Memory Soundscape Project Documentation

A. Concept

The story is that: I was biking from a city into a park when I was studying abroad at the age of 12. At first, I was whistling and biking happily, and I could hear peole camping on the greensward and having picnic. As I biked forward into a forst, the sound of people faded away. Instead, birds singing and leaves rustling got to cresendo. Suddenly, in front of me, was a steep downhill slope. For excitement, I biked downward without hesitation. However, because the slope was too steep and the velocity of my bike was so large, I uncontrollably hit onto a tree badly. I suddenly got fainted and both of my wrists were broken. Then, for a long time, I was in a state of unconscious. After several hours, I woke and found myself lying in the hospital. Listening to the doctor’s keyboard sounds which meant she was trying to analyze my healt, I felt in a state of panic and nervousness. I hoped that I would be fine because I would be having an important percussion competition in the following weeks. However, after I heard that my arms were broken, I got very frustrated. 

For the project, I mainly tried to use real sounds to tell the whole story. However, it is hard to show the panicness and frustration when I heard that my wrists were broken. So I decided to use the sound of organpipe playing a very tense chord to show the feeling. 

B. Process

For the happy part, I would try to use different real ambience sounds such as people picnicing, birds singing and etc. I would also use the bicycle’s chain sound as the foundation. The mixture of these sounds, I think, would be great to tell the whole story. To record the ambience, I took the recorder out and went to different places such as Century Park, metro stations, hospitals and etc to collect real sounds. I first tried to use the recorder to record the ambience sound. However, I found that the wind was too strong. After struggling, I decided that for some ambience sounds (such as picnic sounds and birds singing sounds), I would use my phone to record them, which is surprisingly effective. And for other sounds that are more detailed such as bicycle sounds and whistling sounds, I used the shotgun to record all the sounds in detail, which turned out that the quality of sounds were clear. When editing, the ambience sounds were added compressors, a bit reverb, and adjusted the volume and panning to make it more immersive. For the detailed sounds, I added reverb, delay, compressor, and adjusted EQ depending on the function of the sound. 

For the developing part where I biked down the hill, I would cresendo the chain sound as well as adding some wind sound to show the acceleration. Eventually, I hit onto the tree, which I used the bicycle falling sound, branch broken sound, leaves falling sound, as well as cracket sound of eating melon seeds to show the collision. All the sounds are recorded using the shotgun.  After that, the ambience sounds suddenly vanish to show that I got fainted and unconscious of everything. The recording was quite smooth. When editting, I mainly gradually turned down the volume of ambience sounds (birds and crickets singing), and gradually turned up the volumn of bicycle chain sounds and wind sounds to show the acceleration. I tried to make the sound of hitting onto the tree as loud as possible to give a great contrast of volumn, but I found it challenging to do that. So finally, I decided to leave a little bit of blank space before the smashing sound to show the advent of the huge sounds. 

For the part where I woke up in the hospital, I recorded the sound of beeps in the metro station to represent the ambience of the hospital. After that, I recorded the keyboard sounds, and the last hit of the keyboard was raised the volumn, added panning effects and some echo delay to show that the result of the doctor’s diagnosis was quite a shock to me. Finally, I added the two tense chords of the organpipe (recorded the sound of my electric piano) and adjusted the EQ, reverb, and even distortion, to make it seem as gloomy, shocking, panicking as possible, so as to show my feeling. 

For the mastering process, I adjusted a little EQ, and use a mastering compressor and  the maximizer to balance the whole audio. 

C. Conclusion

During the presentation day, I found that most people did not quite understand what the whole story is (maybe they did not think it should be a story), and the professor said that the crash sounds was not obvious enough. Thus, if I have more time, I would revise the crash sound to make it more highlighted.  And I did. After the presentation, I changed my crashing sound to make it more prominent. 

D. Image of Audition