SCMAker

Description

For Project 3.3 I created a soundscape project, meant to simulate the sound of escaping to the bathroom during a party. The dominant sound will be the muffled thrumming of a bassline, punctuated by faint laughter and conversation, representing a party in full swing. Lorde’s “Ribs” will be faintly recognizable amidst the muffled music, symbolizing the nostalgia of youth and feeling misunderstood. Overlaid on this will be the ambient sounds of a quiet bathroom: the trickle of a faucet, the flushing of a toilet, the opening of a door. These intimate sounds aim to highlight the feeling of isolation and seeking refuge amidst the social chaos.

The listener will be transported to a brief moment of solitude, a sonic sanctuary away from the overwhelming noise of the party. The contrasting sounds will evoke feelings of nostalgia and isolation, capturing the complex emotions of being young and navigating social spaces.

Reflection

Crafting this soundscape on Audible was a process of revisiting a specific time period through sound. Collecting the raw materials that would make up this soundscape was far more difficult than I imagined, as it required finding sounds that were not only accurate but had the right cadence, that layered over one another correctly. The creaking of the door could not be louder or higher in pitch than the footsteps, etc. These fragments wouldn’t just exist – they needed to be woven together to evoke a specific emotion.

The challenge was to transport the listener back in time, not just with familiar sounds, but with a tapestry that captured the essence of the feeling. The final product isn’t just a collection of sounds – it’s a portal to a specific memory. Layering these sounds over the muffled song, I hoped to isolate them in a way that invoked nostalgia and a sense of sonder in the listener, as if there was something they were missing out there in the party, something being in the bathroom was isolating them from. By drawing on personal experience and the power of sonic arrangement, I hope to have created a soundscape that allows the listener to experience this moment, not just hear it.

The podcast series “Arranging Delivery, Delivering Arrangement” played a pivotal role in shaping my approach. The concept of splicing sounds to create entirely new rhetoric resonated deeply. Instead of simply presenting a collection of recognizable sounds, I utilized layering and manipulation to imbue them with a new meaning, one that resonated with the intended emotional landscape. In reference to her own podcast, Lambke states “I’ve changed it, clipping and moving, rearranging what Rosenthal arranged in the episode, and then uniting it with my material, repurposing it for a new audience, thus delivering a different piece of rhetoric.” This idea of delivering a different piece of rhetoric built from existing audio became the direct inspiration for my soundscape.

Source

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