Month: August 2022

My experiments with the field recordings went very well and gave me a lot of understanding of where I would like my sound piece to go. I really liked some elements of the first two experiments, most notably the ambience/mood that the digital processing created. The final experiment was my favourite and I now have begun to develop that idea more, extracting ideas from the other experiments to influence the direction of the sonic aesthetic I want.

PROCESS STAGE 1 –

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1y9qazTNnY8llfW_bmi7BXszXLwu22a-c/view?usp=sharing

I started out my sifting through the numerous no input mixer recordings I have from my previous experimenting, and found one that I thought had enough consistency in terms of mood, as well as enough sonic changes so that it wasn’t too static. This audio file is just the third experiment I talked about in the previous post with the recording of the mixer added to it.

PROCESS STAGE 2 –

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yErrxdz88mpcYYDMe2-XXNXoVNMTaU0Q/view?usp=sharing

The next step was to put the recording of the mixer within a space, as well as adding some qualities that elevated the sound even more towards abstract and unnatural territory. My intention was to offset the field recordings with a more ethereal atmosphere that sounded otherworldly, in order for me to have a basis to start intersecting two recordings from different worlds – one from the real world and another entirely created through machines. I used one of my favourite plugins, Rift, to create motion and changing tension in the sound because I wanted the sound to have a sweeping movement that essentially smothers the field recording without masking the frequencies.

(PHOTOS/VIDEO) – https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1yLqIIBFkhACni32kx61PUV__xL33fMhQ?usp=sharing

I am happy with the progress so far and I think the definition in what I want to create is starting to become clearer. I have been listening to some music lately that has been inspiring me in other sound work I am doing, and I feel strongly that this piece needs some melodic tone, even if it is just one note or chord as it will hopefully lead to a more cinematic overall sound. I want the track to feel like a big event is happening.

‘The Disintegration Loops’ by William Basinski is very interesting to me because it is such a gradual decline in the quality of the sound and because of that it is difficult to hear the changes as they are not so sudden. But after 20 minutes if you skip back to the start you can start to hear these artefacts and the sound begins to have dropouts or lose frequencies. I think the consistent melodic loop acts as a canvas for these surrounding artefacts to become more involved with the overall piece rather than being distinct in their own right, and it is this idea that I think my piece could benefit from referencing.

I now have a very strong concept for what I want to communicate with my sound piece. However, upon thinking about it more, I feel like the piece will have more of an impact if it is kept simple and to the point. I think in past projects I have tried to transfer my concepts into dense and articulate pieces of practical work which ultimately either leads me on tangents or clouds my brain. Since I have pretty much all of the source sounds to build the piece from, I have been experimenting with manipulating the field recordings I took to start with. I feel a concise track that explores the intersection of a field recording I have taken of a place that I have had my own experiences in and a reconstructing of that sonic environment would be more than enough to display my idea of the convergence of two worlds.

EXPERIMENT 1 –

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uWmuv0Hly3-3uTO-VJLV_AI29njmGqbD/view?usp=sharing

(PHOTOS) – https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1uKubs-bkl5eQ-WfAM8rSB9JKsQw_Rqh-?usp=sharing

In the first experiment I grouped the four tracks of the wav file (as it was an ambisonic recording) and gently compressed them so the quieter sections had a bit more clarity. The beauty of working with spatial audio is that I don’t have to do much to add depth and width as the recordings themselves have an already immersive effect. I allowed myself to let my mind wander and use the software accordingly, so I added a delay to the group, adjusting the speed of the delay, the feedback, the dry/wet and the spread of the delay. I recorded the automations in live, which allowed me to use the delay as a tool to make timbral and textural shifts over time, which created an evolving motion within the field recording. I also added a spectral delay on one of the tracks for a more subtle increase in randomness and movement.

EXPERIMENT 2 –

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uzPP3K_8da7xP58v6MJ5PfH0YuLna0lC/view?usp=sharing

(PHOTOS) – https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ukwwDAqTK5DR5ypYxdyOf6pfzNBqb-uK?usp=sharing

I was a lot more reserved with my approach on the second experiment, only processing one of the four stereo tracks. I used the Max for Live spectral delay effect to create some artificial sounding glitches and alien-like delays that flowed smoothly through the rest of the tracks, interweaving between them in an organic way once I added the magical touch of compression. Once again I altered parameters live, the photos in the link above showcase this. I think out of the two I prefer this one because it sounds more purposeful and combines a unequivocally digital sound transformation with the raw and unfiltered ambience of the original field recording. This to me feels more like the intersection of two different worlds; it sounds almost like a rip in the fabric of reality that is very small but beginning to grow, which is really cool!

EXPERIMENT 3 –

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vFLJiH3buzAjL4ZxE4LEYDY78FkEKNfB/view?usp=sharing

(PHOTOS) – https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1v85Mz2MtiZivGqnvwsYkt4jXULS7nVtU?usp=sharing

My thought process here was very different. I wanted to enhance certain qualities that each track had, identifying whether a certain track would fit better sitting in the lower end of the frequency range or the higher end as well as the level of overall detail. Of course this was difficult as the tracks are the same recording but slightly different. However, I found that this experiment ended up as the most clear in terms of the detail and clarity that the distortion plugin I used brought out. I used the same plugin (Izotope Trash) on all of the individual tracks but I affected the tracks differently based on how I felt they sat in the overall mix. For instance, in one track I noticed it had a lot more detail in the higher end most of the time so I added a fair amount of saturation to really brighten up the sound, as well as having a high pass filter with some of the eq bells being modulated by LFO’s inside the plugin. On another track I more carefully added light distortion and carved it to sit in the lower mid region of the mix, which enhanced the other tracks by establishing a solid foundation for the movement and detail to move around/through. I like this attempt about the same amount as experiment 2, but I do feel this one holds a more intimate quality, with the distortion really giving the overall recording a lot of weight.

My aim now is to refine these experiments a bit more and figure out what I like the most out of all of them and what I may need to add/remove to make sure this piece is as impactful as it can be.