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.

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.

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.