Today George and I started our recording for the Soundscape. We booked out a Marantz Recorder and an AKG C3000 – a large diaphragm condenser microphone set to a cardioid polar pattern – meaning that we could pick up the sounds that we needed to a good standard. For our presentation we recorded some sounds with a Shure SM58, however we decided to re-record those sounds to make sure that they are recorded as good and clearly as they can be.

We set out to get all of the recording done today so that we could then edit it all next week, however we ran into some trouble early on. The battery of the Marantz ran out almost immediately, despite them being replaced before we used the recorder, which cut the recording session short.

Some of the sounds that we managed to record included cooking bacon, an alarm clock, a kettle boiling, and pouring a drink. They were all recorded well with a high Signal-to-Noise Ratio.

Today George and I met up to discuss our Soundscape. We realise that we have left this piece of work quite late due to other work needing to be completed. We have decided to record all of our sounds next week and then get started on editing them and putting the Soundscape together immediately after. We have created a structure for the piece, which hopefully we will be able to stick to without too many problems.

Our main worry is having to create the piece to go in time with a non-copyrighted piece of music that we are using briefly to create the visualisation that earphones are being put into the ears of our individual. We have worked out the tempo of the piece, so we should be alright when creating the Soundscape. If all goes to plan, this will be a successful and entertaining piece that students can relate to.

We met up about a week ago to make decisions about our soundscape. We decided that we would base our soundscape on an average day in the life of a student. This meant we had to take into account different parts of the day, such as waking up, getting ready,  going to lectures and getting home. We very quickly decided on ideas of sounds to record and agreed that we needed some form of rhythm to keep the soundscape flowing. This beat is likely to be a combination of a zip with a with an echo and also footsteps. We also thought it would be good to include the idea that the subjective person in the soundscape is temporarily listening to music through earphones whilst walking. We aim to do this by using a non-copyrighted piece of music which we will manipulate to sound as though the earphones are being inserted into and removed from their ears. This  will be achieved by adding a filter to cut off certain frequencies at different times. This will stop when the sound of the present crowd outside the lecture theatre overpowers the sound of the earphones being moved away from the person’s ears.

We’ve created a presentation which we feel explains the idea of our soundscape well, as well as proposing some of the sounds that we will use in the process of making the soundscape. It also gives an outline of recording locations, production tools and techniques, structure and our target audience that we are aiming to reach.

By George Burrows and Ben Hollick.