A slightly awkward start to the blog post, as week 1 and week 2 are kind of merged together due to a complication in the time table. So i'm not sure if i'm a week behind or on track. Either way, here I am, attempting this blog/journal/diary - whatever you want to call it.
Sound design is something i've always been interested in, especially as i've been brought up as a musician and being surrounded by many musically talented people in my life. And then there is film and design which are two things I am personally passionate about - so with all of that combined, sound design is definitely something that interests me. However i've never really explored it in depth - i've never mixed music before or recorded foley's or play around with sound effects on programs; so i'm a little worried that I won't be able to produce something due to the technicalities of things, even if I have the vision that I want to produce in mind.
This week we experimented with recording sounds with the Zoom microphone, capturing atmosphereic sounds. I think atmosphere will be one of the sound options I go through with in my final piece (as we have to have 3 out of the following 5; foley/music/atmosphere/dialogue/sound effects), as I quite like the organic, rawness that it captures. Our homework task was then to gather some tracks that we like/are influenced by, and present them to the class. The following tracks are my preferences:
1. This is the full album of Takk... by Sigur Rós, an Icelandic band that produces very ethereal sounding music through the mixture of instruments and sound effects. Additionally, they sing many of their songs on Hopelandic, which is a made up language they have created. I think I appreciate this kind of music because they're creating music from legitimate instruments, yet they can transform it into something very celestial. The bands frontman, Jón Þór "Jónsi" Birgisson, also strums his guitar with a cello bow, which is a very creative form that also provides the unique sounds their band is known for. My personal favourite is the song Sæglópur "Lost at Sea", which is the 6th track on this album (you can listen to it from 23:37).
2. Ryan Lewis is a renown producer, especially for his work alongside rapper Macklemore. This track here, Fake Empire, is purely by Ryan Lewis (as now days everything he makes is generally alongside Macklemore). I enjoy the light, delicate beginning which gradually grows as the guitar and strings progress (and eventually gets rather upbeat further sounds are incorporated). In that sense, it carries a similar movement as Sæglópur. Again, it also uses raw instruments, and subtly combines it with some sound effects. As you can probably tell, I definitely appreciate music that isn't completely digitalised (as most of the mainstream music these days are). I grew up playing classical piano for 11 years of my life - so I guess thats where that part of me comes from, perhaps? There is also minimal dialogue used, which I like as it is subtle yet effective, as its not quite lyrical but definitely adds to the entire piece. On an additional note, Ryan Lewis states in the description of his video that he primarily used Pro-Tools to produce this track, which gives me some hope that I will be able to produce a decent track within the next few weeks.
3. I'm not going into too much detail in the next track, as its only really the first 50 seconds that I'm interested in. Initially this is a remix by Kyson of Bon Iver's song Holocene. The first 50 seconds of this piece carries a very beautiful ambience, as it includes atmospheric sounds of rain faintly falling. It is subtly laced with sounds effects, and then gradually grows as sounds of the saxophone are combined. All of this is yet again similar to the other tracks I have exemplified so far, so I think you can see a bit of a patern as to what kind of music i'm interested in and would like to try and produce myself for this assignment.
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