Month: December 2022

This is my script proposal written about how I would go about creating an audio paper about noise pollution. This was written many weeks ago but thought it would be good to upload it here as you can see many of these ideas translate into the final product of my audio paper.

Today is the day before the hand-in, we had a class crit today where we got to showcase our work and gather feedback. My piece’s feedback was positive, and I got some good constructive feedback on changes I could make to my piece. One was to change the voice of the text to speech midway through the piece to keep the listener engaged which was a good idea. They also said that a British voice could be a good idea, as on tube lines they use a mixture of voices and because the text to speech during the first half is an authoritative figure it could be interesting to switch that stance during the second half.

I was also told that the ending could be more interesting if I put my perspective on it, and how ironic it is that as sound artists we are trained to listen carefully to the sounds around us, even though that sound is causing damage to our ears. I was also told that we should add a reference in our piece, so I thought using the reference from the world health organisation about the health effects would be suitable. I decided to use a different male voice representing me and talking from my point of view, meanwhile, the rest of the paper is spoken more like a doctor. I thought this would be an interesting way to point out that we are all somewhat guilty of noise pollution, and that it is somewhat ironic and hypocritical of me to be talking about it. But this whole paper got me to learn how bad noise pollution is.

I tried to add a screenshot of what my Ableton session looked like with all the finished edits but I had some issues with the screenshot deleting my post when added. So here is a link to it

I am very happy with the feedback and think it improved my work, it was very exciting to see everyone else’s hard work and it was very inspiring. This has been a very interesting course to work on and gave me some much-needed context on what an audio paper actually is. This is something I would love to come back to later on in my career, as I think it is a good way to tell a story in a format that is quite unusual.

Elephant and Castle construction/roundabout

This was where I first recorded the sound for this project, I started by taking a Zoom H5 to the construction site across the street from LCC and I started recording the construction. I did not want to look too obvious when recording, so I recorded primally from behind the walls they had covering up the site. I figured out they had metal grates at the bottom of the wall that had a clearer sound of the site so I kneeled down to capture these sounds. I did a couple long recordings from around the construction site, to gather as much sound as I could.

On the way to and from LCC I was also recording the sounds of the roundabout with my field recorder, which provided me with some great sounds of cars racing by, and an ambulance siren which you can hear early on in the piece. I managed to capture the sound of someone whistling, and people talking far in the distance.

The London Underground

My first recordings were captured on my phone from a journey I had from London Bridge to Paddington Station. I did have my field recorder with me but it was out of charge, so I had to use my phone. The phone recording came in handy, as they are heard a lot throughout the piece. I EQ’d the sounds, and ran them through reverb and MISHBY (a broken tape machine plug in). Some of these tube recordings were also transposed down, to add more variety in sound and frequency.

I did end up being able to record with the Zoom H5 on the way back on the tube a few days later, I gathered some really good recordings on this which have also been used in the final piece alongside the phone recordings. I did not have enough space to attach the holder for the field recorder so I had to hold it in my hands due to the tube being full of people. Hearing the difference these recording formats have was a really fun experiment which happened purely by accident. The lofi, raw recordings from the iPhone made for a nice quality which worked in the piece’s favour. Meanwhile, the clarity of the field recorder added some much-needed clearness to the piece. This is something I will continue to experiment with in the future. In my blog ‘Creating The Audio Paper’ you can hear what the raw iPhone recording sounds like, and then what it sounds like processed through effects.

When planning how I was going to create the audio paper, I had to figure out what DAW I was going to edit, record, and mix on. I thought about using Logic Pro X and Pro Tools, but I have neither of those on personal computers and wouldn’t have the opportunity to experiment as much if I had to come into the university to edit, record and mix. Because I would only have so much time to use the computers. I landed on using Ableton, as I own it on my own computers, and it lets you freely experiment while doing that on logic or pro tools is more difficult as they are not built to experiment as freely as Ableton is.

With that chosen, the next thing was to lay out the track. I decided to start the track with a 15-second silence, and then the sounds start slowly creeping in over the piece. The way I composed this piece was as one big crescendo, having the sounds slowly work their way into the piece. Then finish with another 15-second silence, to realise how loud these sounds are. This use of silence was inspired by John Cage’s 4’33, which you can read more in-depth about my other blog here.

The way this piece is constructed is to start with the construction and roundabout noises, so the way I compiled them was to start with one noise that fades in, and then slowly fade in other construction and roundabout noise. I used minimal effects on these sounds, I used Valhalla supermassive as a reverb on some of the construction sounds to add a nice space to the sounds. But I didn’t use reverb on all the tracks, as it would become muddy, and take away from the rawness of these sounds that I wanted to capture. I used MISHBY which is a destroyed tape machine plug in on one of the construction noises that fades in and out pretty quickly. Overall the use of effects on this part of the track is kept to a minimum. I found this a challenge because I am someone who is constantly using and customising effects in my pieces but I felt it would be inappropriate in this context.

I talked about my use of the text to speech and what effects I used on it in another blog post which you can read here, so I will not be talking about that in this blog post.

After the noises of the construction and the Elephant and Castle roundabout, we start hearing the tube. I started bringing in the tube sounds while the construction noises were fading out, so the sound keeps on building up and there is a seamless transition from one sound to the other. I experimented with using a period of silence between the construction and tube noises, but I found the piece lost its momentum and feels like it was being restarted, which is not what I wanted.

The sound of the tube uses more effects to help with the crescendo of the track and to also affect some of the sounds in the raw audio. For example, you can hear people speaking and rustling coats and food packets. I wanted to use effects to be able to still hear this somewhat but have it hard to tell what they’re speaking about or what the sound of rustling is. I used a mixture of transposition, reverb, and MISHBY to detune the sounds slightly near the end of the piece. Here is the sound of a raw recording of the tube captured on my phone, and here is that recording after being run through MISHBY, Reverb and being transposed down

When it came to ending the track it was hard to avoid it being somewhat abrupt. Especially when you’re dealing with a noisy ending that is supposed to stop quickly. I feel that it is always going to be abrupt when dealing with that. The best way to make it feel abrupt but in a good context is to make sure the sound at the end has been playing for a bit so it feels like it should end, and not just have the sound play once or twice and then stop it. Having the sound repeat and build in volume and distortion makes the abrupt ending feel satisfying. The piece ends with another 15-second silence, to be used as a reflection of how noise pollution could be affecting you. Below is a link to the most recent version of my audio paper, we have a class crit soon so I expect there will be some feedback that I can work on.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VujX_7ISf7xq165ZyaeGdyYV6f73qezP/view?usp=share_link

Below is my promotional paragraph for my audio paper

Noise pollution plagues London, why should it matter to you? Composed by sound artist Theo Power, City Of Sickness is a sonic telling of noise pollution and how it affects London and its residents. Walking through construction sites, roundabouts, and the London underground, Power shows you why noise pollution is more dangerous than you may think. Power walks you through how noise pollution affects everyday people, disadvantaged people, and people with disabilities, with a satirical take at fearmongering by using text-to-speech and scientific facts. Noise pollution is a scary subject, City Of Sickness shows us the harsh reality of that.

I plan to release this audio paper on my Soundcloud page. I created a Soundcloud page recently to keep a backlog of my university projects, demos, and experiments. I thought it would be a good way to keep a catalogue of my work to show people and to also pump out consistent work.