Sound Entry #11 - Project: Soundscape

Project #1 Soundscape

Aim/Objective

You are required to plan, research and produce a two to five minute ‘audio soundscape’ or ‘acoustic portrait’ of a geographical place of your choice. This will include a range of self-sourced associated or abstract sounds that help illustrate the space.

I have chosen to do a soundscape of an amusement arcade. I'm familiar with arcades and feel I could have done a good job recording it.

Securing the soundscape

Once I had decided what I was going to do, I was booked out the equipment at SISO and went down the arcade nearest to the train station. I assumed they would be okay if I just went up and asked and said I was a university student. They did question me though and looked like they were about to deny me to record but I showed them my uni ID and they were okay with it then.

Pre-production

I know quite a bit about arcades and been in a fair few through childhood and my adult life. It's something I enjoy and thought it would make an interesting soundscape as it has so many sounds in it that I'd be hard to narrow it down. Better having more than less I guess. 

Soundscape

I recorded the interview by going round all the machines and collecting the individual sounds of it. For example, if I was changing money, I'd collect taking the note out of my wallet, putting it in the slot, having it process the note and then producing the change in the metal troth. Another example is this crane game machine. I would collect the music that plays before putting money in, music whilst playing the game and then music when the crane goes down. And the joystick being twisted and the noise of the crane moving.

I spent a long time in that arcade recording the sounds and wasting my money. I then went back home and recorded the sound of me and my flat mate playing a racing game as the racing game there had no one on it so I couldn't record them having fun. I also needed voices of people to fill the space. So I play video games with a couple people and we use Skype, so I recorded a skype call and use that in the background.

Post-production

Once I had recorded the soundscape, I had to cut up roughly 40 minutes of audio and give each sound effect its own track. I would then overlay these sounds to create a soundscape that sounded semi-decent. I would then polish it until it sounded good.

Conclusion

Overall, I am happy with the mix but tired from how many tracks there are, but if that is what professionals have or more, then I've just got to get used to it.