Month: March 2022

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VISITING PRACTITIONERS

‘Lindsay Wright’

Lindsay Wright is a British composer, her practice involves blending traditional orchestral elements with experimental methodologies.

‘The mystery of D.B. Cooper’-

This documentary focuses on the highjacking of a plane in the 1970’s, the documentary forwent investigating the perpetrator of the crime, rather it highlighted public obsession with the mystery. Lindsay’s brief for the documentary included many different elements, mainly a 70’s theme with modern sections.

Firstly, Wright talks about scoring the cue ‘attention all agents’. This is the moment the FBI agents are notified about the highjacking, moving from footage of police cars racing to the scene onwards to talking head interview elements. The cue begins with a classic 70’s cop drama style intro, with guitars violins and drums, the score then reduces in volume and frequency occupation to pave way for dialogue. These talking head sections were underscored with low frequency synthesisers (bringing in the modern influence) with drums maintaining the narrative intensity/pacing. Lindsay also made use of a key change to provide a sense of urgency and build, in her words an easier way to build tension without actually having to write anything new.

Write tried to give each person being interviewed their own musical identity. She talks about one person having a string belief that DB Cooper did not survive the crash. Scoring this Lindsay tried to give it a more ‘Fargo’ inspired sound, off kilter, curious and sometimes fun. This part of the scoring process highlighted the importance of creating more than one version for cues, as sometimes your scores don’t reflect the directors vision.

Lindsay talks about starting a composition with a few days dedicated to finding the right timbre or sound palette, to find the sonic identity of the piece. Sounds have themes in integral in their timbre, finding a good instrument to attach to a certain element of the narrative is an important part of the process.

‘Mudlarks’-

Mudlarks Is a film about two homeless girls living in a tent besides the thames, during the film one of the girls doesn’t come home from a s shift of finding money/food. The aims of the scoring was to highlight the girls relationship, and the anguish caused by one of their absence. Lindsay tried to capture the vastness of the city whilst also commenting on the intimacy of their relationship. They focused on gestural ideas, and built up textures, each they could reuse later in the film. EQ automation is a useful technique in building gestures, filling out the sound as the score grows. A quality the director wanted from the sound is a homemade feel, which was convenient as the budget only really afforded home studio recording. Lindsay talks about the importance of bringing in tones from the rest of the score into each cue, it gives the whole underscore a fluidity and solid sonic identity.

‘Lines’-

This was Wrights self made EP constructed during the first lockdown, the project was influenced by Patrick Jonsson, Angus McRae and Keaton Henson. Exile was a track inspired by moving from a busy street in south east London to a small town in Cambridgeshire, how moving gave her more space to think and work healthily. Other tracks inspired by peoples resilience to carry on working through the pandemic, also a reflection on some peoples negative experience such as her friend having to see his family though a glass window.

Musical Traits to consider when constructing a piece-

  • Timbre
  • Constant motion
  • Cyclical Layers
  • Texture
  • Rhythm
  • Harmony
  • Instrumentation
  • Structure
  • Slides
  • Bass
  • Space and Depth

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CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN SOUND ART: LITERARY REVIEW/SUMMARY

‘Sonic Diegesis: Reality and the Expressive Potential of Sound in Narrative Film’

The essay opens by outlining the birth of music concrete, and how Pierre Schaeffer and Luc Ferrari’s pioneering work paved the way for our modern outlook and processes in cinematic sound design, proposing that mimetic sounds hold emotional and musical value. Andrew Knight-Hill states that analysing sound in film purely from a perspective of signification is a misstep, ‘within this context sounds can never just be- they must always be something. And as such they are denied the opportunity to reveal their full potential.’

Knight-Hill then goes on to investigate the relationship between reality and diegesis in cinema, and how reality is often subverted in favour for narrative. He provides examples, one of which being ‘Gravity’ 2013 in which if reality was favoured there would be no sound in the film at all. Instead, the sound designers weave the mimetic sound into the underscore, each composed with the same orchestral methods (tones and glissandi). Through this the score becomes inseparable from the diegetic/narrative world, and the mimetic sound becomes inseparable from the narrative. This relationship between mimesis, diegesis and underscores is contradictory to our traditional notions of cinematic sound. Traditionally the underscores occupy a separate plane to the diegesis, from which it provides commentary on the story, scores take on a life of their own, they become a ‘discourse that frames the story’. The underscore provides a ‘stream or layer of information that the audience negotiates in parallel to interpret meanings from the film’. This analysis of underscoring is extremely limited and in certain cases completely wrong.

The essay goes on to suggest that an underscore can act as an indicator and occupier of narrative space. Again, Knight-Hill provides an example, ‘Dunkirk’ 2017. The score in this film is interweaved with the diegetic sound. It represents unseen antagonists (the approaching Nazi forces), it also drives the narrative intensity (The score does not represent the narrative intensity, it is the intensity), lastly it acts as a modulator for the drive and trajectory of the film (The ticking watch is constantly changing tempo driving the narratological intensity, this is described as ‘intensified sonic continuity’ highlighting the self-consciousness of the narration).

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MA COLLABORATION

Initial overview of project/Mechanical bird plan

The majority of the sounds required for the game are foley and ambient sounds, although important these sounds do not, for the most part, lend themselves to creative licence. As this is the case, we have created lists of sounds from the documents provided for us separating or highlighting the creative sounds from the ‘necessary’ sounds. This way we can each take on the responsibility of recording some necessary sound, whilst also having a creative sound to dive into more deeply.

As of today our team has conducted two foley sessions in which we recorded sounds for levels 1 and 2. These mostly included footsteps, interactive sounds such as picking up and opening books and folders, and ambient elements such as typing and chair creaks. With such a large collection of these sounds being required for the game, this foley process is turning out to be repetitive and tedious, therefore I don’t think I will be talking a lot about it, in short the process is record, edit file, send to MA students. Instead I would like to focus this project on the more creative sounds.

I have started with a sound in level 2, the mechanical bird sound. In this level the player is interacting with the space from the perspective of a mechanical bird, so far the size of the bird hasn’t been specified but I’m assuming it’s approximately the size fo a sparrow. The main elements I have to keep in mind whilst creating this sound is the proximity to the character (almost inside the character, as the character is the bird) and the size and weight of the bird (this determines the pitch of the sound and also the frequency of the flaps).

I would also like to make use of a lot of layering with this sound, I think the challenge is going to be seamlessly merging the mechanical with the biological. I believe that the sound of the bird should retain a strong biological essence, as the level is about a fond memory situated in nature, this to me suggests an organic quality to the sound.

This is an extract from my research on Dune in a previous post, I believe it’s relevant here and I plan to do more in depth research into exactly how the ornithopter sound was created.

‘Denis wanted the technology of this world to be grounded, as real as possible, so it didn’t become a distraction from the story. He wanted the audience to embrace the technology spontaneously. An example was the ‘Ornithopter’, it was based on insects, he wanted the vehicle to function like an insect and look like a military vehicle. The sound, Denis said, should be close to the spirit of a helicopter, in the same family but not the same. The sound team used recordings of beetles and other insects to create a helicopter sound with a natural quality. 

Mark Mangini states that we can be more successful in our sound design when we start with natural recordings. He thinks that the reason for this could possibly be that we have a psychoacoustic response telling us that the sound is real, the time arrival to the ear and the acoustic environment in which a sound lives might be a subconscious identifier for reality. Whether this theory is correct or not, I think he is right. The brain responds to natural sounds differently to synthesised sounds, I’ve created synthesisers out of vocal recordings and they are very un-natural as an acoustic sound, but retain an organic natural quality. These natural sound ‘ingredients’ are all in service to quickly and effectively suspend the audiences disbelief. We can present sounds that are decontextualised from what it really is, present them in a new context and your brain doesn’t have to understand what the original sound was it just recognises that it’s real.’

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VISITING PRACTITIONERS: PAMELA Z

ARS ELECTRONICA 2008; A NEW CULTURAL ECONOMY: Sonorous Embodiment- Gro§e Konzertnacht; Brucknerhaus – Pamela Z: voice and electronics. Foto: rubra

Pamela started her career as a composer/performer, expanding to many different facets of sound making later on in life. She is best known for performances in which she manipulates her voice using wireless gesture midi controllers. In the mid 1980’s, Pamela started manipulating her voice with outboard rigs of processors. Following years of spending lots of money and effort on transporting this rig, Pamela decided to patch her processors into software using MAX MSP. This method of manipulation is constantly evolving, adding and subtracting tools, however the manipulation essentially remains constant.

These voice manipulation pieces began life as 3-7 minute songs, as a means to begin concerts. The pieces eventually evolved into evening long works, often held together with visuals, allowing Pamela to explore different areas of manipulation.

‘Baggage allowance’ explores the concepts of baggage in literal and metaphorical senses, it was a multimedia installation containing sound, visuals, objects and a browser. This piece also took the form of a gallery installation, including video, ‘sonic luggage’, draws with sound, video and objects. Opening the draws would trigger different videos to play next to them.

‘Sonic gestures’ is a site specific installation in a very large room, it included 10 HD screens and 16 channels of audio. The piece became dormant due to galleries’ inability to present it, requiring lots of screens and multiple computers. Recent advances in technology have allowed the piece to be played from a single computer, making it easier to exhibit. I find this very interesting, how the life of a project can change and even be resurrected by changes in the world of technology, perhaps this could be true of culture and politics also.

‘Memory trace’ is constructed from interviews about memory Pamela conducted, the audio is chopped and stacked, it results in a chaotic experience for the listener, the conversations move in different directions very quickly. The different voices are binded by a synchronisation of expressions such as ‘Hmmmm I forget’. The piece was developed for a commission in which the voices are accompanied by a string quartet, repeating expressions and mimicking the melodic shifts of the speech. I appreciate the organic qualities of the chaos, voices interrupt each other. This reminds me of the director Noah Baumbach as they highlight the idea that natural speech is messy, people talk over each other, this subverts the feeling of a performance, and brings the organised narrative into reality.

Pamela’s work resonates with me because of her use of layering. She negates isolating phrases, instruments or voices in linear space, rather allowing these phrases to overlap, interrupt and conflict. This technique gives the audio a natural quality, imperfect and real. This organic quality is evident in her methods of manipulation, opting for gestural midi control, allowing for natural imperfect movements of the hand. Thirdly, it is evident in her emphasis on the voice, an instrument which lends itself to portamento and naturally negates harmonic segregation.