Looking back on the project, I’d have to say the planning process came to be quite productive. It wasn’t much longer at all after thinking of the topic and genre that we though of the sounds we’d record and gradually built on our lost of ideas for good sounds to record and what we could do with them. There were points at which we were considering effects and EQ we could put into practise before we’d even thought of all the sounds we’d use. Once we’d listed all of the appropriate sounds we aimed to record however (after we’d presented our idea), that was when we had a more in-depth discussion about the mix and EQ.

The recording process came to be efficient in most respects. Ben and I felt that the equipment could definitely have been more reliable, however. Although there were times when the battery didn’t last long in the Marantz audio recorders no matter what we did or it simply corrupted single previously recorded samples mid-recording, we managed to get by and obtain the sounds we aimed to record. The process took longer than we’d intended because of this but it didn’t obstruct us to the point of not achieving our aims at all, only temporarily.

The recording process came to be a lot quicker than we’d originally intended. When Ben and I met in the studio for a few hours on Saturday 13th Dec, we managed to assemble the majority of the project itself. We had more than one issue, to do with not knowing how to automate certain sounds. At the time, we planned to come in with a solution the following day. Ben saved time however, by showing up with the problem already solved. From there on, all there was left to do was finish EQing the sounds and to complete the running order which I did after we met.

While working in a group of three, I felt there was a definite imbalance of contribution between us all when it came to the amount of effort put into completely the project and also taking it seriously. I feel my attitude and effort personally had been average but there was definitely room for improvement. From this project however, I feel I’ve learned that equal contribution should be apparent at all times and that there’s plenty of enjoyment involved as long as the mood is good, which relies on group members helping out equally.

Whilst working on this Soundscape, I have learned many things. Some things not even related to Audio Production, but to life in general, which is that it is hard to work as a group at times. A lot of the time you just want to get on with your own thing, but working as a group can be quite fun and satisfying overall, when you have something to show for it. One thing that I have learned about Audio Production is that a condenser microphone is extremely useful. Our Soundscape required us to record some relatively quiet sounds, which the condenser picked up perfectly. Even the sound of tying a shoelace came out pretty well, but we did not use it in our final mix.

Another thing that this project has taught me is not to put your faith in audio equipment. It breaks… a lot. I have spoken about our struggle with the Marantz Recorder in previous blog entries, but I have not talked about how the Marantz breaking actually helped me to realise that you need to be prepared if something does go wrong, and you need to make sure that you have enough time to rectify whatever went wrong. In the case of the Marantz, it broke on multiple occasions, but luckily we recorded early enough to book equipment out the next day (and the day after that… and the one after that) and get the rest of our sounds recorded.

I have also learned that when working on a Soundscape, if you have a plan then after recording the sounds, putting them together is a rather quick process. I was worried that when we got to editing it would take ages and we would get to what we thought was the end and find out that we still have to fill up another 30 seconds… but that didn’t happen luckily. We put the whole Soundscape together over the weekend. Obviously there will be small things to change still, but we are pretty happy with the outcome already.

One final thing that I have learned about Audio Production is that it is fun! I knew I would enjoy certain aspects when I signed up for it, otherwise I would not have undertaken a three-year course in it. What I mean is that there are always certain parts of a subject that you are less interested in and turn your nose up at when you hear about them, and creating a Soundscape was one of the things that I turned my nose up at. I couldn’t have been more wrong about it. Once we had come up with our idea, recording the sounds and then putting the whole thing together was much more interesting than I thought it would be, and it was a lot of fun too.

Me, Ben Hollick and George Burrows met up today at one o’clock at the music suite to do some more editing for the soundscape. The audio clips were already in the almost perfect order in Pro Tools but a few clips needed to be added to complete the whole arrangement of audio clips. We need a few clock sound effects to fir the alarm clock at the end of the soundscape just before the second alarm and just after the yawn. Also we needed to add a clock sound effect on when the student character is doing his work. The two clock effects have to be at two different tempos one faster than the other or one slower than the other. The faster clock sound effect needed to be quiet fast to give the impression that time flies while you’re being productive whether its working or play games. We originally wanted the fast tempo clock to be put over the in-game sounds but unfortunately the two sound clips didn’t really fit to gather in perfect harmony so we decided to put it over the student charter typing away on his laptop which was a much better choice. The slower clock was for the second to last piece of audio clip in the soundscape, right before the final alarm clock. was chosen to be slower because the student character was sleeping and we tried to emphasise the fact time seems to be loving slowly while you’re either relaxing or sleeping. The hardest audio clip we had to get was the sound effect an iPhone makes right after you send a text or iMessage, it was sort of a “wooop” sound effect. We didn’t have any microphones or any recording equipment on hand so we had to make do of what we had. We used Ben’s iPhone to do the recording while provided the sound we needed only because me and Ben were the only ones with iPhones. After many attempts of trying to recored the perfect iPhone message sent sound effect. Ben then emailed the audio clip to himself from his phone and with a few little changes in the EQ and the Db levels the sound effect sounded fantastic. placing the sound clip wasn’t too hard but we had to make it perfect like the student character actually sent a text message. We wanted the soundscape to heard at the student characters perspective so we made sure each individual audio track was panned to the proper level, hard panning them left and right would just be unrealistic so for example if say the in-game sounds was supposed to be to he right of the student, instead of panning hard right we pan it to the right but still making sure we can still hear it a little to the left of us. After all the appropriate panning was done and all the levels was checked and making sure that the whole soundscape was in the two minute maximum limit we decided that the soundscape of “A Day In The Life Of A Student” was finished.

Ben Hollick and I met up today for a few hours to begin the assembly of the soundscape itself. We focused more on putting the sounds together in a suitable order, using cross-fading and volume controls. We began with the simple plan of transferring all of our sounds into a brand new Pro Tools project in the correct order so that we could alter the duration and levels of the sounds after. However, we couldn’t help but edit them as we went along. What we didn’t expect, was that the sounds collectively lasted much longer than we’d originally assumed. This wasn’t a bad thing however, because it meant that we could get rid of any fraction of the sounds that dragged out too much. During the construction of the soundscape itself, we came across certain sounds, with which we couldn’t EQ. For example, we intend to put clips from two separate songs into the soundscape. However, we were unsure of how record the control of the level of HPF used for our intended portrayal of what was happening. We do however, intend to overcome this problem tomorrow.

Other than the problem that occurred, we managed to successfully insert all of the sounds we first intended to use within the project and use cross-fading and volume controls within the few hours we had available to us. We also managed to fill in the majority of the script along the way which we intend to finish when we meet tomorrow.

Aims for tomorrow’s session would be to complete the EQ of the sounds successfully and to finish the script, along with the duration of the sounds in the running order.

One final time George and I booked out the horribly over-complicated Marantz and an AKG C3000 this morning in the aim to capture the sound of a crowd. Luckily we had a Mediation and Representation lecture at 11:00, which we stood outside of until a crowd gathered, and then hit record. We recorded one take outside the lecture, and another whilst walking into the lecture and sitting down.

Now that I’ve thought about it, the AKG C414 would have been a much better microphone to use, because it has an changeable polar pattern, meaning that we could have recorded using an omni-directional polar pattern, which would have let us capture a more full sound. However, the C414 was already booked out so we had to make do with the C3000, which did the job well enough for the purpose of a muffled crowd. We are going to use a muffled crowd sound to signify that the individual in the Soundscape has earphones, and the crowd will then get louder when he “takes his earphones out”. If we manage to achieve this, it should sound excellent!