Soundcloud link: https://soundcloud.com/user-341076605/unwinding/s-VS5p0UpuV2B?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
For this project, I first started off with wanting to do something impactful and eerie because I thought it would be fun to incorporate the feeling of uneasiness that you get from exquisite corpse drawings. I then decided that I wanted to switch my idea to something more simple so I ended up doing a more ambient, calm soundscape.
My inspiration actually first started with the 4'33 piece by John Cage, as the message that he wanted to share through that piece was to appreciate the sounds around you as music. The background noises like trees, birds, the beginning of a rain storm can all be music if you sit down to listen. I was quickly reminded of my favorite type of videos to watch to get me motivated to study: ambience videos. Like I stated in my second reading blog, I find it very nice to listen to ambience videos featuring rain, movie soundtracks, the crackling of a fireplace, etc. It's an easy way to get you in a mood to focus on your work by imagining you're in a much cooler place than your college apartment!
In my soundscape, I wanted to depict you getting up after class to go home. You close the classroom door and walk out through the parking lot and get hints of people skating, listening to music in their car, and then you come to a light rail/train station.
On the packed light rail/train, you hear conversations, someone playing music out loud, and someone watching the Super Bowl on their phone. After getting home, it's raining and you sit down to get some homework done. Later, your roommate comes home and practices violin in their room.
Overall, I really liked to learn how to make the recordings sound like how you would actually hear them if you were there in the moment. I got to work with a lot of reverb effects and I think that the quality in some parts turned out really well. What I didn't and should have considered was that using a lot of reverb would cause the entire soundscape to be pretty quiet. I wish I took the time to listen to the piece without headphones to see if it would sound the same. I also think that using some more professional sounding sound effects from the Internet could have created a smoother soundscape, so I'd love to see if I could create some more ambient sounds.
All in all, it was really fun to see if I could create something like the ambience videos I really like to listen to, so I can guarantee that I will try to create another soundscape soon.