Sound Project - Lesson 4 (In depth editing skills)

In this lesson we began out by looking into a few more sound scape pieces as extra inspiration before beginning more editing on Audition. Here are what we looked at and what I thought:

'Limbo' Game Soundtrack 'spiders approach' (Martin Stig Anderson, 2010)


To me this piece sounded very distorted and at first I recognised it to be muffled as if you were underwater whilst listening. It created a very tense atmosphere using a lot of low frequency noises that slowly built up. There is also a sound almost like a heart beat and I really like how this created even more suspense in the piece whilst listening. I like how this sound scape has created the tense mood required for the game as the spiders approach but it has done it in a very abstract and successful way.


John Cage - 'Water Walk' and the 'Prepared Piano'


I find it interesting at the time he was doing this how unique this idea was creating these very strange sound scapes from random object around the home which he transformed into his instruments. I like his careful planning in the way he uses a stopwatch to keep everything in time also giving an indication that he wasn't simply making it up and that he had sat and planned this like any musical piece. I personally don't like this piece he produced if I were just to listen because I feel it is an outdated idea now but I do like watching how he has done it especially all those years ago.


This different piece by John Cage I much prefer because it is defiantly more musical however it is still very unique. He created these new variety of sounds on a piano by placing objects such as screws, nails and wood etc in the strings of it which would distort the sound completely. It makes a piano piece turn into a much more percussion sounding piece and makes the music unrecognisable. I enjoy this piece and find it very interesting how he made it.


'Confluence' (Sleepless City Productions, 2014)


I really like this piece and it is very emotionally provoking through sound but also through the imagery. It takes you on a story beginning with very negative sounds making you tense and then slowly moving away from this into much more comforting and positive sounds. The powerful sounds fit really well against the powerful imagery consisting of all these macro shots. However whilst watching this I saw so much nice imagery that it almost made me wish that you could hear more diagetic sounds involved in it.


After gaining a lot more inspiration we were set another task which was to use sounds provided to us by the tutor and manipulate them on Audition to create a sound scape which represents an Avalanche. He showed us ways firstly on how to change all sorts of interesting elements of each sound like the speed and pitch and even how to add cool effects like reverb. This is what I managed to create:



I am really happy with how far I have managed to push my Audition editing skills today and that I have managed to create another sound-scape which I feel has greatly improved since my last attempt. I am much more confident now when it comes to using Audition and I feel much happier about the idea of creating my Sound piece for this project on it now.