Throughout this creating process I have learned so much. Before I arrived at Uni I was only slightly a-where of the term ‘Soundscape’, but now I have a great understanding of what one is. This process has shown me how easy it is to work in a group and how easy it is to pull all of our ideas together, in our group we were mostly fortunate with who we had, if you work with someone who doesn’t pull their weight, it can potentially really affect the final outcome.
It is important to meet up regularly, as this kept a good rhythm to our thought process and the work produced. We chose to meet up weekly, as with this we could spin our ideas/new ideas to each other, and talk about what we achieved for the Soundscape in the previous week gone by.
Actually recording the sounds we needed were so much fun, like the natural wind noise and bird songs that I managed to get hold of, almost right place right time, the birds just sound beautiful. The other sounds that we used, we didn’t want them to be too prominent, any spikes of loudness would distract the listener, while if we keep everything at a low pace, the transition from sounds would be so much easier on the ear.
It was a great choice of ours to keep everything as natural as possible; because this is a meditative piece adding effects such as flanger and phaser would of ruined it, it would make the listener ‘think’ to much about what they are hearing, instead of immersing themselves in the world they are now in.
I have learned that you do not have to be worried about pitching an idea in, no matter how rubbish it sounds in your head. I suggested the initial idea, just because I had walked past the Brayford Swans earlier that day, and from that we have created a great meditative piece of music. This is a creative course, which means that we do not have to stick to the rules when we are making something, are there even any rules when it comes to creating? I don’t think so, but there is a definite skill to making something that someone is going to want to listen to.
Also Max was dead set on putting in a bass guitar note onto the Soundscape, and I was dubious of this because I felt that putting in a regular musical instrument would detract from the meditation aspect of our project. But Max pushed through with his idea and i’m glad he did because I now do believe that it was right to include it, and it enhances our Soundscape well.
If it ever arrises in the future to do another Soundscape, I do not believe that I would change much, if anything in the way we created ours. From the initial idea, where most of us pitched in and helped out, we were on the same level when we got our initial presentation ready, we all had equal opportunity to have input on it, and getting a first for that, shows we were doing a lot right. I believe that our Soundscape lives up to what we said we would do in our presentation, everything we said we would do, we delivered on, and created a great end product to be proud of.