This piece centred itself around a tiny section of interview I recorded. I asked Aleisha, a resident of the estate, what she didn’t like about the place and she replied with a short response, “the junkies and the alcoholics”. This response inspired me to record sounds that put you in the shoes of one of those junkies. The piece manifested itself in a very different way due to the way I constructed the piece using scenes I had in mind as appose to a written out structure. All I had to work from was my imagination and five words. Originally, I had the intention to kind of float in and out of different emotions, however the narrative/story/message wasn’t strong enough to inspire and push me to create something aurally engaging. Instead, I decided to stick with the one feeling, which to me was a feeling of isolation and distress.
After listening to the opening sequence of Hearing voices by John Wynne I decided to include the tram sounds at the beginning and end to signal the endless dreary repetition of life as a junkie. At times I went for a wide range to make a place feel big and played around with the frequencies so as to give each voice a place in the mix and to give a sense of clarity and at times muddiness to the sounds. Radiolabs Jad Abumrads audio conference, Music: A Force For Good (And Sometimes Evil), gave me lots of tips and things to remember in terms of the power that music has on a piece. I used the music as a collector and channeller of previously created emotion, rather than the device that creates the emotion, which I am often guilty of doing. With the scenes in mind I altered the music from Diegetic to non-diegetic allowing the music to switch to full frontal and create the effect of the junkie escaping to another place. I then allowed music to frame the picture and tell the listener where they are; framing the experience so it was as if the camera was panning into the other room where a family was preparing dinner.
I think a significant change in the way I think about Radio’s New Wave is that organization is key in terms of field production work. I have learnt that rather than going to the location without a story and just recording everything I hear is often a waste of time. It’s important to go to the location with a story so as to avoid returning again and again to gather more sounds. Looking forward to further push the boundaries of how I can use the sound of a location to tell a story.