My initial inspiration for this project was a soundbite I recorded while taking the BuffBus to school - the sound of an ‘interesting’ audiobook playing at full volume over the sounds of a crowded bus full of college students. My soundscape was designed to start as a normal day; waking up to my alarm, going to the bathroom, having a snack, getting ready, and walking to the bus. Very mundane, but still a lot of ambient house sounds (people talking) and I also included a short greeting with the neighborhood cat on the way to the bus.
Once I got on the bus, the sound of the audiobook get more and more strange and distorted, to signal a shift into a sort of other world or alternate dimension. Then, at the end of the soundscape, the bus noises fade back into the alarm sound from the beginning. This was meant to give a sense to the listener that this was all a stress dream experienced in the first few seconds of waking, induced by the horrid alarm sound.
Originally I was not planning on making the whole soundscape be a dream, but as I was designing the soundscape the dream concept made sense to give the soundscape more of a concrete concept and story line.
I think my project was fairly successful in communicating my idea. Although I wish I dedicated more time in the end of the soundscape to fade the alarm sound in, because I feel like the listener might miss it, not paying attention in the last 5 seconds. I also wish I had made the transition to the strangeness of the bus audio a bit more gradual.
Something else I learned is that when I am editing audio, I need better headphones, or to constantly be checking the balance on my computer's external speakers. I would be editing for a couple hours with headphones, think everything sounds great, then when I tried to show my roommate without headphones, the volumes were crazy. Some were super loud, others too quiet to hear. I think better headphones would probably help this issue, or continuously checking with my computer’s speakers, which is what I started doing at the end.
Some images supporting the theme of my audioscape:
Deep Kitty sleep -
Neighborhood cat <3
More kitty sleep
How I feel being woken up -
Snowy morning on campus -
Kommentare