Sis 🎼🎧🎛️🎚️🎙️📻🎶🎵

My étude 1 soundscape is a collage of soundbytes recorded from a high school girls basketball game. A basketball game soundscape can also be referred to as a sportscape. This 2min50sec sportscape is a seven clip pre-game to the end of game audio montage. The inspiration for my sportscape stems from a longing for the way things were in sports before the COVID-19 pandemic. This is a unique time in the history of both soundscapes and sportscapes. The COVID-19 pandemic has limited spectators at sporting events making these soundscapes less clamorous. My composition explores the inherent sounds still hidden in our half empty gymnasiums. Being a retired pro player, a basketball sportscape arouses many emotions including nostalgia. Revisiting an audio atmosphere that had such a significant influence on my life captures both the past and the present.

This soundscape features a pre-game, COVID-19 guidelines by the game announcer, the National Anthem by the band, and a climactic ending. The interludes of various sounds include players playing, cheerleaders cheering, balls bouncing, sneakers squeaking, buzzers buzzing, whistles whistling, and drummers drumming. A sportscape with a pep band has its own distinct and musical acoustic environment. There is no recorded music per se, only the “ambient” sounds and songs of the high school pep band.

I applied several different editing techniques to my audio collage. First I cut and spliced my hour and a half recording to my desired seven clips. Next I altered my first pre-game clip by increasing the speed X2. I also increased the speed on the National Anthem clip [1:01-1:41] and the cheerleader clip [2:21-2:26]. I then spent a couple of hours toggling the fades for all of the six transitions. I used layering and repetition for the four buzzers transition [:25]. The first two buzzers are from the three minute warning and the second two are from the two minute warning. Further, I increased the volume nine decibels on all clips except the end of the game clip (also end of the étude). The loudest part of the soundscape is the end of the game and the volume is unmodified. Lastly, I manipulated this end of game clip with a slight fade out to achieve the final and desired outcome.

Footnotes:
1) Although their definitions differ, the terms soundscape and sportscape are used interchangeably for the purposes of this étude artist statement when applicable.

2) I uploaded an MP3 because my WAV file was much larger and it froze in Harvard Canvas.

Technomusicology

Basketball Soundscape Étude - Harvard Technomusicology

Music for the Health of it!  Dr Robelyn Garcia - Harvard University Technomusicology MUSI 190R

Comments

Brad Eddie Garcia

RGPhD

RGPhD

Harvard Cyber

Senior University