Author: 
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.