serenecentral

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Reflection of Success

It has been a vigorous journey to come where I am today with developing this project. Though with the countless struggles and changes I am satisfied that I was able to achieve a level of serenity. With the inspirations I found form the videos I was able to grasp the idea of what made a music video considerably relaxed and serene. I am glad to have made the change from narration to no narration as well as making a focus on the use of soundtracking.

In today’s showcase I was able to show to my friends and teachers what I had produced and in some cases my friends were able to have some kind of experience of serenity. They commended me for my composition and enjoyed the piece. It was a great success because they told me that they had experienced serenity because of the instruments that were used. The string and pads that filled the room was evoking the feeling of serenity as well as the sound of nature which they had also commented on.

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Week 14 Soundcloud link to the project.

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Week 14 screenshots of the project. 

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Week 14 Tutorial for the Audio Spectrum. 

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Week 14 Tutorials for After Effects - for the fake smoke.

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Week 14 (Reflection)

In this week I looked into many examples of meditation/relaxing videos. I needed inspiration to understand the reasons of why a piece of music would be considered relaxing. “A musical key is the tonal context for a piece of music” (Levitin 2006, p. 70). With the help of the plugin Scaler, I was able to compose something that sort of made sense and was close to serenity. I experimented with many chords but thankfully with Scaler, it prompts me with recommendation of what chord I use as well as giving me a description of what sort style the chords are. There was an abundant of scales to choose from and I was fortunate enough to have come across this plugin.

Finally approaching what felt as serenity I came across the mode D Lydian. What I found that was common in all the YouTube relaxing/meditating/serene music video is that they had a dreamy, hopeful and yearning style. With this in mind I produced a chord progression and layered the sounds. That had been the difficult while I was dealing with the composition side of things. Since I had already gathered all the ambience and animal sounds I had to focus on the soundtracking aspect.

Finishing off the arrangement I felt dissatisfied with only the sound design. It felt hallow to only attend a showcase with only the sound that was playing. So in saying this, I took up the work of learning how to use After Effects to create a visualiser for my work. I have never used After Effects before and I had to go through tutorials to accomplish my goals for this project. 

With tedious scripting and understanding where all the tools were, I was able to produce a visualiser that accompanied my sound piece. In this visualiser, I included an audio spectrum, background of a rainforest and some fog/mist effect. The beginning of the visualiser the rainforest is blurred out. The reason why this is the case was so it can encourage the audience to listen to the sound, in hopes of prompting the audience to have their attention on the sound to understand its emotion that the piece is trying to evoke. To further support the attention to the composition, the audio spectrum is found at the bottom. As the visualiser gradually focuses the audience will be able to see the rainforest with fog/mist. This is where the ambience and animal sounds become prominent. The fog/mist I added in was to create a more immersive experience. Making the image seem like it is moving. At the very end of the piece the trance is broken by a loud droplet. The reason why I implemented this droplet was because I felt that if the audience is able to enter an experience of serenity why not see if they can be broken out of the emotion with an abrupt ending? This will also heighten the experience and the delay of the droplet could also be a support in causing the serene state for the audience.

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Week 13 (Reflection)

This week, I prepared the final presentation. After the presentation I was critiqued again by the narrations and I found that it was probably not worth making use of the voice anymore. I no longer had any time and my voice was not well suited at all matching what I desired it to be.

There was also alterations as well that needed to be done. The compositions sequenced within the arrangement was not long enough or they seemed to be redundant because of the vast ambience and animal sounds that took up most of the piece. I made use of nature in hopes to heighten the experience of serenity that could give you “a sense of connectedness with the universe.” (Roberts, K, Cunningham, G 1990, p.581). With my attempts failing I had no choice but to scrap my story idea and re-create a piece that involved more soundtracking and also a visualiser that can support the experience of serenity. 

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Week 11 - 12 inspiration for narration as well as me looking into other examples.

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Week 11 - 12 (Reflection)

During these weeks I made a consultation appointment with Ben to talk about my project. He recommended me to make efforts in trying to implement the narration again so that it had more of an interaction with the audience. It was a great idea and I thought maybe I was up to scratch with the mixing for the Black Box, I could make another attempt to add in the narration.

It was difficult to perform a narrator’s voice but I made an effort and looked into videos of the best narrators for audiobooks. The aim was to use the narration so that it could fluently guide the audience through the story.

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Week 10 bus sends for the Black Box and automations in my track.

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Week 10 (Reflection)

This week I have decided to work in the Black Box and use the surround sound. The challenge here was understanding where everything was meant to go but eventually I was able to get a booking in the Black Box to have a test run for my project.

It was interesting to hear my project be played in surround sound. I made attempts to utilise the speakers and tried to create movement in my piece. There was also alterations in levels as well and comments were made about the ambience and animal sounds. The critique was to have more focus in sounds that were introduced. Initially the sounds were all introduced at the same level and were mixed so that they intertwined. However, I did realise that it became quite crowded and noisy so I had to create automations for the tracks to articulate the sounds better.

At this point my main focus was to mix the project for the Black Box.

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Week 9 (Reflection)

Milestone presentation week. During the past few weeks I had been mixing and arranging the project in stereo. I was unsure of where I would be showcasing the project so to be safe I only worked in stereo. After presenting my progress to the class, I was commended for my composition in the project. Everyone was surprised that I had composed the piece in which I was quite happy with. But they were questioning what happened to the narration.

So the arrangement of the project was suppose to tell a story where at the beginning the audience experiences the introduction of a quiet rainforest/jungle. The middle part of the sequence is where it becomes exhilarating and interesting, and I understand that this does not bide to my adjective serenity. But there is a reason why I arranged and composed the project like so. At the end of the project, the animals who fought against the invaders in the middle had won back their homes. What I was trying to set was an introduction of an object, a problem and a solution. I thought to myself that if one is to be “amidst loss and grief” will they not eventually be able to find satisfaction in life? (Roberts, K, Cunningham, G 1990, p.577). This theory I thought made sense to be in which that if I created havoc I am able to create peace like in most movies there is always a problem and a solution which we can familiarise as ‘happy endings’. 

At this point in time all I needed to do was try and finish the arrangement and project so that I could figure out where I wanted to showcase it. At the time I was deciding between room 9.1.36 and the Black Box. 

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Week 7 - 8 (Reflection)

Entering week 7 and 8 I composed music and arranged the project. The sequencing of the project starts off with ambience and the narration. I re-recorded the narration and changed the context of the script. The critique I received from the pitch was concentrated at the narration. The scripting asked the audience to prepare themselves for immersion but that didn’t seem to work out, and so I altered the scripting and only interacted with the audience.

The main idea of the narration was to calm the audience. The autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) effect is supposed to create a feeling of euphoric tingling and relaxation. But instead I received criticism about the narration being too creepy and uncomfortable. Due to the time restraint I revised with no narration at all.

So I continued the arrangement with only ambience and soundtracking. 

I researched into what kind of other sounds I could use for the soundtracking. During week 5 and 6 I had the tibet drums implemented into the project. But I felt that it was lacking instruments and so I looked into shamanic healing practices which included voice, drums, shakers and rattles. These sounds are thought to help the shaman and those journeying with him/her to enter a trance-like state beyond the physical veil. I continued experimenting with Orbis in hopes to find any sounds that were appealing.

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Week 5 - 6 (Reflection)

Week 5 and 6 I was experimenting with Spitfire’s sound libraries - LABS and Orbis. Orbis had great tribal and rite sound recordings such as timbre sounds like the Tibet drums. LABS had a nice selection as well that allowed me to layer the sounds so that it was fuller. It had features that allowed me to manipulate its vibrato and variations. 

The story telling for this project was an addition to immerse the audience. I wanted to create low arousal and then gradually increase the arousal as well as the valence. The goal of this effect was to exhaust the emotions of the individual and then gradually comforting them with slow and calming soundtracks. The story sets in a rainforest/jungle where animals live in which later on humans ravage the lands and take over. But they fail and the animals win. This child like story was something for me to start off from so that I was able to layout what I needed to create this story. I first introduced the story using a narrator whom was myself. The narration offered instructions which intertwined with the sound ambience and sound of animals. The soundtracking was a pre-empt of what is to come. I wanted to keep this consistency so and continue developing this piece.

However, during the pitch presentations, I was hit with critique in which I took into consideration. Due to time restraint I was not able to find someone who was suitable for the narration and so I did my own voice recording - which was not bad sounding. But there was lack in its direction in what the experience was. I unfortunately was not able to reach the heightened experience of serenity. So I had to revise the arrangement and made an attempt to salvage it. 

I had to go on a wild goose chase to look for the necessary sound assets. I was fortunate to have the Audiovision sound library modules from Semester 1 still accessible which I used Adobe Auditions as well as Pro Sound Effects library to source all the sound assets. 

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Week 3 - 4 (Reflection)

During these weeks I had chosen the word adjective serenity. I struggled to describe what the word meant in our first assessment but I still was determined to uncover its meaning of what it meant. Through research I found that serenity is defined as “the state of being calm, peaceful, and untroubled.” (Oxford, 2019). When you as an individual is being in a state of inner peace and “letting go of unrealistic expectations and of wanting things to be otherwise.” (p.580, Roberts, K & Cunningham, G 1990). With these definitions and thoughts I had to think about what I could do to be able to heighten the experience of serenity for an individual. Through more vigorous research there were many examples of how one was able to find serenity or be serene. Examples show such as meditation, having a connection with nature, shamans and medicine songs called icaro. These examples come with the physical and mental connections through methods in which I was unable to grasp at that very moment. I knew my goal was to make a sound design but I was unsure of what was needed in a sound design to evoke serenity within someone.

I further looked into the examples and looked at meditation songs which were tracks found on YouTube that went for 4 to 8 hours. Commonly accompanied with these videos was a picture or photo of mother nature. Things such a rainforest, jungles, mountains, valleys, body of water... The list goes on. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njHvGxZgTPk&t=5375s). These meditation/relaxing music videos involved the use of drones that were played between 200Hz to 500Hz. These drones were layered with pads and synths which creates the airiness in the sound. Sometimes a piano was accompanying and playing softly with spacing. Looking at these music videos sparked an idea for me.

Upon the use of nature sounds and calming music design I had decided to do a project in which involved interaction with the audience and simulating as if they are present within a rainforest/jungle with sound design. Soundtracking would be accompanying the sound design as well as an ASMR narration to increase the immersive experience.

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The Tao of Sound: Acoustic Sound Healing for the 21st Century - Crowe, Barbara J, MMT, MT-BC

Described in this article there is a well-structured, quantitative research involved exposing healthy human blood cells and cancer cells to difference tones played on a variety of acoustic instruments in order to vary the timbre of the sound. 

“Maman defines sound healing as the use of sound structure to bring people, nature and the cosmos into healing harmony through entrainment with the universal energy field, a clearly different perspective from that of music therapy.” (Crowe, 2012, p.204)

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Reflection

In this article I have found that the use of sound does not only affect the audience’s brain sensory but also the blood cells. Through different articles I have read, most have spoken about the use of sound and how it can affect the person’s emotional valence and arousal. Further looking into the adjective Serenity I have found that there is another method called sound healing which involves the human energy field - the subtle energy field that results in physical, psychological, and spiritual illness. Sound healing involves the use of vibrational media of sound, colour and movement. It is the timbre and pitch of sound that is able to supposedly heal the human energy field. Which therefore is creating Serenity - “the state of being calm, peaceful, and untroubled.” (Oxford, 2019)

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Language, Music and Mind - Diana Raffman

Etiology - Study of causation or origination

According to the cognitive psychologists, listeners unconsciously abstract and store structural information from the music they hear, thereby establishing long standing mental representations that shape their subsequent music perception. (line 6, para 2, p. 3)

Ineffable / ineffability - Concerned with ideas that cannot or should not be expressed in spoken words, often being in the form of a taboo or incomprehensible term.

... Certain features of the music, often called 'nuances', are likely to be recovered so early in the representational process that they fail to be mentally categorised or type-identified in the manner thought necessary for verbal report. As a result, the listener is consciously aware of the nuances but cannot say which nuances they are. Therein lies their nuance ineffability.

Ineffable knowledge will be conscious knowledge that cannot be communicated in words.

"I know something somehow, but I cannot out it into words; I cannot say what I know" (Kennick, 2967, p.181)

"Phenomenological" characteristics or "raw feelings" of our conscious sensory-perceptual and somatic states. (line 1, para 3, p. 9)

Quate / qualia - A quality or property as perceived or experienced by a person.

Philosophical def. - individual instances of subjective, conscious experience. e.g. Perceived sensation of pain of a headache, the taste of win, as well as the redness of an evening sky

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Reflection

Through this research I’ve speculated that the choice of sound I may have to use to compose my soundtrack would need to relate to the theme of my project. This project consists of a rain forest with several animals that can be heard. To create sense for the listener I need to pick “nuances” that are relevant to the idea of my project. A great example in my project would be the sound of tribal drumming that can demonstrate the environment in which the audience may be in while listening. Certainly, I would not be including a 808 bass or drum kit into the track because that would confuse the audience as well as take away the image that I am creating.