Sound Wave Wood Art

 

Using What You Have

I must confess that I had never seen “Sound Wave Art” until a Facebook friend saw some of my wood craft projects and suggested I try making wood art of sound waves.  The links she sent were printed paper art and sound waves cut from metal but in digging deeper and consulting Etsy I found some examples using wood.  

Materials: 

• Bamboo Chop Sticks
• Square Dowels for framing
• Birch panel cut to size.  Examples pictured are either 11 x 16 OR 12 x 12
• Minwax Puritan Pine, dark walnut, special walnut American oak and gray stains from Minwax
• White Folk Art paint to white wash the panels
• Gorilla Wood Glue
• Brad nailer
• Printed sound file—I use the voice memo app on my iPhone to record the phrase from a song on YouTube
• Brown Kraft paper and double sided scotch tape for frame backing

Process: .  

Using the voice memo app (free download), I record the sound file (usually a word or short phrase).  I then do a screen capture (on/off button and home button) of the displayed sound file and print it for reference.  I mark the printed sound file with left, right, top and bottom for reference, as the file might be hard to read. 

Now the fun begins.  Using the paper as a reference, I scale the sound file to size for my board.  There are probably many ways to complete this task, but I measure the sound file drawing on my paper and my board and then determine the ratio.  For my 11 x 16 board I was able to double the measurement of each sound point.  For the 12 x 12 board I used the exact size—no scaling, as my printed paper was a landscape 8 1/2 x 11 which allowed a 1/2 inch margin on each end of the 12” backing board.

Sand and stain your chop sticks and then begin cutting them to size.  I used a pair of wire cutters to snap the measured  sticks but a small hand saw or jigsaw would also work.   I like to sand the cut edges and touch up the stain as I go   Lay out the entire sound file before you begin gluing it to the backing board.  My preference is to glue the chopsticks together first and then wait for it to dry before gluing to the backing board—that way everything can be centered.  

I use square dowels for framing and back the piece with brown Kraft paper using double sided tape.  A QR code is attached to the back with a web link to the song from which I pulled the phrase, or the stored sound file (I put mine in Google drive because a web link can be generated). 

Think about catching a child’s first words, a heart beat, a child saying “ Merry Christmas,” etc.  you could also use bright primary colors or ones that match a room’s decor.  I have stuck with earth tones in my samples.