trance mix experiment

I observed the sound environment on my deck at night. I noticed the sharp contrast between the texture, amplitude and timbre of the static, soft, humming sounds I heard around me facing the dark, quiet back alley as opposed to the rough, dynamic and much louder street noises happening out front on the opposite side. Meanwhile the night sky was quite prominent and seemed to be wrapping all of it together. 

Given the overall ambience, it made sense to sketch the map in black and white and in a combination of charcoal and ink to play out the contrasting qualities of the sounds. I visualized my surroundings on a round map divided in three parts with me grounded in the middle, the near and far sounds circling my head and the serene night sky wrapped all around.

Mahsan Abedi - FVIM 333 Field Recording + Sound Map (The City Hum)

Undecided on a location with interesting sonic spatial qualities, I spend my entire day off curled up at home pretending not to procrastinate. Annoyed and blaming it on the unwelcome snow, I hurry outside to collect the mail when I catch myself fascinated by the densely packed snowflakes floating in space and melting on the ground. It’s around 6 in the afternoon and the constant noise of car engines and tires running up and down the busy road in front of my home is nothing I don’t normally tune out.

 Today, though, I am keenly listening for ideas. The sounds I normally experience on a daily basis have a different timbre and quality. They bounce off the wet ground and blend in with the muffled white silence of the snow. I start noticing the nuances of different tires hissing as they roll across the wet pavement and the sound of engines with different pitches and amplitudes moving left or right and dissipating into the distance. The ambience starts to take over my sonic experience and give it a rhythmic quality. The traffic noise soon starts moving farther away as snow continues to screen everything off, shifting my focus on to my immediate surrounding and increasingly more inwards.

 I can feel the hypnotic buzz of silence unwinding my mind and feel at peace with this space.

 To capture this oddly satisfying experience in such an ordinary spatial space, I pick my sound object from a recording I did while practicing random notes on the Sansula instrument. Working my way through various editing techniques, I recreate the sense of movement and skipping left and right through space while trying to capture the different sound quality and pacing of each passing car.

 The soundscape briefly picks up into a faster pace only to dissipate into a comforting space of peace and contemplation.

Sound editing techniques used: 
- panning right and left 
- fade in and out
 - repeat - pitch shifting 
- cutting
 - overlap
 - reversal
- Paulstretch
- tempo change

Mah Sun

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