Experimental Sound: Final Comments

After the screening today of my sound piece, I am doing the same here as I am for Time Art, and just giving a few points of reviewing the project.

The main thing about this project that was significant for me was the creative aspect of using solely sound to create an environment. I have never really underestimated the importance of sound, and I've always understood its necessity, however I never saw it as much more than a necessity. There is a bigger creative and more complicated aspect to what you can do with sound than I had ever really thought about, and this project has really opened my eyes to that, and I really enjoyed that process! I am proud of my project, when I got the piece Nighthawks (1942) by Edward Hopper I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it, and being able to, for the first time, put all of these odd sounds I had recorded into Audition and come out with something that sounds half decent is a big achievement for me.

Using the recorders also was something I had never done before, and for this project I mostly used a Roland recorder which took a small amount of figuring out, but I definitely got there in the end. At one point I recorded a couple of sounds and listened back to them only to find there was some unwanted gain on there, so playing with settings and modes helped me get the result I wanted, even if it took a bit of time.

If I had to do this project again, I know there are some sounds I would re-record, or spend more time on getting right. For example, the footsteps of the person weren't right for the character I was portraying, the sound of the door as the character entered the diner, and the conversation in the piece stand out to me as things I would definitely do again. My main issue with those sounds was being on limited time to record them, or deciding very late on to record those sounds either again, or for the first time in the case of the conversation. Now that I have a bit more experience in sound design I think my organisation of it would be better in future projects.

The final thing I would like to mention is the use of separately sourced sounds in my sound piece. A few of the sounds I sourced from either YouTube or FreeSound.org and I think it is right to link where I got those sounds from:

Newsreel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pj_btks99p4
Car noise: http://freesound.org/people/juskiddink/sounds/77096/
Music: Stardust- Frank Sinatra and Tommy Dorsey
Background conversation in diner: http://freesound.org/people/Corsica_S/sounds/165238/
Fabric Movement: http://freesound.org/people/Yuval/sounds/188222/