My initial memory for the sound visualisation was going to be from the perspective of sitting in a coffeeshop in New York City on a rainy day, watching all the people passing by. However, the more I recorded the sound samples, the more I realised it sounded like it would be from an underwater scene – which brought me to a memory of when I was about 14 years old. I was surfing in Half Moon Bay when I got a leg cramp and fell off my surfboard. My leg got cut by the fin and I remember moments fading in and out from above water and underwater.
For the basic structure of this, I started out with the background sound of a video recording I took from a rocky beach in Niagara Falls. Then, I recorded the sound of a lot of people talking outside of a street in Xuhui, and also recorded the sound of someone playing music on a speaker as they were standing on the street. I layered these for the first bit of the soundscape. I then isolated the water for a few seconds and faded in recordings from an outdoor skatepark in Puxi, first recording the skateboards rolling and people doing tricks, then recording a group playing slow drums in a different area of the park. These were to emulate the sound of my heartbeat, and also hearing the noises when I came out of the water. For the rest of the soundscape, I faded in and out other various noises such as the airplane flying overhead with the water consistently in the background.
For effects, I added lots of reverb and amp for the water noises, limiter and equaliser on the skatepark, reverb on the people talking, echo on the music, and full reverb and echo on the airplane noises.
Overall, this was a cool project to explore. I had previously used other DAWs such as Ableton Live and Logic Pro, but it was a bit tough adjusting to Adobe Audition. If I were to take this project further, I would add more elements and perhaps mute the water noises especially for the parts portraying underwater in order to better convey the emotions.
final soundscape: link