Project Portfolio
Initial Compositional Framework
During an early developmental phase in 2019 the project's conception began by formulating a visualisation guide as a starting point for envisioning sound design and compositional structural ideas. This visual method for planning sound design parameters was this project's original focus, leading to new personal compositional practice exploring ambisonic field recording techniques combined with additional sound synthesis.This creative process is important to include here, as it was an initial way I realised the potential for combining ambisonic field recordings and sound synthesis within an acousmatic compositional framework.
Reflecting upon this early stage of the project's development informs the evolving nature of this project's approach to methodology, highlighting the importance of a practice-based approach to creative practices in acousmatic musical composition. Whilst there was an eventual shift away from developing this visualisation exercise further, the design fundaments helped shape this first compositional outcome Underneath the Surface.
Compositional Outcomes
Underneath the Surface is down-mixed from ambisonic first order to a binaural stereo file. Listening through headphones is required to experience the full immersive effect. This first composition resulted from visually planning and considering ways to layer and arrange multiple formats of sonic materials by developing an illustrated guide as a starting point for cultivating approaches to creative practices. This exercise attributed to defining essential sound design and arrangement techniques that allowed this first composition to move from an initial concept to a finished compositional arrangement.
Awakening is binaural stereo MIX. Listening through headphones is required to experience the full immersive effect.
This second composition was the result of engaging with binaural field recording techniques in a bid to capture personised sonic experiences of participating in the recreational pastime of urban exploration. This evolving field recording practices focuses on the narrative aspects of moving through abandoned sonic spaces and exemplified the beginnings of developing a practice of sonic-autoethnography. As a field recordist exploring these sonic spaces, time and acoustic space govern my movement. When exploring spatial environments wearing the binaural field recorder, I became a first-person sonic documenter searching for sonic characteristics that foretell the sonic narrative of experiencing abandoned places.
The Void, Regarding this performance piece the spatial narrative embedded within the field recording practice informs and influences my creative approaches to sound synthesis as the convolution’s bespoke spatial effects change the sonic materials over time, impacting and facilitating further creative responses to my compositional practice and outcome. This created a feedback loop between the synthesis patch, and the sonic signatures captured through impulse response recording.