Archives for April 6, 2020

This excerpt of the reading mainly introduces the three characteristics of the sound: variety, complexity, and balance. The author mainly focuses on complexity. “In the listen-

ing-in-search mode, the ear is alert to every possible subtlety of information in the environment, and in the listening-in-readiness mode, the auditory system scans all incoming sounds to obtain a match to one that is familiar and recognizable.” This tells me that listeners themselves have their mode to process the sound they heard and then acquire the information that you want to deliver or other things they interpret it to be. “The complexities involved in ascribing meaning to such sound sequences suggests that environmental sound can function as a ’language‘ within a soundscape.” However, the language is what uses a fixed encoding method to let the audience get the exact meaning that the speaker would like to deliver, while soundscapes are what depended on the listeners’ own encoder, for example, how they translate the certain “sound symbol”. In my opinion, besides some basic, or to say, common symbols, such as the sound of rain, some “sound symbols” can lead to misunderstanding. There is no absolute evidence to ensure that all the listeners can acquire the same thing as what the producer is trying to deliver. However, I do think this is also where the charm of the soundscapes lie.

This podcast is actually a fictional series of stories. It shows a complete story, which is more like a TV series but only with the sounds. In this podcast, I observe several skills the producers use in making this whole podcast seem to be a real visual TV series.

The first is the background sound, for instance, the sound of other characters, besides the main characters, talking, the sound of rain, the sound of plates’ colliding, the sound of walking steps… All of these sounds were mixed together to create a noisy and crowded setting.

The second is a special technique to make the sound like talking through the phone. When one of the patients started to recall his memory, the producer used some techniques to recap the phone call he made with others. I am still not sure what kind of specific technique should be used here, maybe record the sound of a real phone call? But, anyway, it is very useful for making the whole story more real and listener-friendly.

The third is the sudden loud-to-quiet procedure. This gives the listeners a clear sense of setting changes. Also, it works pretty well for this story, a fictional suspense story. However, I found it sometimes too loud and it shocked me. Therefore, I think it should balance the listener’s feelings with the effect works for the purpose of story-delivery.

These are some techniques that I feel inspiring for my own project. All in all, this episode is very well-produced.