Posted by: Brendan Greeley on October 25, 2005 01:55 AM | Comments (3)

David Schulman, he of the Third Coast Award-winning Musicians in Their Own Words just wrote an email, asking if could add to the blog. The answer to him, as it is to everyone, is YES. From David:

One of the real gifts of this year's festival were the new "close listening" sessions — BYOT breakouts where small groups of producers each got to play up to 5 minutes of tape, and then heard a few minutes of live feedback from the group. Sessions were deftly led by Martin Spinelli and by The Kitchen Sisters, Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva.

Not only was the tape often, very, very strong, but the response of moderators and other producers was like the very best kind of editorial feedback — imaginative, empathetic, fair, creative, decisive. Often, these sessions offered more than what even the best editor could provide — it was a live audience response, too, and the format meant that you could hear and feel immediately whether a comment or suggestion rang true for the whole room, or drew a more mixed response.

At a session moderated by the Kitchen Sisters, Ann Heppermann and Kara Oehler [ed. That there on the right is a steppin' out Kara, a very fuzzy Ann and Chris Turpin]played two versions of a beautiful work-in-progress. Ann and Kara's intimate and soundrich piece involved a woman recounting her memory of the first song she remembered hearing as a child — an old Irish-American tune her father would sing with his carousing buddies. But the first mix didn't quite deal with a lurking and important question about her mother and father's relationship. The second mix added a very brief comment — I could be mangling this whole story, but I think the added tape was 5 seconds or less. This short additional comment was just enough to address the problems in the relationship, deepening the realness and honesty of the piece without turning the story away from its focus, as Ann and Kara had worried it might. The response of Nikki, Davia and the full group was instantaneous — no question. That goes in.

At other times, the response could be more mixed — a reminder how subjective these things can be. Yet even when people were divided on what would be the right way forward, the differences were themselves constructive. The pattern of discussion often made it crisply distinct what specifics merited attention, or if a larger, structural changes would improve things.

Participants in the close listening sessions included daily news reporters, audio artists/composers, producers of soundrich documentaries of many styles and aesthetics, impressive veterans and extravagantly talented newcomers. This sort of range range meant that each piece was met with with a deep reservoir of resources. Sometimes the discussion quickly went to questions of storytelling and narrative and interviewing. But this was also a safe space to ask, 'can this tape be saved?' — and get an authoritative Rx for EQ.

Maybe it's because the nature of the medium means we so seldom get to feel the responsive energy of our listeners, but, whatever the reason, there was a palpable energy to "close listening" — the sessions provided a rare and wonderful chance to talk about our work (and work-in-progress) with such a generous, and creative group of people who really get it. I hope this will inspire us to try this kind of thing more often — and not just when Third Coast makes it happen for us, but also in small producer gatherings wherever we live.

More from Third Coast Festival 2005 :
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