Sound Arts – Year Two

We recently went on a trip as a class to Otherworld VR, a virtual reality gaming experience complex in Haggerston. Only around 15 of us turned up, which gave us more time in the VR world, which was great because I felt I got a lot more out of the experience. The experience was extremely disorienting and strange, as I could see my arms and could walk around in the virtual world without walking in the real world, which would often totally mess with my balance. I found it really enjoyable interacting with everyone in the virtual world, and as this was my first proper experience with VR I left imagining the possibilities of avatars, world building and immersivity with a reference point of actually experiencing it myself. I firmly believe you learn the most when experiencing something first hand, and this was no different.

I played various games, most of them being first person shooters with other people in my class and one being a game called ‘Supahot’, which was a slow motion game where you had to evade attacks and retaliate. I found this the most enthralling because I was on my own and the slow motion altered my perception of time, which really drew me in to the virtual world, totally immersing me. I was picking up on how the sound was used with the space to trick me into believing I was really there and that if a bullet hit me I would die. The panning, distance and textures of the sound would create an intimacy that felt claustrophobic or a vast sense of space that felt liberating, depending on the game and how the sound was deployed.

I will be considering my experience here and reflecting on it when I come to start adding more detail to my game sound design, trying to mirror the feeling that I had when I was in this virtual terrain.

I sent my tracks into the group chat and received a very positive reaction. Everyone thought the sounds fitted the game really well and were impressed with my professionalism and hard work, which was great to hear as this is something new for me. Working within a group is really fun when everyone is proactive, and I’m lucky that I was a part of a very hard working and communicative group. The general consensus was to choose experiment 1 for the hopeful mood and experiment 2 for the desolate mood. A couple of people said they were particularly in love with the pad sounds in both tracks, which made me happy because I felt that the pad sounds were the best representation of me projecting my own voice through the work, so it was great that they picked up on that.

I was planning on producing more experiments based on the tracks that they liked the most, but when I mentioned that idea the group insisted that I keep the two they selected and just mix them a little more. Although I didn’t produce a massive volume of work, they felt there was enough to choose from and felt that I had reflected the mood they were after well. This is a good thing about working as part of a group because if I was on my own I would have continued to try and develop something more ‘detailed’, whereas here I was encourage to stick with the less is more approach.

In terms of mixing the final tracks ready for the game design and animation students’ deadline, there really wasn’t all that much for me to do. I didn’t want to overcomplicate anything and I just trusted my ear. Also, there is still plenty of time for me to re-mix ready for my own deadline. All I actually had to do was EQ the individual sounds slightly and then compress them to bring up a consistent level and glue them together. From there I used a limiter to bring up the volume and the tracks were pretty much done. I was happy that I didn’t need to do too much in the end because it showed me that I had chosen the sounds and composed them in a careful and considered manner, which meant the frequencies worked well with each other.

I am pretty happy with my first experiments for the soundtrack for the ‘hopeful’ side of the game, and with the ideas for the ‘desolate’ side of the game I wanted to keep the consistency in sound choices and sonic palette. I feel it is important to not have the two moods clash too much as at the end of the day it is background music and should bleed into the environment it is contained in. Making more desolate and sombre music is definitely more in my comfort zone, but I still had the challenge of keeping it cohesive with the games aesthetic.

I have been receiving some updates from my group about the progression of the game design. They have sent me some pictures and videos that show things like the design of the bee, the landscape, and the other animals in the world. This has given me a better sense of how the music might fit into the virtual world, as I feel the aesthetic is giving off a mystical and bright energy, which I used to influence these tracks.

When making these tracks I retained a very similar sonic palette to match with the more hopeful tracks I previously made. However, I shifted the focus onto the synth sounds because I felt they helped create a more sombre ambience. Here’s a video of me in the middle of the process.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YWtGwnm4jK70vnCfYGnZZsImO_1AKwlk/view?usp=sharing

Following my plan to make the soundtrack based off of the references I have been given and found myself, I have made three versions of the more hopeful side of the soundtrack.

My intention was to make the tracks not only hopeful but full of adventure and curiosity. I wanted the tracks to mirror the playful nature of the game as it has been described to me. I used the plugin ‘Labs’ and just used presets that I occasionally tweaked, as Labs has a great range of soft and authentic instrument sounds like pianos and strings. The music I was referencing was consistently quite organic and had cinematic auras that relied heavily on subtle build ups of instruments. For this reason I limited myself to using piano and string sounds, as well as light synth sounds to add ambience and a sense of space.

My personal favourite is number 2 but I am interested to hear what the group has to say about them. Making ‘happy’ tracks is something I am not usually concerned about, so this provided me with a different challenged that felt quite liberating. I played most of the melodies in myself and then would edit the patterns after, which was a nice and fluid way of working.

The references that I was given as a starting point have a general pattern in that they are all heavily instrumental (strings, guitars, piano) and project a grand, cinematic feeling. I was sent a playlist by my group on YouTube that I will include below.

These videos of soundtracks/songs have made things a lot clearer for me as the composer because they’re all quite consistent in the mood and instrumentation. I had a couple of thoughts, however, that I expressed to the group. The main idea I had was that the soundtrack should be a little more intimate and subtle, because the game, as it has been described to me, seems to be a very simple, fun, solo game that doesn’t delve too much into the abstract realm and has a very definitive connection between the protagonist (the bee) and the player. I felt that an intimate soundtrack would serve the overall experience better, allowing the player to become more lost in the game whilst not becoming distracted.

In light of the idea of intimacy, I have turned to Minecraft as a reference. It’s subtle pianos and blissful ambience create a soothing playing experience, with the soundtrack playing a vital role in a simple open world game with an innocent aesthetic. I feel that the game I’m working on is similar in the sense that it revolves around a fun and playful gameplay rather than more cinematic and treacherous for the player, albeit a lot more simple.

I have been in contact with the game designers and animators in my group and I asked for a list of references and what mood they wanted the sound to create. I also asked if there was a preference in the type of instrument, whether it should be more experimental or not, how intimate or abstract it should be and how long they roughly want it. The response was very open in that I was told I am able to be quite free in my experimentation. I am in charge of the musical score in the background while my partner is in control of the sound effects. I’m happy that the assigning of roles worked out this way because it provides a good opportunity for me to explore something different by scoring an environment that is specific and requires a certain mood to reflect it’s atmosphere and structure.

My role is to score a ‘lighter’ and ‘darker’ side of the game, the lighter for when the bee is pollinating the flowers and the darker for when it is searching for flowers in a barren wasteland. So essentially I feel it is quite important to have the two moods be consistent in their sonic textures and aesthetics, as they will occupy the same world but with slightly different tones. Similar instruments and an overarching ambience I feel would work well in retaining the consistency in the soundtrack, making it obvious that the two tracks are existing in the same world.

NOTES –

As someone with no experience in spatial sound in any way, I found the first lesson very informative, and a lot of ideas were sparked in my head. What I found particularly interesting was the idea that spatial sound, as opposed to the standard two channel setup that everyone listens to music through, is a lot less concerned with the sound on its own, but instead more worried about the relationship between the sound and the environment. For instance, if you are listening to a song or a sound piece through headphones, you are hearing a definitive and focused piece of work that doesn’t use any of your physical surroundings to create its impact. Sound systems in clubs and venues have a bit more of a relationship with the space but it is still quite a linear way of the sound being projected.

Spatial sound, however, often uses the space as another instrument, fulfilling the architectural brilliance of a space and playing a lot more with emptiness and physical sensation. One note I wrote down was that you can never show the experience of a spatial piece because you have to experience it in real life – as soon as it is converted to binaural or a video of the piece being performed, the spatial sound element gets lost as you are now listening via two channels. I think this is an important idea to think about, because the way I interpret it is spatialisation/installation work is all about being immersed in the moment, and it is an experience, whereas how I am used to producing sound work is through making work that can be replayed infinitely. It seems like more of a mindset change over anything else when you move into spatial sound.

At the midway point of the year, it seems to me as though we have entered the phase of learning through mimicking real world situations, exemplified by the exhibition unit that we have just finished and this new collaborative project that we are starting. This is my favourite way to learn because there is a slight amount of pressure and I enjoy learning new perspectives through collaboration. Upon meeting some of the people I will be working with, I am excited to see how the project will develop and I’m looking forward to engaging with people working within different disciplines.

The project that I will be working on is in conjunction with MA Games Design and MA 3D Animation. The title is ‘Too Bee‘, which is a simple game where the player controls a bee and has to pollinate flowers in a barren wasteland in order to bring back the nature. I am pleased that I am in a group that is focusing on a simple idea because working with game designers and operating in this sort of scenario is new to me, so I don’t feel like I’ve been thrown in at the deep end.

SUSTAINED GENERATIVE DIALOGUE

It is important to treat this collaborative process as an ongoing conversation rather than forcing the issue based on my own interpretation. I realise that I am one cog in a machine and I am challenging myself to be as open minded as possible whilst bringing my own voice to the team.

I am very happy with my sound composition for this unit, as I feel it is a unique concept with interesting sonic nuances. The mixing and mastering helped strengthen the impact and heighten certain frequencies in my opinion.

My mixing approach was very simple. I am used to mixing together dense tracks and carving out frequencies so all the elements can sit nicely together, however in this instance my approach was more subtle as I concentrated on panning, volume automation and compression as the key components to bring the piece to life. I wanted the track to feel more and more like it was forging a life of its own as it developed, and I think fairly simple but bold mixing decisions such as panning the entire master hard left then hard right to emphasise certain moments of fracture and instability really help to create a sense of immersion and the feeling of the drum break frantically crashing through different realms.

The mastering again was simple, as I applied a mid/side EQ and some light compression to glue everything together. Two limiters with different thresholds and lookahead times boosted the loudness of the track whilst keeping a good balance between the organic sonic palette and intensely chromatic quality of a lot of the digital processing.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GTCZneSRsmKEGHp9vlriE5z5QeVtmE6g/view?usp=sharing

As I mentioned in my previous post, I wanted to create a scene of a producer and the computer struggling and fighting over a breakbeat. I felt that this would be an interesting way of representing my overarching theme in my research, my essay and ultimately this entire unit. I am usually more calculated and methodical with my practical work, developing and refining it over time, however for this composition my creative spark was more of a burst that was sustained over a two day period. I feel that this is because I have done so much research and have such a clear mind in terms of what I’m writing about, so the composition as a result was quite vivid in my head.

I started by importing the stems that I had recorded of my friend playing the drums, and I cut out the best bits, focusing the tempo on around 160bpm. I then compressed the samples quite heavily, bringing out the interesting tonality and timbres that the recordings had. At the same time I made sure not to over do the compression as I was aware that with further processing the sound could lose its character.

I began to structure a sketch of how I wanted the piece to develop. My intention was to have the piece start like a rehearsal with the drummer warming up, which was aimed at highlighting the human element of the composition. Immediately after the short intro I processed a kick sample I cut out from the recording and distorted it, as well as layering a reverb and delay send that I bounced out to separate tracks as audio to enhance the texture of the sound.

From there, I chopped up and reversed a snare fill to lead in to the whole drum break releasing and driving the track forward; the break then begins to morph into a more abstract and unpredictable rhythm, diverging from the initial linear direction it was previously going in. I used Pitch Hack, Valhalla’s Frequency Modulator and Space Modulator, and panning to transform the breakbeat, eventually disrupting it altogether in an overwhelming frequency sweep. The rates, frequencies and dry/wet knobs on the plugins were mostly automated live, which I just recorded in. The breakbeat then comes back in but with adjustments to the frequency and rates of the pitch hack and frequency modulation, making the sound more submerged and less definitive. I felt this approach resulted in a convincing sonic image of a human (recognisable) sound and a computer (abstract) sound blending into each other.

The video link below highlights the development and modulations of the sounds in a clearer way:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EyFyp7AgCc0LrZ5vCijC2uU8Gn61RZli/view?usp=sharing

I put the break through Ableton’s granulator II VST, modulating the grain size, spray and file position live on my MIDI controller. This retained the human element of the sound of the drums but added a spectral, ghostlike presence of the sounds floating through the stereo field, as if they are being sucked in by the computer. The track then hits a crescendo, culminating in distorted remnants of the breakbeat taking centre stage. I processed these samples on the plugin Izotope Trash, manually altering the waveshape of the distortion and adding noise presets, filters and drive to render the breaks almost totally unrecognisable. At this point in the track, I was aiming for the sense of the computer completely consuming the break, hinting at the unapologetic force of technology. The track comes to a close with miniscule, distorted chops of the breaks slowly gaining momentum through a delay send.