The memory that I decided to create was the breakup of the love relationship with my ex. I focused more on the emotions felt after the breakup rather than the event in itself. When we broke up, I felt devastated. Time was slow and I felt that I wasn’t one with my body. Everything felt boring and empty to me. At some point, I felt like I was emotionally dead. Because the emotional aspect of the memory stuck more with me, I wanted to recreate the memory as an emotional instant.
For the composition, the need for excessive sound was miniscule. The representation of my memory through sound was to be limited as the emotional feeling was very empty. When thinking about the sounds, I kept the sounds to a bare minimum where I deleted a lot of loud noises as it effected the feeling of emptiness that was crucial to the emotional feeling. For the sounds, I used a clock ticking, water droplets, and a metal ball rolling in a metal bowl. I recorded water and metal ball with the shotgun recorder multiple times to pick the sound effect I liked most and I recorded the clock with the Tascam to have that stereo effect. When recording, I didn’t really encounter many problems as I recorded it in spaces where ambient noise was minimal. After collecting all of these sounds, I slowly edited these to convey the message I wanted to the audience. I used time as a variable in the composition as part of the beginning and the end where it was edited in the beginning to create a lagging effect to imply the slowing of time. During the period between the ticking, I used it to imply a lapse of time where I included the action of going through a void into another dimension to show the loss of self. In the void, I wanted to maintain the emptiness and lack of actions to represent the feeling I felt where everything was “black and white”. Water droplets were used to create a lack of action in the universe. The challenges faced were mainly due to mistakes in mixing the sounds where I would try to put everything in one track rather than multiple tracks. I found that harmony was instilled when less tracks were used as control is easier to imply.
If I were to improve my project, I might experiment with making the emotional state of being emotionally dead clearer. I think that without my description of the memory, the ending may seem abrupt and inharmonious with the earlier phases of the piece, however, this dis-harmony is also very necessary for my piece as this phase change was very different from the past phases. While the beginning took on the cognitive idea that time was long, the end takes on the idea of being emotionally dead where the frequency and pacing of the sound is “imaginatively” different. Therefore, I think that the current presentation is not bad, but subtle changes could be made that could transition the piece more clearly.
On presentation day, I received conflicting feedback from an array of students and faculty. In regards to the panning in the beginning, it received feedback that it may not be necessary and other feedback that it was a beautiful part of the piece that enhanced the concept. In regards to the tempo of the phases, some feedback was that it allowed for the listener to imagine the event and the emotions while others thought that it should connect faster without small pauses. I personally think that the work reflects my personal emotional experience very accurately. As to the points made about the tempo, panning, and small pauses, I think that change is unnecessary as it would change the feeling the listener has when hearing the piece. For example, if panning was discarded in the beginning, it would create a lack of movement which would make the transition to the void very dull. This lack of transition would hinder the harmony of the piece which would make it an inaccurate representation of the emotional memory. As for the tempo, I think that the slow sounds help create the emptiness that’s supposed to be present in the piece. If it was paced faster, it would sound more like a journey rather than wandering without a purpose which is what I wanted to do. Lastly, regarding the pauses, I think that they are necessary to provided time for the listener to transition back as well. Even in classical music, small pauses of the sections are incorporated into the music for transition so it’s absolutely necessary.
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