Below is the link to my blog for hand-in:

https://henrybrewer.myblog.arts.ac.uk/

Further on from the last blog post I wrote detailing where I had got so far with my piece, I have now finished it and would like to share my final outcomes and opinions.

In my previous post I had just finished experimenting with the creepy, distorted laughter track that I am having loop for approximately a minute throughout the piece. I wasn’t sure about this track but I decided to keep it in the end and see where the piece took me. I also recorded a scream to play amidst all of the overwhelming noise and edited it in the exact same way as the laughter.

Here is the scream before editing:

As you can hear, it’s not much of a scream and sounds quite silly. After adding the plugins it sounds like this (you might want to turn your volume down):

Again, it’s quite gimmicky on its own and I’m not 100% sure that I like it, but it does contribute to general overwhelming sonic nausea of the piece.

I was quite unsure on how to develop the piece past its climax with all the noises, and I decided to let tracks fade away into the distance gradually, one by one. In the case of the looping coins I automated the track so that the dry output on the reverb would slowly go down in order to give a sense of it getting further and further away. I then also decreased the wet output later on to make the track fade into silence.

I also added a low rumbling sub-synth to add to the overwhelming sense of anxiety within the piece. I know that long drawn-out bass notes are a bit of a cliché that can definitely be overused within the context of sound art, however it is quite low in the mix and not a prominent feature of the track at this point.

One final element I added to the climax of the piece was a simple square-wave tone on the Retro Synth plugin on my DAW. Whilst recording it I slowly moved the pitch wheel on my MIDI keyboard up and down to create a slow siren-like tone. This is what the result sounded like:

After the climax of the piece, I decided I wanted to spend the rest of the piece having things gradually quieten down whilst still keeping a general sense of unease. Most tracks were gone by the 01:40 mark but I kept the low bass note and added some pitched down field recordings of my kettle and fan to give the sound extra texture.

I also bought in an extra element of white noise on Retro Synth with a slow flanger on it as well just to help keep the piece moving and not make it feel stagnant:

I actually really like this sound with the flanger and I think I would use it again on another more laid back piece as a more prominent feature.

I then had to decide how I wanted to end the piece. I decided to have the low bass note and white noise slowly fade away and I used the same trick on the background arcade soundscape that I used on the coins track, making it sound as though it was slowly getting further away. Initially, to end the track I wanted to use an outtake from my field recordings of the arcade, with my girlfriend saying “Yes, I won some!” at one of the penny falls machines. I tried putting this into the track, however I couldn’t quite make it work on its own with the noise gate and it sounded too clunky.

Here is the track I ended up not using:

The noise gate was too harsh and any higher threshold resulted in no background noise being cut out at all.

However, when I was just experimenting I put the track through the vocal transformer plugin and a large reverb and got a very interesting result:

I liked this effect and decided to see how it sounded if I put it in the middle of the piece with all of the overwhelming sounds, and it sort of sounded like someone talking on the very brink of intelligibility, but was still indistinguishable from the rest of the soundscape. I decided to keep it in.

To end the piece I decided that after everything else had faded away, I was going to have the menacing, distorted laugh loop one more time. It serves as a bit of a jumpscare, and as this piece is based on my social anxiety in public spaces, serves as a reminder to the listener that it is never truly over and always creeps back.

Final Thoughts

Now that I am finished with the piece, it seems like a good time to look back and reflect. Overall, I do enjoy the concept of the piece and the idea of trying to make a piece slightly grating and unlistenable whilst keeping its artistic merit has certainly been a challenge. The main concept of it was to mirror the severe anxiety that I sometimes get in public spaces when I am overwhelmed by the amount of people and sounds around me. I always want these experiences to be over as soon as possible and in a way I wanted to recreate that feeling through sound. It’s the most aggressive-sounding of my pieces yet with the use of harsh distortion on some tracks to increase the overall intensity.

There are definitely aspects that I believe I could improve though. I think the overall mix could be cleaner and better blended together – this is a skill I am looking to develop more as my projects go along. Throughout all of my pieces this year, the mixing has always been a point for improvement and I really want to refine my skills as I go along.

It’s the shortest of the pieces I have handed in so far, and whilst that is not necessarily a bad thing, I do feel as though I was slightly running out of ideas towards the end and maybe the concept wasn’t as strong as my previous pieces. Ideally I would have made a few pieces and seen what my favourite was, and that is definitely a practice I will be taking forward into the future.

Overall, although I am generally happy with the concept of this piece, I feel as though there are still technical aspects for me to work on in the future, which I believe is a good thing! Every piece should be a learning process.

Towards the end of our lecture on graphic scores, we were given the task of coming up with a graphic score and then getting into groups to improvise around it. Everyone in the class drew a graphic score and then the four strongest scores were chosen for us to improvise around. Unfortunately I don’t have access to the pictures of the scores – I drew a picture of the boat I live on surrounded by the buildings it was moored next to at the time. Admittedly this wasn’t very good as I am not the best visual artist (hence why I am studying sound art!), so naturally it didn’t get picked.

The score that my group ended up improvising around was a drawing by my classmate James of a sort of dystopian cityscape with many layers to it. In a way this was quite easy, as one of us could improvise a part as the buildings, one as the sky, one as the road and one as all of the subterranean aspects of the city. As my strongest instrument is the bass guitar, I decided to use this instrument to represent the underground lines, sewers and everything else that lies beneath a city. As we didn’t have much time to discuss what our plans were before playing the score, it was pretty much an improvisational piece. I have improvised more traditional, structured forms of music in an ensemble many times before, however this experience was different as we were more focused on creating a soundscape.

Here is an excerpt of the result:

As you can hear, it is quite messy and clunky and I think none of us were entirely sure of what we were doing. It’s actually a lot more difficult to improvise a soundscape as you don’t have music theory to fall back on like you would in a more conventional musical scenario. I was trying to keep a low rumbling tone on the bass to keep the piece grounded as it felt like it would be useful to have one underlying aspect that ties the piece together. If I were to do this again I think I would bring my fretless bass and my pedalboard to add effects to what I am doing. I would also have made more of an effort to keep eye contact with other members of the group so we could communicate better, as I feel this was lacking.

Overall, I do realise that this was a 1st attempt and everyone has to start from somewhere! I’m happy to have done it once so that if I revisit it, I will have more of an idea on how to set off. Everyone in the class was non-judgmental and that certainly helped as well – it was good to have a free, open space to experiment in.

In one of our first sessions, we looked at graphic scores and how they have been used in experimental music and sound art. I had never previously heard of graphic scores before and as someone who has always struggled to read and play music in the traditional notated form (my first instrument was guitar, which is very rarely read from traditional notation), I found the concept very interesting and wanted to research into the concept a little more.

The first example of modern graphical notation is Morton Feldman’s ‘Projection 1″ from 1950. This graphic score looks almost like a circuit diagram, and is designed to be played consistently quiet, with different boxes in the score representing “instrument, register, number of simultaneous sounds, mode of production, and duration” according to Paul Griffiths in his book ‘Modern Music and After: Directions Since 1945’. Time is represented by space, and the arrangement is certainly very sparse, which is of course not uncommon as Feldman was mostly a minimalist composer. I find it interesting and and of course very innovative, but I’m not sure it’s something I would find myself listening to very often as because it is so minimal my mind starts to wander a little bit (although this probably more on me than the piece).

Another example of graphical notation is Brian Eno’s score for his 1978 album ‘Music for Airports’. Himself not being a traditionally trained musician, and struggling with traditional notation in the way that I also do, he once said in an interview “quite a lot of what I do has to do with sound texture, and you can’t notate that anyway… That’s because musical notation arose when sound textures were limited”. The score features very unorthodox instructions such as “play the note C every 21 seconds”, a method which I personally really like as it gives the musicians playing it a lot of freedom. Each track on the album has a different score with very different illustrations and patterns. Track ‘1/1’ is made up of lines and dots, whereas ‘2/2’ consists of grey rectangular blocks.

I think this way of working really speaks to me and is something I would be interested in working on in the future, although I should maybe brush up on my drawing skills a bit! The album is very calming and was composed with the purpose of being played in airports in mind, to make the atmosphere more calm and to be easily interruptible without it ruining the music. Although before looking into graphic notation I was a big fan of Eno’s work with David Bowie and Roxy Music, I had never listened to his ambient solo works before. I thoroughly enjoyed this album and will listen through his catalogue more in weeks to come.

There are, however, older examples of composers trying to break free from traditional forms of notation. On designer David Hall’s website, I found an example of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No.32, in which you can clearly see Beethoven deviating from the normal way of notating music at the time:

All in all, I find graphic scores to be a much more exciting, creative way of notating music and I would like to experiment with it in the future. As my drawing skills aren’t too great, perhaps I could use a picture that I’ve taken as my score, or use AI to generate the art and then improvise off of that. Who knows where the future will take me…

Bibliography

1. David Hall. 2018. The art of visualising music: a brief history of graphic notation. [online] Available at: <http://davidhall.io/visualising-music-graphic-scores/> [Accessed 29 April 2022].
2. Griffiths, P., 2002. Modern Music and After: Directions Since 1945. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p.94.
3. Reverb Machine. 2019. Deconstructing Brian Eno’s “Music For Airports” | Reverb Machine. [online] Available at: <https://reverbmachine.com/blog/deconstructing-brian-eno-music-for-airports/> [Accessed 29 April 2022].

When starting my piece for this project I wasn’t quite sure what direction I wanted to take it. I’d gone to the seaside to record the change coming out of slot machines, but I hadn’t properly recorded it with an idea of what I wanted to do with it. Originally I thought that I could try and do something rhythmic with all the different recordings but in practice I found it very difficult and decided I needed to change what I was doing. Seeing as the theme of the piece didn’t have to be ‘change’ anymore, I just decided to put a few of the field recordings into my DAW and see what I felt like making.

I started by looping the 18 second sound clip that I included in one of my recent blog posts and used it as a sort of background soundscape to open up with. I put a few plug-ins onto the track to enhance the track a little bit. I added a stereo spread and sample delay to help spread the track across the stereo field, and a short room reverb (I’m not entirely sure why I did this but I felt as though it made the track sound a little better).

I then used a technique that I had used in a previous project – I looped the sound effect of coins dropping that I previously posted on this blog, to make it sound as if it was never ending and the coins never stop dropping. I did this previously in my first project where I made it sound as though a door would not stop creaking open for 2 minutes. I find that if used effectively, this can definitely create a sense of unease in the listener as normally you would not hear that sound continuing for that amount of time – you usually only hear coins dropping from a machine or a door creaking for a couple of seconds at a time.

Already from having these two tracks put together, with all of their overwhelming noises, I figured out that I could make a disturbing piece of sound art that relates to my social anxiety when I am in public spaces. It would be an interesting concept to make something that is purposefully unpleasant to listen to, as I feel like that is one of the only ways to make an audience understand truly how horrible anxiety can be at times. To listen to it and just feel overwhelmed and want it to be over is a very uncommon reaction to want to get from an audience, but I feel as though it could be an interesting experiment.

I tried to add a couple more field recordings from the arcade but it ended up not sounding great and decided it was time to add some new textures.

I found an experimental synth preset on my DAW called ‘Old Robot Factory’ which was very percussive and eerie sounding. I changed some of the settings and added an EQ and some stereo spread and this is the result I got:

At the moment I’m keeping it quite low in the mix, as having it too high does make it feel a bit like a horror/sci-fi track from the mid 20th century. However, if you have it quieter it just adds to a general feeling of unease.

The last thing I’ve added so far to cause a big sense of anxiety is a high pitched, distorted laugh that sort of sounds like a deranged child-demon mocking the listener. Here is the original piece of audio that I recorded, without any plugins:

As you can hear, it doesn’t sound particularly amazing. In order to fix this I added a vocal transformer, chorus, EQ, reverb, heavy compression and distortion. Here is the end result:

I’m not sure how I feel about this sound at the moment but I’m going to stick with it for now and see where the piece takes me. I think it definitely adds to the piece feeling very overwhelming, so in that sense it does work but I’m not sure if it maybe comes across too gimmicky.

This is as far as I am with the piece so far, and I will update the blog as I go along. I think I’m happy with the direction I’m taking, although if I had more time I would probably start off a few pieces and see which one I think is best.

In our psychcoacoustics lecture a few weeks ago, I came across a condition that I had never heard of before – Hyperacusis.

What is Hyperacusis?

According to the NHS website, “Hyperacusis is when everyday sounds seem much louder than they should”. It sometimes appears on its own but can also be caused by other conditions such as tinnitus (constant ringing of the ears), migraines and Lyme disease, amongst others.

The NHS website also states that sounds that can affect people with the condition include “jingling coins, a barking dog, a car engine, someone chewing or a vacuum cleaner”. Seeing as I just went to Hastings to record jingling coins (the first sound that NHS lists as causing difficulties), I wanted to research this condition more and find out how it affects people who have it.

How does it affect people in day-to-day life?

It’s all well and good reading about the condition and grasping how it might affect people, but for my research I wanted to find actual case studies of people who suffer from hyperacusis and see how it really impacts their day-to-day lives. I found an ABC interview from 2014 with Joyce Cohen and Ben Meltzer (https://abcnews.go.com/Health/quest-silence-living-wth-hyperacusis/story?id=22284805), a couple from New York who both suffer from an extreme form of the condition. The interviewer follows Cohen around the streets of New York, and it becomes apparent just how much this condition can affect people. Cohen walks around with industry grade ear protection over her head, which she only takes off “if I’m out in my block in the middle of the night…But typically, it’s too hazardous”.

Seemingly innocent noises such as a doorman blowing a whistle have an incredibly strong affect on Cohen – she describes the sensation as her “ears being filled with burning acid”. Matters are even worse for her husband, Ben Meltzer, who hasn’t been able to leave his apartment for years due to his condition. In fact, the only time he has left his apartment recently is for the interview, and even then the team has to take extra special precautions to accommodate him, such as removing all jewellery and footwear, and switching their phones to silent. Even when they are 29 stories above street level, they still have to briefly stop the interview when vehicle with a siren drives past the building on ground level.

In other cases hyperacusis has had an even more serious effect on those who are unlucky enough to develop it. A few years ago two young musicians who were seriously affected by the condition tragically committed suicide. Meltzer has since set up an online support group, Hyperacusis Ear Pain, in memory of the two.

What can be done to cure it?

Unfortunately, there is no specific medical treatment to help cure hyperacusis. However, there are certain therapies that have proven useful for some who suffer from the condition. CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy), according to the British Tinnitus Assocation, is used to “recognise what is helpful and/or unhelpful in your everyday life when it comes to living with hyperacusis”. The therapist that works with the patient then tries to help find ways to manage the condition and reduce the impact it has on day-today activities.

There is also more specific therapy that is occasionally used for the condition, often delivered by therapists that also work with conditions such as tinnitus. They will usually work with the patient to gradually introduce aspects of noise into their life in a process known as sound therapy. The patient will be given a small device that plays quiet amounts of background noise, which is often something similar to white noise. They monitor how this affects the patient and then continue from that point as required. In a lot of cases this will be successful however there have definitely been cases where this hasn’t worked and the patient has kept suffering from the symptoms.

Bibiliography

1. nhs.uk. 2019. Noise sensitivity (hyperacusis). [online] Available at: <https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/hyperacusis/> [Accessed 29 April 2022].
2. Deutsch, G., 2014. On the Quest for Silence: Living With Hyperacusis. [online] ABC News. Available at: <https://abcnews.go.com/Health/quest-silence-living-wth-hyperacusis/story?id=22284805> [Accessed 29 April 2022].
3. ENT Health. 2019. Hyperacusis – ENT Health. [online] Available at: <https://www.enthealth.org/conditions/hyperacusis/#:~:text=There%20are%20no%20specific%20surgical,affected%20ear%2C%20or%20both%20ears.> [Accessed 29 April 2022].
4. Baguley, D. and McFerran, D., 2019. Hyperacusis. [online] British Tinnitus Association. Available at: <https://www.tinnitus.org.uk/hyperacusis> [Accessed 29 April 2022].
5. Swft.nhs.uk. n.d. Hyperacusis information for audiology patients at Warwick Hospital. [online] Available at: <https://www.swft.nhs.uk/our-services/adult-hospital-services/audiology-hearing/hyperacusis> [Accessed 29 April 2022].

When we initially started this project, we were given the theme of ‘Change’. Although the theme eventually did end up changing to be whatever we wanted to take a piece about, I decided to stick with the original brief and record some change coming out of slot machines in an arcade, taking the brief rather literally (this was also a brilliant excuse to have a nice day out at the seaside which I rather enjoyed!)

As it was quite a last minute idea for me to go on the trip, I didn’t have time to take out a Zoom portable recorder so I had to record everything on my phone. I was initially very sceptical of this but decided to just press ahead anyway, and I found that I was quite happy with the results. Whilst I don’t think they were up to the same standard as a more professional recording device, I think that within a mix they would sound good enough to use.

Below are a couple of examples of recordings I made.

I think that the first, longer one could be used as a general background soundscape, although it is quite low quality. The second clip would sound great and I actually practiced using a noise gate and EQ to cut out all of the background noise and I think I now have a very usable piece of audio that can be placed over other clips to hide the small amount of noise that is still there:

I also saw a couple of really creepy looking arcade games that inspired me to maybe make something a little spooky: