*NOTE: Wear Headphones for best effect!! * :D

This recording was done for my 3rd and final assessment for Music and Sound Production 1 at uni :D.

For this assessment, we were required to create a soundscape lasting between 2:00-2:30 minutes, utilizing various recordings, our own and/or samples and then creating a final mix in Pro Tools. The soundscape would be linear and follow a journey, based on a text we had read in our lives. 
For my soundscape, I was originally trailing in the direction of the novel ‘The Exorcist’ by William Peter Blatty, after researching it’s various sound effects, and the measures the technicians had to take to get the desired effect, however, when it came to writing the script for the recordings, I found it would be a tedious task to condense the vast storyline that is present in the novel into a 2 minute soundscape. It was then that I decided to focus on a mental illness- particularly psychosis and schizophrenia, and the auditory hallucinations one may experience. I was inspired by several videos I’d seen, giving a simulation of an auditory hallucination, as well as several accounts given to me by friends of mine who experience them. I found 2 poems called “Auditory” and “Myself, which I felt encompassed the feelings on how someone suffers, and a descent into madness. 
The plan was for the soundscape to be in almost a “found recording” style, as well as a simulation of an auditory hallucination. There would be a voice narrating sections of the poem, while there would be atmospheric noises, such as creaking doors, various scratching on objects, and knocking on walls, and demonic-sounding groans and breathing, I sourced these sounds from the internet, as they would be difficult to source in a real life setting. In the background, there would be voices, a mixture between positive and macabre comments being made, I recorded these sounds, as well as a few of the scratching sounds and the main narration on my own, using my laptop, to create a very crackly and dry sound, as if it was recorded while someone was in private, hiding away and documenting what was happening. In the background, I also had some  music from the soundtrack of the 2013 horror film ‘The Conjuring’, which has a very suspenseful and building main theme, and  that I thought would be imperative for usage,  I also used the doll-box theme and a suspense noise for the beginning and the end. There is also a heartbeat track heard in the background, to add to the anxiety, and gradually becoming faster as the main character of the story becomes more and more distressed.


Auditory

Lizzie. 20. QUT Music. Singing. 

<3 let's be friends, yeah?

Lizzie Brown