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Pauline Oliveros

Pauline Oliveros Quotes

Composer

Pauline Oliveros, born on May 30, 1932, was an influential composer and musician from the United States. Her work spanned a wide range of genres, including electronic music, experimental music, and improvisation, and had a profound impact on contemporary music.

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All Listening Sound Different Way Tape Meditation Deep Listening Thinking Wells Ifs Play Space Trying Delay Firsts Kind Long Mean People Player

Famous Pauline Oliveros Quotes

“Sounds beyond the limits of the ear may be gathered by other sensory systems of the body.”

Body Sound Sensory

Book:Deep Listening: A Composer's Sound Practice

Source: Deep Listening: A Composer's Sound Practice

“When I am composing, the sounds are leading me to the way I want them to organize.”

Way Want Sound Organize Composing Leading Me

Author:Pauline Oliveros

“The sound and just the fact that it was different from the piano, yet it still had some familiarity [made my fascinated with accordion].”

Made Stills Different Facts Sound Piano Fascinated Familiarity Accordions

Author:Pauline Oliveros

“First of all I had to teach myself how to use the studio because there wasn't any classes in electronic music. So I'd stay there all night and leave in the morning, observe the sun rise and have a lot of different kinds of sounds in my mind. But it was a quest, it was a search. It was research, it was learning.”

Mind Firsts Kind Different Use Night Sound Class Teach Morning Sun Research Studios Different Kinds Quests All Night Electronic Music Sun Rise

Author:Pauline Oliveros

“Deep listening is experiencing heightened awareness or expanded awareness of sound and of silence, of quiet, and of sounding - making sounds.”

Sound Silence Awareness Listening Quiet Deep Listening

Author:Pauline Oliveros

“I'm very interested in vertical space.I want the players to listen to their sound in such a way that they hear the complete sound they make before they make another one. So that means that they hear the tail of the sound. Because of the reverberation, there's always more to the sound than just the sound.”

Way Want Mean Sound Space Player Tails Vertical Reverberation

Author:Pauline Oliveros

“After a long section of the glass playing, you'll hear an instrumental sound emerge from some undisclosed location. There'll be a lot of mystery about the sound, I think.”

Thinking Long Sound Mystery Glasses Location Sections

Author:Pauline Oliveros

“The base skill is listening: how I'm listening to the material, how I'm listening to the space. With electronic sound, it's a similar situation of how to produce it and place it so that it works in a space. The first consideration is adopting the space and having work that resonates in the space.”

Firsts Sound Space Situation Produce Materials Listening Skills Consideration Adopting

Author:Pauline Oliveros

“I try to influence this improvisation in two ways. One is by centering on reflections, in both senses of the word: acoustic reflections as well as visual reflections from a mirror or surface, and then reflecting on the material in a contemplative way. The other influence is listening to the tails of the sounds that you make.”

Way Trying Wells Two Sound Influence Materials Listening Reflection Mirrors Surface Senses Visuals Tails Reflecting Two Ways Improvisation Acoustics Contemplative Centering

Author:Pauline Oliveros

“There are these sounds that come from outside that work really well if you're listening. If you're not listening, if you're blocking them out, then you don't get it. You don't get the merger of what the players are doing with everything, listening to everything.”

Ifs Wells Sound Player Listening Block Mergers

Author:Pauline Oliveros

“I noticed you could monitor the recording that you're making, but you could also monitor the playback head. There's a little distance between them and so you get an echo, right? If you change the amplitude of, say, the playback and play with that, you get different qualities and different sounds. So I was very interested in that phenomenon.”

Ifs Littles Different Play Sound Quality Distance Phenomenon Echoes

Author:Pauline Oliveros

“I became interested in the delay, having sounds recorded and played back and then come back. I did many different configurations of sending signals from one track back to another track, or to the same track, or crisscrossing them and so forth. I worked on masking the delays so when I played into the machine, I would make long tones and collect sounds in such a way that you didn't hear the delay, although sometimes you did.”

Way Long Different Sometimes Sound Machines Track Tone Delay Signals Configuration

Author:Pauline Oliveros

“My first tape piece was made with that Sears Roebuck recorder. I modified sound using cardboard tubes with a microphone in the end to filter the sound. I had a wooden apple box with a Piezo [contact] mic and little objects that I could amplify on the box. I used the bathtub for reverberation.”

Firsts Littles Made Ends Used Sound Pieces Objects Boxes Contact Apples Tape Tubes Filters Microphones Recorders Mics Amplify Bathtubs Sears Reverberation

Author:Pauline Oliveros

“Before that, an 8-bit recording was pixelated; it was really bad. It didn't serve what I was doing, which was recording live sound and delaying it and feeding it back. This is essentially what the EIS system is: a bunch of delays.”

Bits Sound Bunch Delay Feeding

Author:Pauline Oliveros

“The sound that I play is delayed, it's modified, and it's modulated. It's an intelligent system; it's happening now.”

Play Sound Happenings Intelligent Delayed

Author:Pauline Oliveros

“It takes time because the habitual response to that is very deep. It goes back to our earliest responses as babies. You have to feel safe, and if a sound is threatening, you're going to be upset. There are those early responses, depending on how and what kind of experiences you had.”

Ifs Feels Kind Sound Baby Safe Response Upset Take Time Threatening Habitual Very Deep It Takes Time

Author:Pauline Oliveros

“Deep Listening is listening in every possible way to everything possible to hear no matter what you are doing. Such intense listening includes the sounds of daily life, of nature, or one's own thoughts as well as musical sounds. Deep Listening represents a heightened state of awareness and connects to all that there is. As a composer I make my music through Deep Listening”

Way Wells Matter States Sound Awareness Listening No Matter What Musical Intense Daily Life Composer Connectedness Sound Of Music Deep Listening

Author:Pauline Oliveros

About the Author

Born: May 30, 1932
Died: November 25, 2016
Known for: Composer
Quotes: 81

Related Topics

Listening Sound Different Way Tape Meditation Deep Listening Thinking Wells Ifs Play Space Trying Delay Firsts Kind Long Mean People Player

Popular Topics

People Ifs Thinking Knows Men World Way Want Love Life Inspirational Needs Giving Feels Should Writing Trying Years Mind Firsts

Books & Sources

Deep Listening: A Composer's Sound PracticeRelated source material

Sonic meditationsRelated source material

Sounding the Margins: Collected Writings 1992-2009Related source material

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