Soundscape project – Tom, Liam, Mateusz

Mateusz Wywrocki – Reflective Summary

 

During my production activities, I have gained useful experience in working with microphones, location recordings and editing stuff in pro tools. I have also learned from my own mistakes. In the beginning of my location recordings I wanted to use ZOOM H4n recorder with boom mic connected to it, but after listening to recordings in home, I realized that all of them were recorded in mono, and sound was rather poor. Then, I decided to record sounds once again, but with stereo microphones form ZOOM. Those recordings were much more listenable and they have had nice and more live, panoramic sound. I was also experimenting a little bit with ZOOM recorder, by recording sounds from different perspectives. It was very involving experience, because mics hear the world different in comparison to human’s ears and each change of perspective was giving another perception of sound. I was changing the distance, as well as angle of mics. I’ve learned that use of windshield on microphones is compulsory in normal, daily conditions, because even small wind causes crackling noise in microphone and unwanted distortions.

In our soundscape project, we have decided to portray different areas of Lincoln city with its citizens and their general and stereotypical daily goals, as well as their omnipresent pace of life. High Street was great place to represent this daily life’s speed, because people were walking there quite fast. We found cash machine’s sound as a great representation of people’s lust for money. Recording this sound has turned out to be quite complicated, because we have had to keep distance between person taking money out and still properly adjust microphones’ levels to capture this sound in good quality. Adjusting level skills turned out to be useful also with train sound recording. Because we wanted to capture quite clean train sound, we had to be near to the train and lower the levels in order to avoid distortions. I have learned also, that sound recording can be sometimes challenging. During recording pigeons, as an example of local fauna, I had to master fast ZOOM recorder movements in order to avoid collision of flying pigeon with the recorder.

Moreover, all theoretical knowledge gained during Principles of Audio seminars turned out to be useful, especially during Pro-Tools work. Grid mode and Slip mode were really helpful in compositing our soundscape. Because we decided to make a Music Concrete, “elastic audio” feature was really handy. It made us able to adjust particular sounds perfectly to bar lines, without affecting its pitch, so those sounds were still natural. Another techniques such as panning or fading in and out were also effective in improving the overall sound of our piece.

Due to the fact, that this whole project had to be done in groups, I improved my interpersonal skills as well as group work skills. I realized, that decent outcome of the project depends on good communication between members of group as well as excellent organisation and sufficient motivation.

Tom Chambers Written Reflection

From producing this soundscape, I have learned many different techniques that I can use in further projects through both using audio equipment and the recording software ProTools. I also learned how to use several different mics to record our sounds for the soundscape and how positioning of these mics changes the quality of the overall sound. These mic recording techniques would also be useful when it comes to recording clients in the future. The module also taught me to be able to work in a group better.

To record the sounds for our soundscape, we used a Zoom h4n handheld recorder. This meant that I had to familiarise myself with this piece of equipment to use it effectively. To do this, I recorded many different sounds, experimenting with the gain of the mics and distances from the things I was recording to get different levels. this type of exercise led me to realise that I would indeed have to check the levels of each recording I did before I record them so that they were ensured not to peak and create an unusable recording. We recorded a lot of these sounds outside. Because of this, the weather was often unpredictable, and we had to deal with windy conditions a lot of the time. To get around this, we experimented using different micing techniques. We used a wind shielded shotgun mic attached to an input on the Zoom so that it would cut out the wind in our recordings so that they were cleaner.

Because I produced the soundscape using ProTools, this meant I had to learn how to navigate around the software to be able to use it effectively. I used many editing techniques through ProTools such as panning. Because my piece was Musique Concrete, I felt that panning was a useful technique to use because it meant I could not only control the mixing of the sound, but I could also use panning to my advantage to create atmospheric effects panning left and right at different points. I also learned how to use techniques such as “elastic audio”. This technique allows me to change the speed of a piece of audio without effecting its pitch. This was a useful technique because I could ensure all the audio I used in the soundscape was at the same tempo so that it sounded clear.

I also utilised a technique called Clipping in ProTools editing. This technique was essential to my ProTools editing because it meant I could create accurate and shorter pieces of audio and, so I can use them at different points on the ProTools session. I also learned how to use “Slip” and “Grid” mode. These techniques allowed me to move audio tracks either very precisely or very deliberately. I also used the fading technique when I clipped a track to fade the track in and out only by a millisecond so that it made sure there were no frequencies that were half complete and thus would make a feedback sound.

Before our presentation, myself, Tom and Mateusz met up in the local area to discuss how we wanted our soundscape project to result by. We continued to discuss all of each others ideas and picked which would be the most suitable in the project. The ideas were later finalised and placed into a presentation, and were ready to present upon the following week(s).

Now we all have our sounds captured from the locations we intended, we entered the studios and began to work on making our music concrete. Tom was the mastermind behind most of our project, using Pro-Tools as the DAW and using standard techniques to make the track adapt a somewhat ‘melody’, by clipping, using the slip and grid methods, panning the sounds and fading when necessary. Captured sounds such as cash registers and store alarms was used to create a minor melody in the track whilst other sounds were in freeform, to keep our audiences attention. Below is the final result, tell us what you think!

This week, all of the group once again used book-out zoom recorders and went travelling into different locations around the city to capture more and the final sounds for our soundscape project. We went into shops, recorded the sounds of a busy day within the store, walked up to the cathedral and captured the reverberation effect inside, and then pieced together our recorded clips that contained the most clarity. These are the clips we used for the next stage, which will be editing.