Memory Soundscape Documentation
A. Concept
The memory I have chosen for this project was of one of my first getting a vaccine shot when I was about 8 years old. Me and my mother would be in a lively city, walking towards the doctor’s office. The office was actually a part of a larger building, so we had to pass through a set of large doors that led to a large hall. We then had to take the elevator up the building and onto the floor where the office was, which once we got off we were greeted with a long empty hallway, all the while my heart was slowly beginning to beat faster and faster as we got to closer to the office. Once inside the office, the doctor then opens their door for me and I had to be put on a table, in which my heart was beating heavily. I was struggling on the table and all I could hear was my heartbeat, heavy breathing, and the doctor flicking the needle that had the vaccine. This was all I could hear until the shot was finally done and all I could hear was my breathing. Originally, I had tried to include all aspects of it from my original concept blog post, namely driving from my home to a parking lot, but fitting all the sounds in one minute as well as trying to get those sounds proved difficult. I had to condense this memory for the project however as my original concept was much longer and they wouldn’t fit into a 1-minute sound project. Regardless I wanted to convey a feeling of stress, tension and fear I had experienced during the time up until its end. Hence, I recorded sounds to represent these aspects of my memory, like the echoing and loud doors and constant heartbeat.
B. Process
1. As previously mentioned, I wanted to record sounds to convey the stress, tension, and fear I felt during the time. I wanted these sounds to be as authentic as I could possibly record or make them. Many of these sounds were quite common to be able to hear or easy to make, such as the sounds of a lively city, footsteps or breathing, in which I simply took a recorder and recorded them as such. However, for some like the walking or door opening and closing, I wanted to convey that the area around it had a sort of echo to them, hence I found places that had no people and were relatively large and recorded the sounds from there. However, the most difficult part of the recording was trying to record a heartbeat. I couldn’t pick up a heartbeat of any kind with the recorder I had no matter how hard I tried, thus I had to improvise by beating my chest to imitate a heartbeat. When listening to the original recording, it sounded nothing like a heartbeat, but that was where editing on Audition came in to adjust the sounds into something I wanted.
2. As previously stated, I primarily wanted sound that were authentic as to really convey how real the situation was. Hence for many of these sounds I did little to no editing. But for the sounds that did require editing such as the step of high heels and especially the heartbeat, I primarily used an FFT filter to adjust the sounds into something I wanted. With the heartbeats in particular, in addition to the FFT filter, I also had cut sections of the sound clip to make them seem like the beating was getting faster and faster with each passing action. Lastly, since many of the sounds’ volumes were uneven compared to one another, I adjusted the volumes of each track accordingly, with of course getting the heartbeats to be progressively louder and louder using this method.
C. Conclusion
Overall, I am decently satisfied with my project given the time and resources I had on hand to make it. However, if I had more time, I would have taken the time to record potentially better sounds to represent my memory, especially for my heartbeat sounds after hearing about the methods some of my classmates used to record their own heartbeat sounds. I would have also done more editing to better make the sounds fit into the memory I was conveying. Despite this, everyone who listens to my project did seem to pick up on the feelings of stress, tension and fear I wanted to convey with it, which I would call a success. In terms of feedback from presentation day, the main complaint was that the heartbeats had a bit too much base, causing them to overtake the other sounds placed alongside them, and causing a quite noticeable “booming” noise that just made it seem not like a heartbeat. With all of this, if I could work on this project again, I would try to record better fitting sounds, better edit the sounds to be more matching in my memory and fix the issue of the bass that was in my project.
D. Image of Audition
