VART3489 - Score and Sound Design Project 1

 

Project 1: Sound & Vision Exercise (15%) + Reflection (10%) Due week 4 (August 12)

Create a work which explores audiovisual relationships in an interesting way.

Select a video work from the shared folder on the SD computer to score/SD.

Reflection:

Selected this piece as it matched my sound palette best. Big reeses and granular with glitchy distortions interrupting the movement in the darkness. First attempt at scoring a piece, discovered the process is even more akin to painting than my usual compositional process. Cherry picking events in the piece as points to build around filling the detail outwardly between points. Rewarding definitely. 90% of the source material created from my own sound library. I used some kicks from a pack while sketching that worked instantly, so I rolled with them. If the project required me to use strictly my own sample library I could have synthesised these sounds pretty easily. Same goes for the 2 field recordings I used from a pack. I could have gone to the kitchen with my h4N if needed.

I used Ableton 9 to compose, using 37 channels of audio, a single reverb send/return, barely any compression or insert effects, filtering or EQ. I relied primarily on the more effective tools of volume, panning and layered arrangement. I find working using the approach infintely more effective with this many channels of audio. To create some of the movement in the later section I layered a fast LFO on a bandpass filter unsynced to tempo, I set the rate by altering it while watching the video. I definitely could have achieved a cleaner tighter mix with more diligence - but I really wanted to avoid mix purgatory for this task and move quickly through the process.

While mixing I had some of the tonal non foley elements soloed and found taking all of the foley out of the mix actually really compelling. I could have built on this and taken this piece in an entirely different direction, this more subtle tone would have also been entirely suitable. This "less is more" mentality would have made this ~24 second piece feel more like a short film than a drum and bass/videogame trailer. More expression is required for a more subtle approach, though I thoroughly enjoyed the engineering aspect of building foley for abstract forms.

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