Sound Design Sketch #2

Sunrise on Kepler-452b

My second sound design sketch—made using the FB360 Spatial Workstation plugins—is pretty different from my first. My approach this time around was an extremely concrete one: the sketch has a specific story; it has a beginning, middle, and end; and it prominently features written dialogue. The original version was 90 seconds, but I cut a version down to about 70 seconds for class.

Samples

I recorded the dialogue from my computer’s text-to-speech function, and the whistling sound from the beginning of the sketch is my kettle. Other than that, I used a sample of wood breaking apart, a sample of some well-garbled chain-shaking, a sample of some owls, and one of some frogs. There’s also some beeping, some cicadas, and hard drive and cassette noises.

Using Spatial Plugins

I got a lot of mileage out of the spatial plugins, but it’s clear to me that they’re most effective when supplemented by visuals. I’m also sure that someone spending more and more time with them could get more out of them than I could. I’m curious about experimenting a little more, and thinking about ways we can encourage listeners to hear things in an imagined space.