Memory Soundscape

Deziree

Concept

The memory I chose for my soundscape was during my time shortly after moving to a new place. I was very stressed with the process of adapting to a much busier lifestyle and the loudness that was constantly around me. One day, my boyfriend brought me to Washington Square Park and we laid in the grass. Despite still being right in the middle of the city and a busy park, I felt things around me got very quiet.

In my project I tried to convey (1) the way that my surroundings got quieter, (2) the way that time slowed down, (3) a detached and anxious feeling shifting to a present and tranquil one. I wanted to make the soundscape fairly universal as I think the experience of having difficulty adapting to somewhere new can be shared by many people.

 Process

To choose the sounds that I would use for my project I decided to make the sounds (mostly) things that I actually heard and use effects to convey the emotional shifts. More detailed information for each sound is listed below.

Clock

The clock consistently ticks throughout the soundscape until the ending seconds. The sound of a clock ticking creates a stressful presence. As a layer, the listener can hear it throughout the composition so when it finally becomes quiet they can feel the relaxation that comes from not feeling constantly pressed by time.

Subway

The train approaching the subway was a sound that I heard throughout the day quite often in my daily routine. I added effects to it to make it sound less realistic and which made the listener feel distant from the actual subway. This played in to the emotion of feeling detached. The subway was part of my routine but because of my stressed mindset I was not present in the moment. It was merely noise in my routine.

Voices

The voices play a similar role as the subway train sound. There is no distinct words or conversations. It is just background noise. Because I was in the city voices were constantly around me. However, I began to tune them out while still allowing them to bring me some sort of discomfort because they are not what I am used to.  After walking in the grass the voices get quiet just as they did when I laid in the park.

Walking in Grass

This sound is included very explicitly to convey a transition into what was before and what will be next. It is the moment that I stepped into the grass to lie down.

Birds

The birds slowly getting louder convey the gradual increase of relaxation that I experienced. All of the other noise gets quieter or disappears. Similar to my mental experience, the mood of the soundscape becomes very peaceful and the listener only has two soft sounds to focus on.

Cathedral Song

The sound played in the cathedral was one I recorded in passing because I felt that the song I heard sounded like an emotional release. I made it play 3 times. The first two it comes in and quickly fades out to build to the eventual breakthrough, the final time it plays and resonates. The song pairs with the sound of birds in the end for a layer of tranquility and release.

When Recording all of my sounds I had the most difficulty trying to get good experimental sounds. The wind was be overpowering outside and my phone mic was very sensitive. I ended up dealing with this by making long recordings and cutting very small pieces to make them sound how I want. In addition, I worked with editing to make the sounds more balanced.

My editing involved a lot of experimenting which is my biggest takeaway. Because audio editing is new to me, I did not start with a specific vision of how to balance different effects. That meant that I had to go through A LOT of trial and error. I enjoyed playing with different effects but was mostly attempting to create the balance that I wanted with.

Conclusion

If I had more time I would experiment more with recordings to potentially make even more creative sound combinations.