🌟Concept
The memory I chose is the daily life in my middle school. Every day is scheduled the same, full of tests and tests. It was a very stressful period. But every night I kept practicing playing the piano, which makes me feel relaxed and help me forget the bad mood.
💫Process
For the recording, I used the Tascam. The sound quality was super good but the volume was low and the sounds were only on the left track, so I made all the sounds louder and copied the left track to the right track before editing.
To emphasize the repetition, I use a slowly pressing button sound to make it sound like metronome to segment different parts of a day, which also implies the piano although there is no piano music.
Then I will explain every sound in order.
1. I choose the beeping sound to show the alarm clock, which also represents the annoyed beginning of one day. I use the pan here to show that I’m still in the dream and unconscious but I have to get up, which is torturing.
2. The sound of the plastic bag means eating breakfast, and the noisy sound show my nervous feeling of experiencing the busy and boring day again.
3. I use the Stepping sound with pan and echo to show that I’m walking upstairs to the classroom via a spiral staircase like stepping into a whirlpool.
4. The gong sound is to show the beginning of tests. I want to convey that there are too many tests, so I use the pan and every change of the sound track means one test.
5. After the gong sound, the test starts. I choose the pencil-writing sound to demonstrate a testing situation. Besides, I add a chaotic dryer’s sound and use echo to make it more chaotic to show that I’m dizzy, painful and can hardly breathe during the tests. The more and more louder noise also represent the headache is more and more serious.
6. The next part is a clicking sound with echo. When I’m testing, I always unconsciously keep pressing the button of the button-press pen. This action can show my anxiousness. The echo is also used to strengthen the anxiousness.
7. I end the clicking sound suddenly with several single piano notes to make it like a sudden relief from the chaotic testing environment.
☀️Conclusion
I received some unexpected feedbacks during the review session. They all like my project and appreciate the nice use of pan and how I use the metronome sound to segment the project. I’m glad that all my classmates understand my concept well and feel the same feelings. I’m very grateful to these compliments.
However, I also notice that when it’s played in the classroom with the certain volume. The echo of the clicking sound is too loud and makes the audience hard to notice the piano sound coming after it, which kinda reduce the sense of relief. If I have more time, I will try to control the volume and test it in the classroom.
