My experience of the second lockdown has been primarily uncomfortable, to be specific my exposure to things that make me feel comfortable (being with loved ones) has been restricted and replaced by an artificial version ie. Text messages, phone calls, video calls. An important aspect of this experience is that the effect it has had on my mind, however impactful, has been very subtle. Although these circumstances have impacted me greatly, I didn’t notice the impact until very late into the experience. Personally, I have never experienced something like this, it’s a strange feeling. It reminds me of the boiling frog effect, where a frog will not notice a gradual increase in the temperature of the water it is immersed in, even if it is being boiled alive. A subtle transition from comfort and mental well being, to an uncomfortable, cold and artificial experience. This is the experience or feeling I will try to invoke using sound.
To do this I have to first determine what makes a sound comfortable, and what makes it uncomfortable.
Warm and cold sound- To me warm sound can be characterised by low and mid frequencies, they have a full sound perhaps because they resonate with your body. Cold sounds are characterised by higher frequencies, thin sounds that cut through a soundscape. This is not to say that higher frequencies can’t be used to invoke a comfortable feeling, this is just how I see it generally.
Harmony- I feel comfort is greatly effected by harmony. Harmony is an incredibly deep area of research and information, but for my project I think I only need to talk about a small part of it. Emotion and tension can be expressed through use of cadence, our brains like patterns, and within a musical phrase there is more often than not a resolution, this is where the chords return ‘home’ to the root note. I think the most comfortable cadence would be a perfect authentic cadence, going from the fifth to the first chord, where both chords are in root position and the ‘first’ chord ending the phrase would have the tonic note as the highest note. I will try to explore this concept to invoke comfort, but also tension by straying from this cadence.
Resolution- I think a good way to invoke discomfort is using Bit depth. People like what is real and tend to dislike poor representations, an example being the uncanny valley. I feel reducing the resolution of a sound will result in an uneasy feeling, I got this idea from Cristobal Tapia De Veer’s work on Utopia. Also this will re-enforce the presence of technology in this piece, this could remind people of connection failures in phone calls.
Stereo Field- I believe that I could use the stereo field as a representation of exposure. Mixing using the full stereo field will make the audience feel surrounded and immersed, while restricting the sounds to one area will result in the audience feeling separated from these sounds. To try and recreate my experience, I would like to play with the idea of restricting the sounds in such a way where it would sound as if it were coming only from a phone.
Sounds, instruments and techniques-
- Synthesisers- I think important aspects would be low cut off, smooth waveforms and using portamento for a warm comfortable feeling.
- Human voices, this is an incredibly familiar sound for people, and I believe a very comfortable one due to us being social creatures. I have some recordings of people talking about what makes them comfortable I can use.
- Ebow- I have an electronic violin bow that I have been experimenting with for a few years, when places near a guitar string it creates a very smooth rich note, and when these are layered with harmony the result is like the auditory equivalent of being submerged in warm water.
- Human voice- I believe the human voice is a very comforting and familiar sound. I think I can use this as a malleable tool, first used to induce comfort, then distorted to express a feeling of uneasiness. This hopefully will reflect the feeling of comfort being fragmented.
- Field recordings- I recorded a couple of really useful sounds from our sound walk on the Thames. The first is a recording of me agitating a lovelock attached to a railing, I used a contact microphone to emphasise tactility in the sound. I was particularly pleased with the quality of frustration the recording had, it sounded as though something was restricted, unable to move more than a couple of inches. The second recording also used a contact microphone, I attached it to a suspension wire on a bridge, I then rubbed a key along the ridged wire. This had a very abrasive sound, and a feeling of rising tension as the key got closer to the microphone.
Reflecting on the work:
In conclusion, I’m pleased with the outcome of the piece overall. I think it sucessfully expresses a transition from comfort to a distorted, inadequate simulation of reality. Unfortunately December proved to be a very challenging time for me, and I became very unproductive as a result. I wish I took more time to make the piece longer, I feel it would’ve been beneficial to linger in the comfortable section for longer to make the transition more impactful. I also wish I had used ambient room sound, I think it would’ve been useful to create a specific soundscape to give a sense of space, so that I could then manipulate this space into something else.