This piece was inspired by an article I read in The Age by Heather Holst titled ‘Too many lack a place to call their own’. It brought about the idea of having a studio discussion about the facts and issues discussed in the article, but also with the addition of some of my own experiences being on the estate. This piece was also strongly influenced by Radiolabs Jad Abumrads audio conference Music: A Force For Good (And Sometimes Evil). Generally most Radiolab pieces I have listened to played a roll in shaping this piece, for instance my opening montage was intended to sound similar to theirs. The discussion of music as punctuation really resonated with me and I felt this piece was an opportunity to test my ability to utilise music correctly. I wanted to explore ways of using music to lift my monotonous voice and to connect listeners to the emotional life of the story. I made sure so as not to just put it over everything but instead use it as a comma. I tried to fade it in and out making the listener pay attention and also using it as a kind of full stop, dividing the narrative into chapters.

Chris Abrahams and Sherre DeLys’ Energy Grids really influenced they way I used sound to portray a place. I used similar eerie sounds of squawking crows and peculiar electric noises to enhance the spoken words. Although I enjoyed exploring sounds capacity to convey meaning, I found it extremely difficult to avoid words becoming the focus of the piece. Once voice is introduced is difficult to fade it out and use sound to communicate the rest of the story. I tried to just use the studio discussion and location narration as way of grouping material into meaningful chunks whilst letting sound be the tool for carving out time, establishing an emotional tone by either speeding it up or slowing it down.

I think this particular piece has taught me to listen in a deeper and more nuanced way. I have noticed that there are endless possibilities in terms of creating emotion when using material generated from the studio. I have found that it is often quite intuitive, after listening to a sentence over and over you start to hear the sounds you can add over the top. I am lucky enough to live in a house that contains a vast amount of musical equipment, hence why there is often faint keyboard and drum machine sounds heard.