept in the train and even though I perceived all sounds.
I worked in the kitchen and inhaled the kitchen noises.
I worked in big factory halls and got into trance about the huge total sound.
This sound of a lot of single sounds lieing and percussive could be so loud,
that it transferred into White Noise interrupted by staccatos of pneumatic drills
working on metal in shrilloversounds that can people drive insane.