Author: Dereck De Abreu Coelho

Steven speaks on knowing through relations and how this insists that one does not simply “acquire” knowledge but, rather, that one knows through an ongoing cumulative and interactive acoustemology. I agree completely. He speaks on that knowledge isn’t just through attempting to know but through ongoing interaction with the environment as the tribe’s people, he was surrounded were doing.

He also mentions that while the idea of an anthropology of sound was meant to help decolonize ethnomusicology’s disciplinary paradigms, the presence of”anthropology” still made it too human-centric; the prepositional “of” marked too much distance and separation, and the nominal “sound” seemingly made it more about propagation than perception, more about structure than process. It was a case of”the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”

Again another great point that struck me about understanding the study of sound. And Steven makes a point here that we are still involving ourselves as humans in studies. Not understanding sound and its relationship with the environment and objects but rather its relationship with us. Deeming that all ideas stem from the human interpretation of sound. That sound doesn’t exist within itself.

Unlike acoustic ecology, acoustemology is about the experience and agency of listening histories, understood as relational and contingent, situated and reflexive.

Likewise, it refuses to replace visualist ocularcentrism with sonocentrism as any sort of determining force of essentialist sensory master plans. I also agree, one isn’t better than the other and he speaks that his goals aren’t to skew the reader’s views into believing sound is more important. That sonocentrism is better than ocularcentrism.

Overall I do believe this article allowed me a deeper understanding of knowledge within sound itself and learning from sound. That there isn’t one way of learning. Sound itself can teach us our surroundings, specific ques that dictate problems in our environment. Difficult for some of us that live in urban environments to imagine this, although we in urban environments have different ques than others for example living in a rainforest.

After today’s lecture with Ingrid about learning and using FMOD I was finding it hard to understand the exact context of the reasons to use FMOD. To encode the sound and present it to the game’s designers already processed was what I received? I should take some time by myself to experiment more and see the benefits and negative and to do decide if I wish to use this platform.

I do find the middle ground between DAW and Engine to be a strange place to edit and encode. I feel I would rather see the visual stimulation when encoding and deciding the effects of the audio in the space rather than a timeline. Like wise when using effects I would prefer to create and use them in a DAW.

But after playing this Cafe Oto game I have understood a little bit more about the design of sound in a game. Although a game, the premise of it is that it’s an instrument where you run around activating sounds and creating a loop with your character to engage complex patterns. I thought the coding behind how this works to be captivating and engaging for the interactive user. It did have me thinking if they used FMOD and I assume so. Seeing other ways of interactive media with coded sound has given me more context towards my game, and application of my audio within it.

Halfway through the lecture, we were given time to speak as groups on the current stance of our group and how we are operating and to plan further for next week’s tutorial. As I and Will already had a group meeting with the MA students before the lecture we were very happy with where we stood in the project. As Jingya didn’t attend we shared the information with her about the feedback to music and the stance on sound effects.

We communicated to Jingya that although the game wasn’t at the right development stage to start deciding on the sound effects, we spoke on the need to continue recording and experimenting on the sound effects regardless. I and Will felt and agreed that we shouldn’t wait for them to tell us what they want, rather we create and receive feedback. The process of creating sounds should be more active than waiting for them to tell us what they need.

We all agreed and decided this week for me and Will to create some music. Jingya will begin creating sound effects and I will also experiment with ambience and sounds with field recordings around contact mics and my Zoom H1N.

I am waiting on the PDF and information we asked for in the last meeting from the MA group.

The article begins by speaking about realism for sound not being the same as cinematic realism. Which is governed by our expectations and perceptions of cinematic wolds and not the real-world experience.  Recording sound effects as well are not just recording but more construction of sounds. Sound for film isn’t about just capturing but performing as ben Burt did for the lightsaber.

The article also compares sound and image construction in unison to be the process of representation and abstraction which I agree with what’s said. It is the balance between what’s seen and the idea of what it could be.

When designing star wars they wanted to make sure the film and its world were reliable, realistic and authentic. Before this most sci-fi soundscapes were using the theremin and other electronic sounds which seemed cliche and took the context out of films. This meant that when designing the sound for this film Ben Burt decided to go against that and make something more realistic and industrial. They wanted it to sound like a “used future”

The sound design in the first scene for StarWars uses the laser sounds to incorporate more than just shooting. It shows a sense of space, temporality and depth/continuity of the environment. You can hear the laser shots you see on screen and others off-screen. Which creates a sense of a world that is alive and exists beyond the limits of what we see.

Ben Burt speaks on his thoughts on field recording. It’s more than recording a source or sound its also the relationship between that sound and the space around it. The air has a lot to do with it. It’s a perfume of sound he says.

Motifs in sound are also added towards the picture, with good vs evil, love and romance, Industrial future. This allowed for sounds to portray these motifs as well. With more heavy mean sounding vehicles using low end and harsher sounds for enemy dark side ships and lighter smoother sounds for the rebels.

 The rebel ships were also sound designed to be jankier and put together like scrap ships through sound and the empire was more high tech, well constructed. 

He also pitched the lightsabers to different tones, Darth faders being a minor key and ben Kenobi’s is more of a C major chord. And when they get together to fight there is disharmony.

With R2D2 they managed to convey emotions and communicate without speech but using sounds and bleeps. Performing with sound the same way a human does with language. The tone, the speed, the pitch, the performance made a difference in understanding R2D2.

Overall this article brings critical reflection on the abilities of sound design to convey messages and meanings. As well as motifs, space, georgarphy. Time, power, struggle. Evil, good. Anything to an extent, and also touches on the ability we have to passively relate that to common contexts in our society. And the balance between abstract and reality can create a buffer zone in which sound design exists.

I decided as it was part of my goals to learn synthesis and the modular this term that it also fits in perfectly to the music asked for in this video game. I booked the synth lab and started practising and learning the machine. I began playing on the Minilogue which is very simple and has built-in presets for you to play with. I recorded long play sessions of exploring these sounds onto logic which I will further refine.

I also began watching videos on the euro rack. I wanted to record some sounds that were progressive and ambient. I decided to watch a video explaining the terminology of modular synthesis and what everything means. VCO? VCA? CV? and understanding the fundamentals of modular synthesis.

I began playing around with the Eurorack and deciding what to go and how to do it. I found modular synthesis to be very organic and progressive with the patching. I sort of understood what was happening but it was almost as if the audio was leading me down a path and not necessarily the other way around. I created a few ideas and recorded for around thirty-forty minutes to get a varied range of sounds to use for composition in Ableton for music in the video game.

Here is a photo of a patch of something I made.

Towards the end, I found this Eurorack didn’t quite offer what I wanted and felt like it was back to the drawing board. Perhaps instead of using synthesis as the main compositional tool, I can sample what I’ve recorded onto Ableton and create an actual piece of music that resembles what I’ve been asked to do.

I also discovered VCV Rack towards the end of my three-hour session in the synthesis room. A free open-source modular rack unit to play around with. I will keep using this to practice my skills and to bounce any sounds and patches I make to use in Ableton for my music submission.

After my session, I ended up with some sounds from the Minilogue and Eurorack modular synthesizer. As well as VCV Rack and further synthesis knowledge with a plan for what’s coming. I believe I must now combine what I’ve sampled from the synth bench alongside Ableton and perhaps record some ambient sound design effects? Other skills I’ve learnt from previous modules. And look deeper into sound/music for games knowledge.