Soundscape Assessment

I chose to do my soundscape of shopping, through my recording I found it leaned more towards supermarket shopping.



Here is the link to download my finished edit.

The problems I found during the recording that as I was always recording in crowded areas there was a lot of background noise and I found it hard to get clear cut sounds such as till beeps.

I found the editing stage quite easy to do once I got into it, but it was most difficult knowing where to start! I wanted to tell a story in that it starts by someone getting out cash, their trip to the shops (fom quiet to quite chaotic) and ending with them leaving. I did not aim to make it sound realistic which is why the middle section is a jumble of sounds.

Hope you like it, comments welcome!
=]

Soundscape Progress

The next stage in making my soundscape is to come up with a list of the sounds I want to capture and after that I need to schedule when I am going to get them recorded in order to make the most of my time with the equipment.

As my soundscape is about shopping I want to get the following sounds and where I plan on recording them:

• General high street crowd noise: Bath high street/Southgate shopping centre
• Bell when door opens: Bakery on Chelsea Road, Bath (with their permission)
• Scanner noise/beep: Sainsburys (or generated in Logic if there is too much background noise)
• Rustling shopping bags: at home
• Cash register&money: Bath Spa SU Shop (with their permission)
• Automatic doors opening: a shop in Southgate with auto doors.
• Tannoy announcements and tinny sounding shop music: Sainsburys often has tannoy announcements
• Sound of trolleys: Sainsburys
• Cars going to shops: any road in Bath

Soundscapes

The Wikipedia definition of a soundscape is :

A soundscape is a sound or combination of sounds that forms or arises from an immersive environment.

 A soundscape is something that allows us to picture a scene or environment through sound and without us actually having to see it. It can tell a story or just be a general insight into a place.

A key figure in soundscaping is Raymond Murray Schafer, more commonly known as R. Murray Schafer. He was an author, composer, musical educator as well as an environmentalist.

Schafer suggests that there are 3 elements to a soundscape:

• Keynote Sound A keynote means the same here as it does when talking about any music, a keynote is that which defines the key of a piece.
  
• Sound Signals Are the sounds that stand out to us and we probably pay more attention to, for example sirens or alarm bells.
  
• Soundmark Similar to the term landmark it means a sound that is specific to a place.
  

A simple example of how to build a soundscape can be found here.