From this module I have learnt about many aspects of creative audio production. Firstly I learnt what a soundscape was, and to define it I would say that it is a way to express an idea through the use of different sounds, in a way which portrays this concept. In our production we have created the typical day of a student, we start in the morning where they are just getting up, the alarm is buzzing, it keeps growing louder and louder. The morning routine then starts in the characters room. We recorded a range of different sounds in the bedroom to be able to build this sonic piece which would show our idea. Other places we recorded were in the kitchen, bathroom, and outside. I also did a special recording from the LG arena in Birmingham for the evening part of the piece.

Throughout this process I have learned how to use a Marantz recorded to capture our sounds. Halfway through the process this changed as our equipment was replaced to a H4n Zoom, these were so much better for recording as it comes equipped with dual microphones, which the angles could be adjusted between 90 and 180 degrees.

Throughout the process I have been doing a portion of the editing of the piece. Firstly I would do a test piece on Adobe Audition, just to gain an insight to what I wanted to do with the piece. We would then review it as a group and then go onto pro tools and edit it fully on there.

From this production I have learnt quite a few things around pro tools and being a previous cubase user I can say that for this type of work I feel that pro tools has been very useful, mainly because of its great audio editing interface and the wide range of effects which can be added onto the different pieces of audio. An example of an editing techniques I have used would be shuffle mode, this was used when editing pieces of audio to make them shorted but keep them clean (no clicks) it aligned them straight away and I could tell where a wave peaked and dipped so I could join them together avoiding these clicks.

In the afternoon part we had someone talking like a lecturer, I then used chorus to give a deeper sound, reverb to add more depth to this and then I used distortion to make the voice unrecognisable, along with a frequency shifter, giving this same effect.

When joining the morning, afternoon and evening together I had to use crossfades to neatly join the parts together, meaning one piece didn’t stop and then wait for the next to start.

This was the day of the final mix, we created a piece for the evening and afternoon session, we decided that the afternoon should be a short aspect of the piece and the evening is almost like a day dream to the character at hand. We blend out from the voice by using distortion, chorus and reverb.

The evening was made from my recording which I did at the concert, in the main atrium area of the LG arena there was a good range of ambient sounds, we then took out the high end of the recording and removed some of the bottom end. This gave a more hollow sound as if you were listening to this piece from above a nightclub.

We then blended the two sessions together and made the final piece.

I found that from this session I learned a lot in terms of mixing and other techniques to do with pro tools, such as using shuffle mode to snap the audio together when taking out chunks, without making the audio jump or click. To make sure this didn’t happen I cut at the zero point on the wave form and then joined it back when the phase shifted up.