by Yiming Li
I think sound is an interesting thing in nature. Anything that moves, collides, or even if it stays still, will make a different sound. The ability to perceive sound is an inborn skill of all life forms.
To be honest, I hadn’t listened very carefully to particular voices before working on this project. In fact, I would think that they already existed there, and I wouldn’t pay too much attention to them. Because there are so many ways to feel nature, and hearing always seems to take a back seat to sight and touch.
I felt great while doing the first part of the worksheet, it’s been a long time since I’ve been able to sit quietly and listen to my surroundings like that. I felt as if the sounds were easily triggering my reverie and getting me lost in something. It’s a calming feeling and I love it.
It’s an interesting observation I think, and I’ve gotten some inspiration and started doing some research on the topic.
There is some simple and valid evidence that sometimes we unconsciously engage in behaviours such as “overthinking”, which may appear to others as being in a daze. This is not always a sign of inattention, but on the contrary, sound is an important cause of thinking.
My research then turned to the actual production of my project.A minute-long piece of well-designed audio can actually tell a story. I don’t think the difficulty of this project lies in the practicalities, but rather how to arrange different plots at different points in that minute. I combined the themes I wanted to convey with my everyday life to make the story more lively and resonant. To do this I tried making storyboards.
This is just a very preliminary demonstration. But it’s got a pretty clear indication of the elements I want to add to this story. And the movement of the characters in the story.
Eventually, after much revision, the overall story took place when I returned to my flat from my daily outings. Perhaps it was the noise from the skyline outside my window that caused me to think a little, and I began to lose myself in my own reverie. Finally a breaking point was reached where all the sounds ended and an outside element brought me back to reality.
The beginning of the story first consists of two different footsteps on different materials and a series of sounds of opening and closing doors. This series of behaviours is like an introduction, I didn’t add any artistic embellishment to these sounds, just some simple noise reduction so that the listener can hear and imagine such a scene.
Immediately after this the episode is introduced by a window noise (yellow track). This is actually an unusual sound that can be heard every day, but it seems to have a different flavour when heard from upstairs. I gradually increased the sound with the footsteps to create a sense of constant proximity to the window. I opened the window (blue track) and left it there with the noise.
Following on from this I started to do some of my everyday behaviours. I chose two of the many elements I could add to the track, the sound of the microwave (pink track) and the sound of the shower (green track). The sound of the microwave serves as a buried clue in the story, symbolising the progression of time. The sound of the shower, on the other hand, is symbolic of the series of behaviours and their triggers that led me into the world of my reverie.
And finally what I think is the most ingenious part of this project. I used the sound effect of waves crashing (blue track) to create a sense of unease, or a feeling of apparent contrast to reality. The sound itself has no real meaning; I used it as a proxy for what was going on in the chaos of my mind when I was overthinking. I don’t explain what I was thinking at the time, the listener will just feel an increasing sense of unease as the sound grows louder. Eventually the sound of a microwave timer (pink track) brings the listener back to reality a split second before the emotion erupts. It’s a pretty extreme emotional shift and I’m not sure I can do it well, but the effect seems to work well.
Throughout the audio, I repeatedly changed many parts of the track to create a movement in the sound. I think this is the key to telling a story with sound. Everything happens for a reason, and everything proceeds with a rhythm. I think it’s a very interesting project. Honestly, I don’t think I did a good enough job, I still have a lot of details I could have fleshed out, and I should have spent more time on the actual recording and polishing the final result. But there’s no denying that I’ve learnt a lot in the process, the use of software is the most basic, and I think it’s more important to realise that sound is also a very effective way of expression.