The king of sound

 

Tony Schwarz in his studio, 1982 (borrowed from McLuhan Galaxy)

I became aware of Tony Schwartz's work during my days as a graduate student at Simon Fraser University. His book The Responsive Chord (originally printed in 1972,) was required reading. It also became an inspiration.

Tony Schwartz was called by the NYT the "king of sound." He pioneered new methods of communication through sound that revolutionized the advertising, political  and educational worlds.  At the time of the publishing of his book, Marshall McLuhan said about it that "this is a totally untouched field and Tony Schwartz has a monopoly in this area."

Steve Peters interviewed Schwartz in 1985 and this interview remained as a draft since then. Peters now decided to publish it. Check here for this amazing document.

The Pulse of the Planet

 

Jim Metzner recording on Great Gull Island Jim Metzner / Library of Congress

Jim Metzner is a key figure in the world of sound. He collected thousands of sounds, from around the world, and a significant part of this material ended up as the theme of a two-minute episode of a program called The Pulse of the Planet. The program went on from 1989 until quite recently. 

Metzner's collection is massive and, according to the Smithsonian Magazine, "the work to digitally preserve it has only just begun, says the Library of Congress in a statement. The radio producer has thousands of recordings to his name, including more than 2,000 audio cassettes, over 1,000 digital audio tapes, and nearly 100,000 sound files created with digital recording gear over the last two decades. Additionally, the collection includes photographs, handwritten journals and storybooks. In total, the collection houses 28,000 mixed material items, spanning from the 1970s to 2019."

Around the year 2000 we agreed to make a Portuguese version of the Pulse of the Planet, but sadly, technical and bureaucratic difficulties prevented me to go ahead with the plan.