Track 6: ‘Where's my Chai?’ (Process Development Exercise #6 – One Minute
Vacation phonographic work)

PDE #6 - Vacational Field Recording (500 word paper for Ass 2)

This is my take on a vacational recording. I read that a vacational field recording was a one
minute, un-edited recording of somewhere, somewhen.

For this PDE I decided to use a few different field recordings to create a journey that tells a
short story.

At the beginning of the year I spent a couple of months travelling overseas recording music.

Before the trip I was inspired by some soundscape artists such as one we've talked about
in class - the quiet American. These people take recording equipment with them to various
locations around the world and create soundscapes that put you in that place as if you're
there. They can tell a story, recreate a journey or capture an experience or event in time.

Unlike film or photos, when you hear these recordings, you have to use your imagination, and
the sounds help heighten that imagination to create a unique experience.

So everywhere I went I carried my little Zoom H4N and had it ready to record at any moment.

For this PDE I decided to use field recordings to create a journey that tells a short story.

I've named it "Where's my Chai?", a 12hr epic adventure compiled into just over 1 minute.

So it starts at about 6:30am, on a rowboat floating down the Ganges. At around midday we
arrive at the outskirts of the city and take a rickshaw into town. By evening there are festivities
happening and we get to experience the nightlife.
We finally find our Chai tea, leave the chaotic city to where we'll spend the night, by which
stage we need to urinate.

It was actually quite a challenge to put all of this into one minute. Perhaps ideally you'd need
several minutes to adapt to each scenario.

I'll now talk about the individual source sounds and their relation to the theme.

First of all, all recordings were captured using the Zoom H4N portable recorder in XY mode
using the in built microphones. It was recorded at 24bit, 96k and the only processing I applied
was some EQ reduction of low frequencies as well as cross-fades in the final mix to give the
illusion of it being one seamless recording.

The first recording was taken on a rowboat floating down the Ganges. There is a focus on the
oars hitting the water and when listening on headphones you get a sense of atmosphere with
boats passing/people talking etc and you can really localise where the sounds are coming
from. It was intentionally recorded quite early in the morning, around 6:30am so there isn't
much excessive noise such as horns and motorised boats passing by.
It relates to the theme in that the position of the microphone is constantly moving, creating a
journey as events unfold around it.

The only processing I made on this recording was to add a high pass filter at around 90hz
when the motor of a boat was too prominent.

The second recording was taken on a rickshaw. This way of recording was chosen as it
wouldn't have constant engine noises and allowed a different perspective compared to just
walking along a side walk. Being close to the centre of the road meant that there were noises
taking place in both the left and right channel of the recording. It also immerses the listener
rather than just having things pass from left to right.
This way of recording also didn't attract as much attention from people compared to walking
where people would always come up to ask what I was doing. To avoid this I sat on the
rickshaw and was able to cover the recorder from plain sight.
This was another journey recording, moving through the streets and recording all sounds that
passed by.

The third recording was a walking recording done at night. Being night-time the recorder
wasn't too obvious and I managed to get some recordings without people interrupting. In this
particular one a couple of my friends are heard talking about finding some Chai tea to drink.
I used this recording because it made it personal to me. Perhaps it takes away some of the
authenticity of it however I feel it adds to the story and journey so in this case it was suitable.

The final recording was made in a jungle. This was a rare opportunity to capture sounds
without traffic or human made noises. For the most part all that can be heard are insects and
occasional movement in the bushes by animals. In this case myself and a friend decided to
urinate off the side of the building we were staying in and it is captured with nice stereo width
and clarity.

For the actual PDE I listened to each recording and chose a section that was most useable
sonicaly and that also helped add to the journey I was trying to make.
I used various cross-fades to try to create one continuous piece involving the recordings I
mentioned.

I think it turned out well and personally I enjoy listening to it. If anything, it's probably only
really suited for headphones, as this is when you can really immerse yourself in the recording
and hear the necessary details.

Reflective conclusion.

I must admit I was a little skeptical about this subject as a whole when I first heard about it. I
didn't see how it would benefit to me at all with what I want to do in the audio industry.
To my pleasant surprise I found this to be one of the more interesting and beneficial subjects
this semester. It opened my eyes and ears to new ways of thinking which is something I can
apply to other situations in life as well.

I think once the 'process' of some of the more obscure recordings was explained, everything
else seemed to make sense.

I even re-recorded a couple of my PDE's, focusing more on the process rather than a perfect
sounding outcome, which I've been used to trying to achieve.

Overall I'm happy with how my PDE's turned out. My two favourites are the genre mix and the
field recording soundscape. I think they made more sense to me sonically.
As far as process goes I'm quite happy with the impressionism piece. I had never tried
to create an atmosphere based on an artwork/art movement and I was suprised at the
inspiration I found for that.

That is all.

Pde6 - Where's my Chai?

Nightlife

Ganges

Evening

Rickshaw

PDE 3 - double bass

PDE 4 - plastic

Track 3: ‘Impressionismitality' (Process Development Exercise #3 – based on a
specified art movement)

For this PDE I wanted to incorporate two elements. Firstly to look at a painting from home and
then create an atmosphere that I felt resembled the painting.
Secondly I wanted to somehow create a piece that reflected some of Claude Debussy's work
(I wrote a paper about him and impressionistic music for assignment one).

My first concern was that I am not a musician and don't have a lot of knowledge about
dissonance and various musical scales. I instead searched the Internet to find a chord that I
felt was not quite standard and then played some non-chromatic singing bowls to create the
dissonance around the chord.

I chose a part of the picture which was a metal staircase. This is where I got my inspiration for
the 'stepped' notes and also the metallic sounds the singing bowls create.

Original track 1: Double bass
Original track 2: String hits
Original track 3: string tremelo
Original track 4: Singing bowls

The singing bowls were placed in a circle on the floor and I recorded them using a Rode
NT2A in omni mode. This helped capture some of the room sound rather than a direct sound
which I felt was more appropriate in creating the atmosphere I wanted.
Parts of this recording were reversed to create an uneasy, drone-like tone.

The strings and double bass were all triggered through Xpand2 in Pro Tools. I pencilled in the
notes and placed them in a way that was not in time to anything in particular. I didn't want the
steps to be spaced the same distance apart.

I feel the tremelo strings creates tension and keeps the listener wanting to listen to see what
happens next.

PDE3 final

Track 5: ‘Music Hard’ (Process Development Exercise #5 – using Musique Concrete
techniques)

PDE #5 - Musique Concrete

For this PDE I was inspired by a definition of musique concrete in that it "involves using the
found sounds in nature, distorted in various ways, to create music."
From this it got me thinking about what sounds are found in nature. In the house I live in it
is almost impossible to escape the sounds from the television. In this day and age, these
sounds are our 'natural' environment.

I thought about recording random sounds coming from the television and creating a piece that
takes what is often normally in the background, to the foreground in the form of music.

I also wanted to manipulate the recordings in respect to the musique concrete ways by
looping, reversing and generally altering the sound signals.

Perhaps this is not an authentic approach to musique concrete however I felt this was a
relevant, modern approach that still used a few tools that are considered essential to make
musique concrete pieces.

For this recording I placed a Zoom H4N recorder near a television speaker and randomly
changed channels. This was the performance part of the piece and was the main process to
achieve my desired outcome.

From here I duplicated tracks and had them play back at random intervals. Some were
panned in the centre while two tracks were panned hard left and right. What this did was
it brought attention to anything that was panned hard left and right, leaving the centre
information forgotten about.

To add to this I reversed the original recording and had it play in the centre of the stereo field.
Again, whilst it is there, the focus is drawn towards the sounds that are panned hard left and
right.

What is interesting about this is that the actual information - the talking/singing/music etc has
no coherent structure or message yet our attention is still very much drawn towards what is
coming from the speakers.
I think this shows an interesting perspective of television listening. Where once it would
be 'background noise', when turned into a piece of music, it is very captivating to listen to.
Perhaps even more so that watching the television because we have to use our imaginations
to re-create images in our mind that the sounds may trigger.

PDE 5 - final

Track 4: ‘Noise is art is noise’ (Process Development Exercise #4 – homage to
Russolo’s ‘The Art of Noises’)


PDE #4 - The Art of Noises

I used the following classification to help aid me in this PDE:

The Art of Noises classified "noise-sound" into six groups:
1. Roars, Thunderings, Explosions, Hissing roars, Bangs, Booms
2. Whistling, Hissing, Puffing
3. Whispers, Murmurs, Mumbling, Muttering, Gurgling
4. Screeching, Creaking, Rustling, Buzzing,[5] Crackling, Scraping [5]
5. Noises obtained by beating on metals, woods, skins, stones, pottery, etc.
6. Voices of animals and people, Shouts, Screams, Shrieks, Wails, Hoots, Howls, Death
rattles, Sobs

From these six groups I chose a few noises to focus on and created a piece which involved a
lot of sound manipulation.

My original recordings were:

1) Birds in a park/children playing at dusk

The recording of the birds/kids in park was done at dusk with a Zoom H4N with it's inbuilt
stereo (XY) microphones. The focus was on the birds but the children screaming/people
talking was present in the recording.

This recording was used because to me, everything in recording was noise. There were birds
squarking, children screaming, people talking, cars driving past, trains and footsteps. When
listening at the time it was actually quite overwhelming just the amount of everyday noise was
being captured.
I felt this would fit well with this noise PDE.

2) A bathroom ceiling fan
The drone/rumble of the exhaust fan in a bathroom is always a distraction for me and once I
hear it operating I cannot take my focus away from it.
It also has quite a rhythmic cycle to it which feels as if it's being looped over and over again.
This gave me inspiration for this PDE.
It was recorded using an HTC Legend mobile phone. I felt at the time that this menthod of
recording could help add some noise to the original recording.

3) Rustling of plastic (in a failed binaural recording attempt).
I set up a couple of cardiod pencil microphones in ORTF and rustled plastic around the
microphones. I was hoping to achieve better results in terms of stereo imaging however this
was not as successful as I had hoped.

Once manipulated, noises such as mumbling, screeching, creaking, rustling, crackling and
screaming can be heard in the recording.

walkingonsound