A Bit of a Blur

Editing Friday 9th. All Protools PCs should have dual monitors, it makes life so much easier!

You know that moment when you stare at something for long enough that everything just blurs together and you kind of loose your mind? Yeah that happened. 

On Monday I exported my sound piece with the intention of never listening to it again because if I heard incessant tapping once more I would have gone insane. However James convinced me that having another look over it after a few days away was the way to go, so that's what I did and I changed a few things.

I changed the reverb settings on the backbeat, changed the volume in some places because in the mix it didn't sound as good as I originally thought it would. The main things were the increased reverb on the 'SFX track' (basically anything diegetic) to add to the feeling of increased intoxication over the run of the track, I used automation to increase the amount of effect added over time, something I had already done for some tracks earlier in the piece. I also added some white noise, something I was reluctant to do because 1) I had done this for last years project and didn't want them to be too similar and 2) I actually really wanted to try adding piano but firstly the plug-in didn't work and it would have sounded very similar to the original song which just would have been too easy. In the end I decided to use the white noise but have 3 versions of it throughout the track, the first starting at a lower frequency/ db, then one a bit higher and finally finishing with a rather high pitch noise. Nothing too disconcerting just something that can grab your attention throughout the piece and act as a warning before the ambulance sirens come in right at the end.

Mondays aftermath - when I was 'finished'

How I left the project before exporting

Now to someone who hasn't been staring at this project for as long as I have there isn't much difference (and one is zoomed in further than the other). But I promise there is a pretty big difference in the way they sound as seen here.

Vs

After making most of the changes on Thursday

I actually did the majority of the editing on Thursday (as seen above) when I was listening back to it I knew something just wasn't right, it wasn't clicking the way I wanted it to. I remember James saying 'If it doesn't sound right, it probably isn't right' and the problem I was having was I knew something wasn't right - I just didn't know what. This is where I shot myself in the foot a bit, I honesty didn't realise how complicated and 'packed' my work was until I started looking at other peoples, and the downside to this was there were now that many more potential problems.  So I started soloing tracks and making my way through them smoothing absolutely everything out I could find to the point I was shocked with myself for not seeing some of it earlier. But now I was stuck with the problem of now it just sounded wrong just cleaner.

Reverb added onto the backbeat

Then panning, plug-ins and automation became my friends again, I decided to just play around with it and see what would happen. Nothing too extreme because even though something was off about my mix I did actually like it. I added some more reverb on parts, upped the reverb/pitch in some existing plugins, as well as altering the panning on some of the more prominent tracks. When I spoke of experimenting I also meant going against traditional conventions such as panning, more to the point the panning of my voice over. If you look closely on the image above the second green track from the bottom you see a bit of automated panning, I did this to give the audience a sense of being off-balance something you could associate with being drunk. However once I looked at it again I realised that whilst it did make the audience feel disorientated it did it too much and was too overpowering for the project so before I exported the track I deleted it.


As I mentioned I changed the reverb on the backbeat because I felt in the first mix it was slightly off, it had too much delay and made the heartbeat track sound off. When I went to it change I realised that I hadn't been using a preset, so my first instinct was to try out the preset and after making my way through them all I decided package was the best as it had all the qualities of the original that I liked whilst also getting rid of the bits I didn't.  I then realised that I had been manually adding all of my plugins and adjusting them to the best of my knowledge which I now realise barely graze the surface of Protools. So I went back and analysed each track individually and made changes where appropriate.

Ok, I made a mistake, but at least the fix was creative?
Shown: I added an extra plugin and automated it on the laugh
track to make the samples sound somewhat different to each other.

When James listened to the track for the first time the main thing he pointed out was that it was very obvious that the laughter was just the same track repeated. Now I had made a big mistake when recording the first time (using the marantz in lesson time) I had done multiple versions of the laughter but each take except the one I used was interrupted by something. The first mistake was not being clear on what I wanted the person to do, the second was recording in B127 a very echo-y, very much not a recording-studio room, in fact all but the laugh had to be re-recorded at a later date.  I would have rerecorded the laugh but I honestly didn't realise it was a problem until I decided to put it in more than one place in the track.

Also changed pitch on laugh track to add more range to the vocal

To fix this I split the clip up and rearranged it slightly so the sustain on the clip wasn't the same giving the clip more punch (if that's a way to describe a sound? Or is it attack?). I also added the plugin Lo-Fi as shown above. This plugin made the sample sound grittier and almost retro but when added to the mix I used it to show how the protagonists point of view is warping the more alcohol they consume.  I also used automation to pitch the track down near the end of the piece, something I used across many of the motifs found in the piece.

Used EQ to make the VO clearer

On Monday when I thought I was 'finished' before exporting some of the class had a listen to my piece and the only thing that was mentioned was the voiceover not being clear enough. Now I hadn't intended to use this version of the VO in the final piece. The plan was to get a VO actor into the studio to do a much better version than the one I did. In fact the only reason I recorded myself at all is the layout of this piece is heavily influence by the VO narrative so in order for me to start arranging my sounds I needed a provisional track, Hence why this is exists.

I had every intention of getting the actor until I realised that the actor I needed also needed to be able to read music. The beat of this track is the driving force and it's pretty obvious from the start, meaning that the voice actor would have needed to know the beat of the words as well something I would only have been able to convey through sheet music (If I ever did this again I would bite the bullet and get a music-reading-VO-actor, because it would be better quality and I wouldn't have to listen to my own voice over and over again). Anyway, that was tangent, to fix the audio I added some EQ and played around with the higher frequencies seeing how much of the lower I would need to take out for it be clear and the image above is how I decided to leave it before exporting.

Pitch change for the vibration track, only 4 semi-tones but
enough to make a noticeable difference.

I mentioned earlier the motifs in the piece a lot of which I left not so heavily edited in the first mix, or edited slightly but it was still rather obvious what the sounds were. The more I listened to it the more I realise that by the end of the piece the sounds need be almost incomprehensible, something I was again put of doing because it was something I did in my last sound project but I did it and I'm thankful for it. 

Again automation was my friend and I added delay to some tracks stronger reverb to others nothing to distracting just something to signal that this persons mind is not coping with the alcohol as much as the VO is trying to convince you otherwise.

Used to make the track almost incomprehensible by the end 

 




I also pitched down the phone vibrations towards the end of the piece, for me the phone vibrations are key to the 'back to reality' moment the character and the audience need to have for the piece to make sense. so I wanted the vibrations to still sound like phone vibrations but almost like a horror film version signalling that even though you are drinking your sorrows away your girlfriend is still trying to talk to you and will continue to try even when you are hung over the next morning (phone vibrations always seem like they belong in a horror film when hungover anyway - I mean what).

Either way that was the last major change that I made, there are a few things that I would improve (having had a few days of not looking at it) the major one being the panning on the vibrations near the end, I didn't realise how far left they were until I listened to it today.

Now it does keep with the theme of throwing the audience off balance and making them feel drunk but at the end of the track the deeper vibrations throw it off a bit.  I also wanted to create almost a bubble effect? But I couldn't think of any way of doing it other than messing around with the master track which I was prepared to do. (it was also a last minute thing so I didn't have time to research it properly) During the production I definitely would have used a metronome so that when I created a click track it would have matched up and made my life so much easier, but these are all lessons learned ready for my next project.

Look I got it to -3.6 on my second try - I was rather proud

In a way I think I was lucky because I've spent so much time on Cubase over the years once I mastered the short cuts in Protools I found the whole thing pretty standard in terms of making a sound piece. Don't get me wrong I don't think I've even scratched the surface on Protools yet I felt like I had a bit of an advantage because the programs are so similar meaning that picking up on the basics was a lot easier for me than some. I'm even considering buying it to use with my digital piano at home - a vast improvement on garage band to say the least.


Wow, that was so much text, anyway I'm pretty happy with the output of this project but I do think I could have done better and the Spring Awakening idea is still in my mind so I may take it on a personal project at some point in the future. But I think that my sound project is officially finished, I'm rather proud. Then again I've said many times that I'm finished in the past week so we'll see how it goes.

Sounds Familiar

For research I first began looking through the library for books on how to create the sounds I wanted (or thought I needed for my first idea) however I very quickly got distracted by 2 books, Sound on Film : Interviews with creators of Film Sound and Soundscape: The School of Sound Lectures. I really like books that seem very relaxed when reading, I like people giving their own opinions and making the reasoning personal, unlike the majority of academic text.

I read interviews with Tom Paulin, a poet obsessed with the way his poetry sounds and Robert Frosts 'Sentence Sound' ('A sound in itself on which other sounds, called words, may be strung') something that caught my attention because poetry and lyrics are so similar. Owe Suenesson and David Burnand
both of which focus on Tarkovsky (Film maker and Opera Director? Never knew that one). Owe mentions that in the 80s he had the opportunity to work with Tarkovsky on The Sacrifice, Tarkovsky then promptly requested 253 sound effects for his film. He goes on to talk about how he halved the amount of sounds and made no two alike because when watching Tarkovskys' previous film Nostalgia he noticed how overused certain sounds were. David Burnand compares The Sacrifice to a Bach aria 'The sonic architecture of ritual. Symmetry as a means of expressing the endless cycles of nature through a sequential narrative lasting 149 minutes, but effectively timeless'. Randy Thom slates a few directors for not knowing enough about sound (David Lynch, Coppola, Scorsese - found it a bit harsh myself) yet stresses the importance of whilst the sound wasn't the forefront of their movies they all made movies with wonderful sound tracks. Because the 'sound and the image were on thing', he also mentions that if he hears an audience come out of a cinema saying 'I didn't like the film very much, but nice score' the film hasn't been a success.

I started trying to remember the films that I've walked out of liked the sound design more than the actual film and the one that sticks out for me is The Theory of Everything. The soundtrack for that film is amazing, the orchestrations phenomenal and I just love that soundtrack - probably because I'm a fan of orchestra music especially when it's modified with electrical instruments. (As long as they're real, no synth please!). Although now I think about it, I remember the music more than I remember the film. Maybe that's not a good thing?

Anyway, during the break for one of our theory lectures, a few of us started talking about our sound project and Liz being the walking encyclopedia that she is mentioned a few sound artists that she likes, Chris Watson and David Strong. However I could only find work belonging to Chris Watson a nature sound recordist best known for his work with the BBC Radio in works such as 'The Ice Mountain', 'The Reed Bed' and 'Jules Verne's Volcano'. He also won a BAFTA for his work as a field recordist in David Attenboroughs 'Frozen Planet'.

Chris Watson on location for 'Frozen Planet' - just casually recording some penguins.

I think what most of the people I've just written about have in common is that I've never really thought about it from that perspective before. I mean I remember watching Frozen Planet and never once did I imagine a guy sat on some ice with a shotgun mic aimed at some penguins, it just never occurred to me that that's how it had to be done. The same with foley artists I didn't even know they existed (which is actually kind of embarrassing now that I think about it) I came home and watched Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971) and Mirella was pointing out the very obvious foley recordings that for years I've never even noticed.

What I'm trying to get at is what I like about this project is it makes me uncover these things that for a very long time I've not paid attention too. During A Levels I would have said that Cubase/Protools is only for musicians, never would have crossed my mind that films need soundscapes too, so whilst working without instruments is weird for me it's also simultaneously really interesting.

Too Much Detail

Sound is so close to being finished I can see the light! However I've just realised that I've never actually explained what I'm doing with the song? Or what my narrative intentions are.

The song 'Last Weeks Alcohol' is the story of a young man (or woman in my case) who is at a party but can't stop thinking about their girlfriend. At the beginning of the piece the guy is trying to forget his girlfriend who he being slightly passive aggressive towards in his inner monologue (rather pleasant to in actuality), his girlfriend is at home wanting to see him but he wants to drink, he wants to be at this party. Or so it seems. From the text you understand that the character drinks a lot and that his girlfriend isn't too pleased about it, something that becomes more apparent as the song goes on and the more alcohol is drank. The song picks up from the line 'Vodka flows into any mixer you can find' and you feel the urgency the man has to get more drinks, this continues onto the point where he starts noticing more women but every time notices something specific eg. 'Mini skirts shift' he remembers his girlfriend or the girls resembles his girlfriend. As soon as one of the girls make a move on him his anger comes out and he says 'Screw the phone, screw you and all your stupid rules' relaying his anger in a way that he almost blames her for what he's doing. He the addresses her directly (well directly in his head) hoping she is having a worser time than he is. ' Are you alone? Are you dancing by yourself!' Cuz I'm out here, alive here. We're dancing here' he then has almost a loss of energy when he realises that he's only become angry when he was drinking 'Chugging from the bottom shelf'.

At the chorus he describes what he believes to be love after the experience he's just had 'This is how it feels to fall in love. This is how it feels to fall. The weakness, the sadness. The sirens, the madness. The pounding in your chest, like you're racing the streets in an ambulance.' The descriptions are heightened because he's still very much drunk but you get more of a grounding from the real emotions rather than the alcohol fuelled ones.

The aim of my piece is to have the listener almost be inside of his mind, you have the beat driving the song 1 acting as a heart beat, 1 acting as the beat of the song (added reverb). You have the music as a very faint backing (simply so there is never any lasting silence and also so you know you're at a party). Then once you get past the initial texting to the girlfriend everything becomes heightened much like his emotions you hear the tapping of cans, the opening of cans, specific laughter (always a woman's voice) gasping, the rustling of clothes and of people being close to each other until everything becomes over powering at the line 'chugging from the bottom shelf' then everything mellows out slightly until you get to the end where the ambulance (I know very literal) siren takes you to the end of the piece. I've also used panning to my advantage since I can make the audience very disorientated something one could associate with being drunk.

I also had a tutorial with James where he looked over my piece and made the suggestion of instead of having the beat constant have it speed up over time and make the beat leave the song by the time the siren comes in and have the voice reverb be more gradual. And other than that to clean it up a bit, but it's nearly there and that's what makes me happy.

Also it's 30sec over brief but I can't cut it anymore....I just can't please don't make me.

An over view of how I left the mis Friday afternoon, hopefully the layout wont be changing that much.

What's that Buzzing Noise?

 So my samples weren't as exciting as some peoples, after finding out the deadline and what the project expected of me my idea to do Spring Awakening was quickly pushed aside in favour of a more practical option. It just so happened that my practical option was set in a nightclub were most noises (aside from music) are caused by people doing pretty standard things meaning I could record all my sounds from my bedroom as I live in a pretty quiet neighbourhood.

I had already made a list of sounds during lesson, the first day we used the Maratnz, and I had recorded a fair few samples that day however not only did I record in B127, me and the Maratnz just didn't get on. I'm not sure if its because I'm used to the Zoom and I know how to use it (or thought I knew how to use it anyway until I recorded in stereo thinking it was in mono) but add a faulty cable that took me 30 mins to figure out - it just wasn't a good day.

So the following Friday I booked a Zoom out of stores and just got to work. I sat at my desk and set up the zoom and just made my way through the list; can opening, clothes rubbing against each other (totally isn't just me rumpling a hoody), heavy breathing, gasping, phone vibrating, text notifications, guzzling drinks, drinks fizzing, general ambience, cans tapping and the initial beat me tapping on my desk. I chose to do that because it reminded me of a bar, when I'm getting served at a bar if they're taking a long time or IDing 3 times just to 'make sure', I end up tapping along to the beat of whatever is playing in the background. So that's where all that came from, I told you it's not that interesting what was interesting was layering the sounds and making them seem a lot more 'epic' than they actually are. Something I'll cover in a later blog post.

Happy Drunk, Sad Drunk, Little Ball of Fur

Today I sat down with the vast majority of my sounds and go to work figuring out my soundscape. Since I already have a chronology to my sounds the first step for me was simply getting them all imported and into their designated (named) tracks, I'm pretty lucky since I've worked with cubase (a very similar program before) so for a lot of this it was just the case of getting back into old habits. Once everything was organised I just got to work and started experimenting, I already have a basic idea of what I want the project to sound like and whilst I don't have a solid voiceover to work around yet everything else is there including the beat I created at home so I have something to link it all together.

I've added a lot of reverb however in most cases (up until now) they have been used in conjunction with the original sound, so for instance you have the beat track original and the edited beat playing at the same time. I love this kind of effect because it gives you that extra dimension of sound without taking away the raw quality it has, if that makes sense? All but 3 of my sounds were recorded at home (2 were taken from the BBC sound library because it wasn't possible to get them alone and 1 is a music track) meaning it is quite obvious that it isn't really a party this guys at but part of me likes that. The whole story of the extract is a guy is at a party but is texting his Girlfriend saying he's in bed because he's tired, the guy is known for his drinking and his Girlfriend is trying to put a stop to it something he is fighting whilst being at the party yet he is hyper aware of the fact that she's right. With this is mind I want to give the sound piece a sense of hyper-reality, make sure the audience know that he is at a party but make them notice things they wouldn't normally notice. Instead of the bass booming you have a high-hat, instead of people talking loudly you have heavy breathing, everything that would normally get over looked (such as your phone ringing.... hint, hint) is suddenly the loudest thing in the room - but the music is still playing, the people are still there they are just not your main concern. 

I only have my voice over to record using an actual male actor (not just me trying to say words in time to a click track) and all in all I'm on track to finish by Monday evening, after which it just a case of mastering the track. 

My screen after getting a general overview of where the sounds need to be, now they just need cleaning up and panning.

PS The title of this post is a play on the first line of the song 'Happy Drunk' and the Soft Kitty Song because, why not?

Last Weeks Awakening

When we were assigned our sound project my first instinct was Spring Awakening (I know, shock horror right?) as mentioned in my last post Spring Awakening is currently being revived on Broadway with the use of sign language. Now this is the first time in Broadway history that this has happened which is still mind blowing to me. I went to see a modern adaptation of the original play in 2014 and as part of my A Levels I had to know the synopsis and it was as follows 'Anya Reiss' new version examines the exuberance, intensity and confusion of teenager life today. Spring Awakening asks important and pressing questions about how young people are shaped for their future by a generation that doesn't understand them.' it doesn't really touch on miscommunication when that is literally what the play is about, something I didn't know until I read about the ASL version.

Now with that in mind my immediate instinct was to create a version of a important point in the show for people with the opposite problem, people who are visually impaired. SA is very interesting visually for instance the band is onstage and interacts with the actors, something people who are visually impaired miss even with AD you can't explain the entire show to someone without ruining the experience, the shock factor, of a very explicit show. I've been speaking to fans online about which passage they believe would work with this idea and a lot of people mentioned the ending monologue of Moritz, a 15-year-old who gives up on trying to please everyone and commits suicide (a tragedy blamed on his best friend), the monologue is him as a ghost talking to his best friend who has ran away from his problems and is now sat in the graveyard staring at another characters' gravestone.

In the monologue Moritz outright lies to Melchior about being dead, how amazing it is, there are so many rises and falls of emotions that doing the sound project would be very interesting indeed. I even did a bit of research on the character resulting in a little case study so I could get the narrative from a different perspective.

However whilst I was writing what I could do a song came on itunes and everything just made sense? I guess. The song is a stand alone song by musical theatre composers Kerrigan and Lowdermilk called Last Weeks Alcohol, a beautifully written song with poetic like music behind it. Whilst it's 8 minutes in length the actual lyrics are poetic enough you feel carried away with them yet theatre orientated enough they are descriptive of their surroundings.  When I was writing out the section of the song and brainstorming what I could do sound wise it just fit. Now I'm in the predicament of do I go with my initial idea which was really intriguing for me, new ground yet made me really excited. Or do I go with the idea that I love and is equally exciting just not as progressive as I would like.

I'll make my mind up eventually, but if you have time watch these two videos. The first one is Last Weeks Alcohol performed by Andy Mientus a song I've never been able to skip on my itunes (also the orchestrations in this song are just phenomenal), the second one is the official trailer for Deaf Wests Spring Awakening on Broadway every time I watch it, it still simply blows my mind.