The goal of this project was to immerse the listener into an artificial sonic space, composed of layers of audio samples. My sound space begins with the person walking through the front door of their house, from a busy outdoors into a comparatively quiet indoors. He then walks through the living room, where there is someone watching TV off to the right. After that, he walks into the kitchen where he gets food and drink from the microwave and fridge, respectively, then sits down to eat.
As a musician, I’ve worked with audio editing for years, however I’ve worked primarily in GarageBand. Working on this project in Adobe Audition instead was in a way very similar, but also very different. While I already understood the overarching functions of Audition, in editing multiple layers of audio together, and mixing and adjusting different volume and panning levels, Audition is formatted very differently to GarageBand. In some instances, this made it almost as if I had to relearn how to do things which I already knew how to do. It was also different in the sense that I was creating a sonic space with audio samples, rather than recording and mixing instrument tracks. It was very interesting to attempt to create this illusion of a space by adjusting panning and volume levels.
I found the most challenging part of this project to be mixing the correct volume levels, more so for those sounds that are closer to the listener than further away. I found it easier to make a distant sound, such as a TV or microwave in the other room, seem a believable distance away. Meanwhile, closer sounds, such as breathing and footsteps, were much more complicated to mix in at the correct volumes.
This exploration of sonic space has definitely improved my understanding of how sound travels in a space. By having to determine the volume of a sound by translating physical distance to a louder or quieter volume level, and figuring out how much of that sound is heard from one ear in relation to the other based on its placement in the space, I was able to developed this stronger understanding of how sound works and how it is perceived. I can only assume this will play an integral role in future projects in Sound and Space, but going into Product Design, I’m sure I will need to utilize this knowledge in my work at some point or another as well.
