For the final piece, I was inspired by a phenomenon I notice every day when I walk along the road, where discarded cans are trampled by pedestrians on the road, but there is actually a rubbish bin not far ahead. So I had the idea to put the story of the cans into piece.

In the first part, I recorded a lot of field recordings, with city noises, shop openings and some footsteps to achieve the scene of a thirsty man entering a shop to buy a drink, and in the second part, I added a drum and changed the tempo of my recorded breaths to make what amounts to an improvisation. The music in the second part is rhythmic, which reflects his happiness after drinking the drink. In the third part when he throws the can anywhere, I added strings and synth chords to make the part sad and I also recorded a lot of footsteps of different shoes trying to create that everyone was just walking and stepping over the can and no one was picking it up. The third part also had some skateboarding sliding by and kicking the cans. In the fourth part, which is the end of my story, I recorded some sounds of the can rolling in the wind and then being picked up. Eventually, the can was thrown in the trash.

In this lesson, we compare and contrast the difference between Underground and avant-garde artists. Underground music generally exists outside or on the margins of mainstream institutions and cultures in various forms of music production, such as noise and improvised music. And he does not earn a lot of money. Whereas avant-garde is progressive, boundary-pushing and challenges convention in a progressive sense and draws the mainstream towards it.

I don’t think I know what kind of sound art I’m in right now, but if I had to think about it, I’d probably progress towards avant-garde because I’m currently trying to become a game sound designer, and although I don’t know what the future holds, I think game sound should be avant-garde. Because it’s more accessible to the masses and is in the mainstream.

We also looked at a lot of the underground and avant-garde pages in class, and when we compared them, it was clear that the underground pages were more free-form than the avant-garde pages, which were like having a dedicated web designer working on them. I like the Sofia records website very much, their design is very free and I like the spontaneity.

In the end we discussed Manifestos and set out our rules.

ONE SAMPLE THAT EVERYONE USES IN THEIR PIECE

DON’T NOT HAVE FUN

ALWAYS SUPPORTIVE, INCLUSIVE, A COMMUNIT WITH SOLIDARITY

BLEND OF INDIVIDUALS, ARTISTIC FREEDOM AND FREEFORM

WORK IN COLLABORATION NOT IN COMPETITION, WILLING TO SHARE WITH EACH OTHER AND NOT KEEPTHINGS FOR OURSELVES, COMMUNAL VULNERABILITY

WHO CARES? WE ARE ANTI-MANIFESTO, RULES ARE MEANT TO BE BROKEN

MUSIC RELEASE SHOULD BE OPEN TO INTERPRETATION NOT GUIDED BY THE MANIFESTO

INDIVIDUAL LIITATIONS SHOULD BE EMBRACED BUT OVERALL LIMITATIONS AVOIDED, OTHERWISE YOU WILL MISS OUT

verb (used with object),changed,chang·ing.to make the form, nature, content, future course, etc., of (something) different from what it is or from what it would be if left alone:to transform or convert (usually followed by into).

verb (used without object),changed,chang·ing.to become different：to become altered or modified.

noun the act or fact of changing; fact of being changed: a transformation or modification; alteration.

In this lesson, we looked at many examples of graphic scores, both drawn and photographic. My scores were made up of irregular curves, dots and numbers in traditional Chinese characters. My score required four to five instruments to improvise.

I find these graphic scores interesting because it is not like a traditional score where each note has its own prescribed notation. It is very abstract and may have an inner meaning of a story or a poem. I might use graphic scores in my work.

I chose graphic scores for the work I produced later on, and my scores tell the story of the can. The story is about a thirsty man who goes into a shop to buy a drink, and after drinking it on the road, he just throws the can away. The can goes through many things on the road, being stepped on by pedestrians, run over by skateboards and kicked like a ball, but no one picks it up. In the process, the cans are in motion and form a trajectory. Coincidentally the person who discarded the can came across it in another block and this time picked it up and threw it in the trash bin.

Psychoacoustics is a fringe discipline that studies the relationship between sound and the auditory sensations it evokes. I felt that the term psychoacoustics was very confusing to me when I first heard it, but it’s really quite simple – it’s the way that the human brain uses to interpret sound. For example, if a person shouts at the top of their lungs and gently steps on their foot at the same time, I will hear them shouting, but I may not hear them stepping on their foot. I am then mentally attracted to his shout because it is richer in high frequencies. I was thinking that when we listen to some music, if there is an instrument that is very special, it might make the listener attracted to that instrument. I was listening to a piece of Chinese-influenced music that had a part played by the suona, a traditional Chinese instrument, and when I got to that part, my attention was completely drawn to the melody of the suona. This is probably the same as shouting and stamping in which the shout is more appealing.

In my piece I can also use the concept of psychoacoustics to accomplish this. Because I want to create an atmosphere with a combination of field recordings and synthesisers. My field recordings may be more appealing to the audience than my synthesizer sounds, and I hope that this will turn the piece into a better sense of rich space.

Yan Jun is an experimental musician. He is mainly engaged in improvised music, experimental electronic music, field recording and sound art. When I listened to one of his albums called Plays John Cage, the music in the album artwork was borrowed from John Cage’s 4 ’33” played with no intentional sound.

I think the most interesting piece in this album is the piece 0’0″, in which I can hear the sound of keyboard typing in this 26-minute piece. Although I don’t know what he wrote, I can imagine that the artist may have used this method to express his own point of view or to express who he is. In fact, he was also inspired by John cage’s 0’0″ for this piece.

In 1962, Cage wrote 0′00″, which is also referred to as 4′33″ No. 2. The directions originally consisted of one sentence: ‘In a situation provided with maximum amplification, perform a disciplined action.’ At the first performance Cage had to write that sentence. The second performance added four new qualifications to the directions: ‘the performer should allow any interruptions of the action, the action should fulfill an obligation to others, the same action should not be used in more than one performance, and should not be the performance of a musical composition.’

I think Yan jun is one of the representatives of contemporary sound art in China at the moment, and his other works are very experimental and incorporate a lot of noise elements. He also said in an interview that in the future, 90 percent of Chinese sound art creators may disappear, and people will start with noise and eventually go back to pop music, or simply give up creating, which may also have to be linked to reality. People should have to extend their instincts into a self-consciousness.http://www.yishushijie.com.cn/sesquiton/article/?type=detail&id=152