Exploring Soundscapes

This workshop, designed for musicians and non-musicians alike, focuses on music-making as a tool for mindfulness and well-being. Partnering with Canyon Oaks Youth Center just outside of Redwood City, the workshop offers a chance to explore creative practices that foster emotional wellness. Through soundwalks, field recording, exploration of modes of listening, sonic meditations, and mindfulness exercises, participants will develop skills in electronic soundscape composition and, alongside our community partner, co-create a final soundscape project to share as a wellness tool.

Kimia Koochakzadeh-Yazdi is an Iranian composer and performer. She writes for hybrid instrumental/electronic ensembles, creates electroacoustic works, builds instruments, and performs electronic music. She explores the unfamiliar familiar while being motivated by musical extremes; finding ways to play with various musical thresholds is something that she is currently attracted to. Being a cross-disciplinary artist, she has actively collaborated on projects evolving around dance, film, and theater. She is the co-founder and producer of Fashion x Electronics, a collective focused on creating interdisciplinary works based on fashion and electronic music. Kimia’s work has been showcased by organizations across the globe and her work has been performed internationally. She is currently a doctoral candidate in Music Composition at Stanford University.

Mike Mulshine is a composer-songwriter-performer and music technologist. He produces interactive audiovisual works that aim to expose accessible, engaging, and empowering new modes of experiencing or (co-)creating music. These range from web-based interactive albums to physical sound installations and theatrical musical compositions blending vernacular and experimental media. He recently defended his dissertation and will graduate with a Ph.D. in Computer-Based Music Theory and Acoustics and a Diploma in Music Composition at Stanford University in June 2025.

Info: We will explore the work of composers and sound artists like Hildegard Westerkamp, Pauline Oliveros, Annea Lockwood, Janet Cardiff, and Eliane Radigue. Then we will go on our own soundwalks around CCRMA, compose and perform sonic meditations together and, with field recordings taken around CCRMA, begin our own soundscape compositions.

Info: Spend the day listening to the sounds around CCRMA and local nature preserves. Along with youth and their supervisors at Canyon Oaks Youth Center, we will make field recordings to be used in our soundscape compositions. We return to CCRMA to hone in on soundscape composition methods using preferred DAWs including REAPER.

Info: We ask you to bring or find an object whose sound you'd like to record. We will record them in the CCRMA Recording Studio and incorporate them into our soundscape compositions. We will do the same with youth on-site at Canyon Oaks.

Info: We will fine-tune our soundscape compositions together at CCRMA and mix for their playback and performance on the CCRMA Stage. In the afternoon, Canyon Oaks residents will visit CCRMA and we will all listen to our co-created soundscape compositions!

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