Group members: Yizhi Liu and Joann Myung
Assignment and Ideation
For this week’s Hypercinema assignment my group and I decided to create a sound vacation in Adobe Audition. After some brainstorming we landed on a three-part vacation through all of our hometowns. So that we could all learn the software each of us were responsible for out part. Here’s a bit on my process!
Assignment details
My initial brainstorming
So I like to say that Boulder, CO is my home. Anyone that’s been there knows that it’s a very laid-back, natural, magical, and unique place. The first thing to do was to think about what Boulder sounds like.
Here are some sounds I thought of:
Boulder creek
Rustling trees, wind
Birds chirping
Rising sun and mountains
What would sound-less sounds sound like?
People
Kids playing in the water
Chatting in a coffee shop
Bikes, beer, hiking?!
What’s the feeling or mood?
Homey, dreamy, comfy, cozy, peaceful, whimsical
Process
Since I wasn’t sure how I would get nature sounds in the city, I started by browsing for free sounds on freesound.org. That’s where I found the bird chirps, wind chime, low hum that is supposed to symbolize the steadiness and strength of the mountains, amongst many other sounds. I only used sounds that were licensed under creative commons in my project.
Next, I ran around The Battery with a Zoom recorder hoping I could get some nature sounds in New York. To recreate the creek that runs through Boulder, I recorded the water and a fountain but neither of those sounded very creek-like. I got some pretty good chirpy-bug clips but I didn’t realize how hard it would be to get an isolated sound in the city; there’s always a helicopter flying overhead or construction going on or a walking tour going by.
There’s a pretty big coffee and beer culture in Boulder and Trident Booksellers is a staple. It was absolutely my favorite place to hang out in town and I spent most of my time there. I had a long recording of ambient cafe noise on my computer for a project I did in my undergrad, so I was excited to use an authentic clip in my sound journey.
Audition
At this point, I had more than enough files for a 30 second composition. I parsed through my zoom files, trimmed them, and decided which sounds to use. I wanted the mountain humming and the wind (chimes) to be a major theme of my sound vacation and I liked the mix of natural and some unnatural sounds. I also added some film photos I took of my town to our presentation as an added visual.
Bringing it all together
Joann, Yizhi, and I all met up to put together our separate parts. We mixed together our individual vacations in Audition and added some fading to transition between movements. Here’s a link to our presentation.
Final Product
My Boulder “staycation” mix in Audition
“Staycation” photos
Here are some snapshots of my contributions to the group project. I uploaded my sound vacation to Boulder to Soundcloud. You can also access all my files, sound clips, and Audition sessions at this GitHub repo. Sound clips I got from freesound.org are named “FS-x”.
Conclusion
I’m not really a big music-making person, but I am pretty proud of what I came up with for this project. I feel like I planned out and thought about every step of the process. I had a lot of fun exploring the Battery and getting down to the water. It may have taken me much longer to get down there if it wasn’t for this project. I also like that I could repurpose some of my own old photos that I haven’t had a chance to use for a photo project yet.