I decided to give it another go, and the sound waves actually turned out the way that I had wanted it to! The sound waves faded off to nothing (as pictured above) and I was actually quite surprised that it did. Initially, I had to fade it out in order to achieve that effect. This time, it happened voluntarily.

I wanted this to represent life in general – how life starts out, we go through the busyness and confusion of every day life, and eventually die. As I thought about the next two tracks for my 3-channel audio, I wanted another to represent the people in your life; the interactions and relationships you make with other human beings, and how they come and go as well. For the last track, I was looking to record sound from people just coming out of the tram and walking along the streets, signifying how the world around you continues on despite your birth, busyness, and death.

Above is the visual image of my edited sound waves. What I want to achieve from this experimental sound is something symbolic in nature, referring bits of a single element to our everyday lives. Following up from what I explained earlier, here are the individual tracks with a detailed explanation of how and what I did to achieve my desired sound.

Channel 1 – Self

https://soundcloud.com/marissa-963960003/self

For this audio, I chose a small segment from the original audio clip, where I recorded sound from a moving tram. I then amplified and stretched it, producing a visually satisfactory track that represented what I was looking for. I faded it in as well to avoid abruptness.

Channel 2 – Relationships

I sat in a tram, and recorded audio from inside. As I listened to my recording later on, I decided to pick a small part where the doors of the tram where closing, producing a beeping sort of sound that reminded me of cardiac monitors at hospitals. Using that small bit of audio, I duplicated it several times to fill up the 30-second audio track, and faded the audio out. I also used noise removal, where I chose a small bit as a profile before applying it to the rest of the audio. It turned out to be pretty interesting because the voices of the people on the tram that day turned out to be very muffled as compared to the beeping sound of the closing doors. I wanted this to represent the lives of people that come and go from your life.

Channel 3 – World 

https://soundcloud.com/marissa-963960003/world

This audio is a recording of people coming out of and going in to a tram. I left this piece raw and unedited, representing the world and environment around you, and how it carries on despite your life and death.

As of right now, I don’t quite know how another person might feel about my piece if they were to listen to it at SIGNAL. However, I’m quite satisfied with this progress so far and I hope that others would be able to listen to this 3-channel story and conjure their own interpretations. Below is the completed edit, a compilation of all three 30-second pieces.

https://soundcloud.com/marissa-963960003/completed-edit