Session 2: Soundwalks

Today we looked at 'soundwalks'. This is a recording purposefully made to listen and record the environment and the various sounds.

We thought of places that would have different echos and types of background noise and created a 2 minute soundwalk using Sure Dynamic microphones and a Sennhiser 416 kit. 

The first was going through a building on campus called 'Bramber house'. It has different lecture rooms as well as a cafe and a Co-operative store. It is always busy so we decided to use this as the environment for the first soundscape we did in our group of 3. I have attached this below.

CO-OPERATIVE SOUNDWALK

Although the quality of the microphone (Sure Dynamic) wasn't as high as the other, I believe it was quite successful due to the different beeps of the cashiers, music and background talking going on. We also went to different parts of the building where some areas echoed more. The unsuccessful element was the cable dropping and making a distraction towards the end of the clip.

The second soundwalk was through a market place on campus. We used the Sennhiser 416 for this recording. Due to the high quality equipment the sounds of the wind and rain were fortunately not picked up as much however we did have some people asking us "what we were recording" which was a downfall to it.

I have attached this below.

MARKET SOUNDWALK

City Park - Soundscape

https://soundcloud.com/maddie-north-1/park-soundscape

I have layered 10 different clips to resemble the sounds of a City Park.

A few of the sounds I have included were:

'Woodland' sounds

Bird sounds

A football match

By layering them on top of one another and changing the volume and fading, I was able to create my first soundscape which I have attached above from SoundCloud.

An Introduction to Adobe Audition

We were told to watch this YouTube tutorial on Adobe Audition as this is what the class was introduced to in the first session.

After watching it, I understand more about the different functions however there was a lot of content within the 8 minute video.

I will be using Adobe Audition throughout this term so I will need to play around with the various functions and familiarise myself with the software.

Two Choices of Locations

My individual work for next session:

"Bring in two choices of locations, which would make for an interesting sound design."

I thought of the many different places which could be interesting. The first few that popped in to my head were nightclubs, the Brighton pier and a shopping mall. However I wanted to choose something a bit more unique.

The two choices that stick out to me the most are:

A tattoo shop - The different machines buzzing as well as people possibly being in pain, or happy with their results etc.

A theatre - The different variations of sound such as people rehearsing, chairs/settings being re arranged, the staff choreographing and directing.

Session 1 - EVPs

The first part of our session we spent listening to EVPs and writing down what we were able to hear.

When discussing with the class, there was a range of responses. Some people saying they heard nothing and some saying they heard up to 7 words.

Personally, I heard 3.

"Anyone there"

"It's starting"

"Shhh"

What is an EVP?

EVP stands for Electronic Voice Phenomena.

They are sounds (found most in recordings with static transmissions and background noise) that can bear resemblance to human speech from an unknown source which are found on recordings.

Some are more easily heard than others and are mainly words or short sentences. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voice_phenomenon

Some people believe it to be the mysterious sounds of spirits or extraterrestrials trying to communicate. However some recordings can be set up as a hoax or prank.