https://soundcloud.com/donandsherri/cream-clouds-rule-everything-around-me
C.R.E.A.M (Clouds Rule Everything Around Me) acts to encapsulate the multifaceted approach that studio sounds have on an audio piece and their ability to augment an environment while still staying true to the story.
The literal locale of the piece acted as both inspiration and detriment for myself as the producer, for I found that the unwelcoming and downtrodden environment of the Atherton Gardens Commission Homes both scared me and intrigued me. Having the already well founded frameworks of the Helping Hoops Basketball program to work under, I felt comforted in the knowledge that I would not be hassled too much; however, when I went out to record all the background sounds, I felt highly vulnerable and out of my comfort zone.
The experience surrounding the act of recording the sounds for the ’24 Hour Folio’ was a wash of excitement and anticipation that unfortunately often culminated into a lackluster affair, where sounds blurred into one and became somewhat indistinguishable. However, this muddiness and non distinct nature that the sounds took, also acted to generate new and unique sounds that employed their blurred aspects.
By centering the conceptual piece around ‘the life of a Helping Hoops coach’, I aimed to take the listener on a journey through their weekly routine of arriving to work; and play on the idea that through this repetition, the coaches could almost find a beat and melody in the mundane banal sides of their session. The washed out children’s voices and the coupling of the Cello to the beat of their footsteps acts as testament to this beat in repetition. By adding a reverb emulator to the children’s voices, the piece was able to effectively create a sense of distance; however I feel that the distance felt by the listener was a literal one, rather than the mental one I had hoped to create.
After receiving feedback from my last pieces, I headed into the production of C.R.E.A.M with a more genuine approach to narrative and the cause & effect relationship that generates listener engagement and interaction. C.R.E.A.M as a conceptual piece, employs three different scenes or movements, and aims to transition through each scene with bridging Cello sounds. By softening the transition between scenes with the Cello, I attempted to draw less attention to the changes in locale, and further this sense of noises culminating inside the coach’s head to reach a washed out feeling.