Week 8
If you close your eyes and just listen to the world around you in this very moment, what would you hear? When I say listen I mean really listen.
Me? If I were listening superficially, I'd tell you I hear nothing, as I sit in my room by myself writing this post. But if I really listen, I can hear the light hum of my laptop, so light it almost doesn't exist and the clacking of the keys on my keyboard. I hear my sister in the living room who occasionally plays her game or watches a video too loud. I can even hear my neighbours and their light chatter as they do most night. If I listen even more than that, I can very faintly hear the sound of some cars driving on the wet roads, and the light rustle of the trees. All of this from simply listening. And this isn't even a big night, if I were writing this on a Friday or Saturday night out of isolation, I can almost guarantee my neighbours would be playing their music stupidly loud until ungodly hours of the night (at least it's good music).
What I'm alluding to is that sounds are literally everywhere. Any and all types of sounds. It's not often you take in every single thing you can hear, in fact I imagine it would be quite overwhelming, but it's all there. If you think about it now, I'm sure you'd be able to identify all the kinds of sounds you hear in your daily life, and if they're regular enough, you may even be able to predict when you hear it. I know I'd be hearing the kettle at exactly 8am when my mother wakes up to make herself a tea, with the television turning on shortly after (often at an alarmingly high volume set the night before). These are just some everyday sounds. Of course you get an extra few thrown in there, you can't predict everything after all.
However, isn't that the job of a Foley Artist? Okay, that's me being a tad dramatic, they do not necessarily predict the sounds, just the exact time to create and make them in order to fit the project they were hired to complete. What is a Foley Artist? A Foley Artist is a person who makes and creates sounds and soundscapes to be used in film, television and other media, added in post production. They make the sounds that cannot easily be picked up during filming and thus, create better quality audio (Maio, 2020).
So what is a soundscape? It is much more than just a collection of sounds gathered together, it is a collection of sounds that form an environment. It is the space the sound lives in and creates. Take my example from before, from what I am hearing. If you were to describe those sounds to me while my eyes were closed, I would be thinking of my bedroom, it would bring me straight there. When sound if defined and understood in such a way, it becomes a wonderful tool for people to use and relate to (Guzy, 2017). They can be made up of anything and everything. You could use music created by instruments, or electronically created sounds. You could even just press record on a walk and use the sounds you collected from that, such as the whistle of the wind, or the crunching of leaves. There are never ending possibilities (Guzy, 2017)
I have made a soundscape only once before in my life. It was for another university class, which required us to create our own sounds with the environment. I ended up recording the sounds of the rain and the crunching of leaves, along with some other things I pulls from a recording of my walk. Initially, I thought that I couldn't really make anything from some simple sounds but you'd be surprised how things can piece together. I am still working on my soundscape for remediation 3, and I've got to say this has been my favourite remediation yet. I am a very big sound person, I like listening and creation, I feel it is the small musician in me. It is in moments like these, I wish I had kept learning piano or stuck it our with guitar, my voice has no use on this particular remediation. However, it may make an appearance in my final project, you never know.
When I think of my original narrative however, I had no idea where to take it regarding sounds. Being such a sad, sombre piece I felt it wasn't going anywhere, regarding the depth of the story. I found myself trying to make it literal, just as I did with my first two remediations, but how can you make some sounds literal. All I wanted was some silence in some parts, but I couldn't do that could I? How is that a sound? But it is. As much as it is an oxymoron, silence can be a truely deafening sound sometimes. In fact, Matt Rogalsky, had said that in US radio, when the silences are stripped, they are stripping away some of the best content. Sometimes we should strip away the words and keep the silence (Poole, 2001). It can make just as much of an impact of other sounds and I am looking forward to playing around even more with adding some into my piece.
References:
Guzy, M. (2017). The Sound of Life: What is a Soundscape? Retrieved from https://folklife.si.edu/talkstory/the-sound-of-life-what-is-a-soundscape
Poole, S. (2001). Prick up your ears. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/education/2001/nov/17/arts.highereducation1
Maio, A. (2020). What is a Foley Artist? How They Bring Movies to Life. Retrieved from https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-a-foley-artist/
(Photo by maxime caron on Unsplash)
What I'm alluding to is that sounds are literally everywhere. Any and all types of sounds. It's not often you take in every single thing you can hear, in fact I imagine it would be quite overwhelming, but it's all there. If you think about it now, I'm sure you'd be able to identify all the kinds of sounds you hear in your daily life, and if they're regular enough, you may even be able to predict when you hear it. I know I'd be hearing the kettle at exactly 8am when my mother wakes up to make herself a tea, with the television turning on shortly after (often at an alarmingly high volume set the night before). These are just some everyday sounds. Of course you get an extra few thrown in there, you can't predict everything after all.
However, isn't that the job of a Foley Artist? Okay, that's me being a tad dramatic, they do not necessarily predict the sounds, just the exact time to create and make them in order to fit the project they were hired to complete. What is a Foley Artist? A Foley Artist is a person who makes and creates sounds and soundscapes to be used in film, television and other media, added in post production. They make the sounds that cannot easily be picked up during filming and thus, create better quality audio (Maio, 2020).
So what is a soundscape? It is much more than just a collection of sounds gathered together, it is a collection of sounds that form an environment. It is the space the sound lives in and creates. Take my example from before, from what I am hearing. If you were to describe those sounds to me while my eyes were closed, I would be thinking of my bedroom, it would bring me straight there. When sound if defined and understood in such a way, it becomes a wonderful tool for people to use and relate to (Guzy, 2017). They can be made up of anything and everything. You could use music created by instruments, or electronically created sounds. You could even just press record on a walk and use the sounds you collected from that, such as the whistle of the wind, or the crunching of leaves. There are never ending possibilities (Guzy, 2017)
I have made a soundscape only once before in my life. It was for another university class, which required us to create our own sounds with the environment. I ended up recording the sounds of the rain and the crunching of leaves, along with some other things I pulls from a recording of my walk. Initially, I thought that I couldn't really make anything from some simple sounds but you'd be surprised how things can piece together. I am still working on my soundscape for remediation 3, and I've got to say this has been my favourite remediation yet. I am a very big sound person, I like listening and creation, I feel it is the small musician in me. It is in moments like these, I wish I had kept learning piano or stuck it our with guitar, my voice has no use on this particular remediation. However, it may make an appearance in my final project, you never know.
When I think of my original narrative however, I had no idea where to take it regarding sounds. Being such a sad, sombre piece I felt it wasn't going anywhere, regarding the depth of the story. I found myself trying to make it literal, just as I did with my first two remediations, but how can you make some sounds literal. All I wanted was some silence in some parts, but I couldn't do that could I? How is that a sound? But it is. As much as it is an oxymoron, silence can be a truely deafening sound sometimes. In fact, Matt Rogalsky, had said that in US radio, when the silences are stripped, they are stripping away some of the best content. Sometimes we should strip away the words and keep the silence (Poole, 2001). It can make just as much of an impact of other sounds and I am looking forward to playing around even more with adding some into my piece.
References:
Guzy, M. (2017). The Sound of Life: What is a Soundscape? Retrieved from https://folklife.si.edu/talkstory/the-sound-of-life-what-is-a-soundscape
Poole, S. (2001). Prick up your ears. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/education/2001/nov/17/arts.highereducation1
Maio, A. (2020). What is a Foley Artist? How They Bring Movies to Life. Retrieved from https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-a-foley-artist/
i loved your description of a sound environment! i think mine is very similar, although i am writing this on the weekend and sadly my neighbours are blasting music right now (and not good music may i add!)
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