“SOUNDSCAPES”
The sky is an opaque black of mysterious quality. There are no sounds upon my ears but the delicate tinkle of coffee being stirred into thin-rimmed white China. Ah, a sound so evocative. Maybe it’s the memory of my caring mother stirring milk in a steel tumbler for me as a baby. Or maybe it’s the moment of solace I always resort to over an ornate tea service at The Raffles in Singapore, where space is my very own. Strange that each vignette, while having soothing qualities, is quite the opposite of the other – one is in a sheltered environment, the other, an independent one.
As I hear myself sip, my senses dawn like the sky, softly, slowly, through pink and gold… into the palest powdery blue.
An hour or two later, I step out into the city, and the sounds are suddenly more assertive, as if I accidentally flicked the wheel on my iPod.
A truck assaults my ears with a deafening honk... the sound of impotent control. The subway attendant yells at a meek ticket buyer through the speaker… the sound of oppressed power. Baffle gates beep-beep, open and slam-shut as metro cards mechanically slide through… the sounds of repetitive drudgery promising a fresh new day every day. Express trains chug-whoosh-thunder past, their speed never failing to thrill… the sound of your own heart beating.
On the train, a foursome of harmonious black voices makes music as the band moves through the cars… the sound of a concert that invited itself to you.
On the street, a revving car pounds rap into your skull… the sound of protest against marginalization turned full on so to be all-inclusive. Strains of a rather loud female Brooklyn accent fade in. They segue into the gruff intonations of a Bangladeshi fruit seller who says, “two dollars”. An ambulance wails to cabs and cars to make way… the sound of help that is helpless. The sibilance of Spanish melds into the hiss of meat at a hot dog cart… the sounds of all the world on one city street.
A pan-handler asks you to help him out, please… a sound that’s switched off almost as soon as it comes on.
Sounds layer themselves into your psyche, but there are so many such as this one that we learn to selectively deaden ourselves to. Then, we carry this auditory space we individually own – like a buffer, a winter coat, an outer layer of aura, even.
After the day’s auditory assault, I return to my meditative Mecca, my temple of Asian buddhas, my retreat of tealight serenity: to my own world of sound.
Or more likely, the lack of it.
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5 comments:
Oh no Ro, you are clearly aware of many worlds of sound-space—in this post I see at least four of your own, plus many others you observe!
When being briefed on the start of a job that requires sound design, I hear constant requests to "always keep in mind that it needs to sound REAL". Conceptually I get it, but always wonder what that statement means to others.....For something to sound "real".
Does "real" mean that the sound will take you back to a distant memory? Will it give you the expressions on the faces of the children playing in the park? Will the sound capture the moment, the feeling, and the space surrounding it?
Space and sound. I experiment with this a lot...I chase it like I am running in a hallway with no end. It's a question with no answer, to make sound's become real within space. Walk in your closet, close the door and speak or clap, open the door and do it again. Listen to the acoustics change, your footsteps sound different with the slightest opening or closing of the door. I try to achieve this in my work and it is impossible... To capture what one is feeling when he/she hears a sound...The sounds surround us, become a part of us within the space we are in. The 2 go hand in hand. One without the other is meaningless.
Ben – if I’m not mistaken, those “real” sounds that you’re asked to remember and reproduce (by folks like me), you typically create/design from “things” that have no relationship to that which produces the “real” sound in the “real” world. So, for example, (I’m totally making this up) in order to achieve the “real” sound of footsteps stomping through a bed of dry leaves an a crisp autumn morning, you might employ (record) a wine glass rhythmically striking a bed of potato chips. Which you then further manipulate using some sort of computer program that modulates and mixes and massages the manufactured sound until it’s considered… well, you know - “real”. And to add a touch of irony to all this “real-fake” sound, it’s often produced in a space that’s referred to as a sound proof room – literally signifying the absence of all sound – real, or imagine, or reproduced.
Adam - You are spot on as far as the recording/foley process! For me, I think will always question it. Wether the sonic environments I create, and perceive to be "real" will be received the same way by others, clients, ect....
Is Adam saying that the real thing is fake or the fake thing is real?
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