Merging audio using convolution reverb with custom impulse response
Using logic’s space designer I was able to customise an impulse response as a means of merging audio files, as mentioned by Martin Stig Anderson in his lecture.
I wanted to integrate music into the game in an immersive way, so as to emotionally influence the player while maintaining suspension of disbelief. By intwining the melody with something in the game I was able to diegetically anchor the music. The audio I chose to use for this was the sound of a foundry:
I chose this because I believed it shared a contextual/timbral quality with the kaleidoscopic room from the third level, this level being a good summary of the theme and feel of the game. Disorientating, curious and otherworldly.
The first experiment I conducted was applying a convolution reverb to the music, the convolution reverb had the sound of the foundry as it’s impulse response. The result was a strange distortion of the music, into a kind of soundscape. It lost its form and became a kind of fluid representation of the composition the was influenced by the foundry. I would ideally like this influence to be more prominent but I couldn’t find any way to make this the case, even after a lot of tweaking.
I wanted to try the process the opposite way to see if the effect was more successful. I found it hard to understand what each element of modulation in the convolution reverb did, but though general experimentation I managed to gain a basic understanding. The most important thing I didn’t manage to understand was how to control the degree of abstraction away from the original form of the audio. This experimentation had a lot less form than the previous one, the music lost its melodic variation and became one tone. Almost like a summary of the composition layered on the foundry.
I found a compromise by using the ‘music through room convolution’ and layering the original foundry audio with a convolution reverb that had the same impulse response (although the wet and dry levels were adjusted to be less drastic). The idea of this was to have an ‘accurate’ reverb under the original recording, that could blend with the musical reverb. It provides an extra tether to reality.
This experiment was a success, it is a diegetically anchored sound scape composition. I think for this method to be more successful (by that I mean retain more of the diegetic form), I would have to understand the convolution merging technique better and possibly compose the music with the exact same timbre and similar frequencies as the diegetic sound. The composition reflects the game’s themes of nostalgia and self reflection, whilst not taking the player out of the experience, it fits the disorienting world of the game.