#audio assignment

Changes made: tried to add a clearer narrative to the work. Added and warped a sound file of a rocket taking off to hopefully add a deeper rumble. (disclaimer: my laptop does not have the capacity for the deep, room shaking rumbles I so crave. I did my best.) Adjusted sound and FX for certain clips to make it more interesting. A LOT more panning. Adjusted so some voice clips were clearer/

My work is trying to address the standards of beauty and health that women face every day of their life. Using snippets of slam poetry from YouTube videos, I attempted to create this cacophony of women’s voices speaking out and expressing how they felt about the treatment they faced because of their weight or their looks. I wanted this to be an overwhelming amount of noise with a few phrases that were audible over the rest of the sheer amount of noise.

I mostly used a lot of general distortion and fading. I tried to arrange the clips in a way that slowly faded in before abruptly cutting out. Attempted some panning, and in longer clips tried to get the audio to “circle” the listener. Sounds better with headphones to be honest. Got a mid-range, attempted to get a low-range, and I think I managed to get some textures in there? No high-range, I don’t think. Might get a high-pitched drone in there.

https://soundcloud.com/amanda-61017344/4-seasons

The core concept for my piece is to make piece that represents the four seasons. The main melody is the driving force behind my piece and I added some harmonies in the background. The Winter section was represented by using higher pitched sound in order to convey the coldness of a winter night. A sort of vibrato was also added onto it to give the feeling of wind. As for the Spring section, I used a deeper sound combined it with higher notes in the middle. This section is was made with the idea of the weather starting to turn warm and the fact that flowers are starting to bloom. The third section is the Summer portion. It may be different from how some people view summer since they usually think beaches, but for this section, I made it with the idea of playing outside as a kid. The instrument has a low sound in order to represent the idea of thinking back on fond memories after growing up. The last section is Autumn and it brings the feeling of the weather turning cold once again as winter starts encroaching.

4 Seasons: https://soundcloud.com/amanda-61017344/4-seasons-wip

For my draft, what I have so far is a series of four short tunes that I wrote with the idea of “Seasons” in mind. The order of the seasons is winter, spring, summer, and ends with fall. What was going through my head when making the tune for winter was more of a walk outside during calm snowfall. For spring, I was thinking of the nice weather and blooming flowers. Summer was done with the feeling of playing outside as a kid. Finally, fall brings the incoming coldness of the winter yet to come.

When I intend for my final work is actually probably going to be very different than what the draft is.  I have not yet changed the instruments and fully make it my own. Nor have I properly added background sounds (especially during the Summer and Fall parts where it is just pure piano). For my final piece, I plan on changing the sound of the instruments in order to make it fit the feeling of seasons more. I also plan on adding proper transitions. I was thinking that perhaps I would make it more similar to what I have for the “Winter” section where I added other sounds to give it more of the feeling of that season.  Maybe I will do some recordings and edit/ add that to my piece as background sounds. Adding some sort of harmony is what I would like to do as well, but I’m not too sure how to go about doing that since I don’t actually play the piano and currently don’t know a thing about harmonizing.  I would like to try to teach myself though since it seems pretty interesting.