Concept:
The memory I chose for this project was the moment you wake up and realize you’re late for school. Your alarm keeps ringing as you have to quickly get ready for school but you also have to make your breakfast and finish your homework before you exit the room. The emotion I wanted to express in my soundscape was the feeling of anxiousness and panic one gets when they are running late.
Process:
The sounds I used were alarm, water, napkin dispenser, chopping, microwave, printer, highlighting a piece of text, typing on a keyboard, paper printing, slippers, door closing, door lock, zipper closing and a bag of chips opening. I mainly put these sounds in sequential order with overlapping so that first it would be the water and napkins sound with the sound of an alarm panning in the background and then it would be a bag of chips opening with chopping and the microwave sound in the background. Then the sound of highlighting, typing and printing to show someone doing their work quickly. Lastly, I added a zipper, door close and lock sound with slippers to show that the person is leaving. I had some difficulty using the Tascam recorder when recording my sounds because the recorder I had kept glitching out and turning off when trying to switch to shotgun mode so I mainly recorded with the internal recorder. To solve this problem, I had to keep playing with the recorder to switch it to shotgun mode and was able to use it after a while. Some effects I added were echo, reverb, and parameter equalizer to certain parts of the sound. I added echo to the alarm sound to make the sound more significant and reverb to the printer sound to give the sound more dimension and that it was in a different room. I found the effects difficult to use and I was confused on how to show the emotion I wanted through the effects but I felt that the effects I used were able to enhance my sound in that there was a smoother transition in the final cut.
Conclusion:
What I could improve on is focusing more on the feeling invoked by the sound rather than the narrative. I felt that the sounds were clear and the story behind it as well but it wasn’t very exciting or thought provoking to the audience. I could’ve used a different set of frequencies and sounds to make the emotions more clear in the soundscape. On presentation day, I receive a lot of useful feedback that I agree with and that is to focus more on the feeling and making the sound more versatile, not just sequential events. If I had more time I would’ve focused more on specific sounds and use more effects to emphasize the feeling behind it to show a more anxious sense of panic for the audience to feel and think about.