Soundscape Final Artist's Statements

This project was far more difficult than the zine, even though the time commitment was shorter. I found myself unhappy with the sounds I was creating and couldn’t quite capture what I really wanted to. It took longer than I thought just to make certain clips, having to constantly replay them in the context of the rest of the song to see if it works. The direction I was hoping to go was the transition between light and dark and how we move throughout lives between the two in constant conflict. I started with deep, dark, distorted sounds, trying to implement a sense of space with echo and reverb, but after I added those effects it was almost overwhelming, so it took a lot of nudging with the different sounds to get something that wasn’t just a blanket of sound. This was the case through the other sections of the song as well. In the middle portion, I wanted to bring their listener above the dark sounds and put them into a natural-sounding bright soundscape. This was the one portion of the song I feel like I accurately projected my creative ideas cohesively. The birds and creek represent life, with the blaring train horn in the background representing death, sounding like pitched down church bells. The silence is meant to build tension, but the transitions ended up feeling empty, and while I am not offended by this, my original intentions differ. The ending of the soundscape builds into nothing, an intentional decision that describes the ever-changing settings of our own lives, that turmoil followed by peace is a pattern that repeats itself constantly. It leaves the listener to wonder where the sound would lead them next.