I Would Rather Walk With You Participants

Aim to record clean sounds in a clean sound environment. Clean sounds have as little background noise as possible. A clean environment is one that has good ‘acoustic’ qualities, and does not refer to whether you have dusted or hoovered lately!

Selecting Your Recording Environment

In sound recording, ‘acoustic’ is used to describe the sound (sonic) qualities of a room or space. Rooms and spaces have different acoustical properties. For example, theatres and cathedrals have specific internal shapes constructed from materials designed to amplify voices and musical instruments, such as stone and wood. Offices are designed to reduce volume with acoustical ceiling tiles, sound-absorbing cubicle panels, foam and carpets.

In your house, rooms that amplify sound have opposing surfaces, and feature hard materials such as tiles, steel and wood. People often enjoy singing in the shower or loo because the opposing surfaces and hard tiles create a reverb that is pleasurable to listen to. In contrast, rooms with carpets and soft furnishings absorb sound and the colour and volume of the sound is dulled.

The best room for recording in has as little reverb as possible, such as the living room, bedrooms, and spaces with carpet and soft furnishings. Have a walk around your house and see which room has sounds the dullest. This is the best spot to record in. (I know someone who records podcasts under their duvet, and it sounds fantastic because it is so dull).

Recording in your garden and other outside spaces can also work if there are not too many background noises or opposing walls; as outdoor sound is not contained in a space, it does not amplify as well. I Would Rather Walk With You is an outdoor artwork, and it would be good to do some outside recordings to match the acoustic environment of the West Wing Battery. If you do not have access to a garden at home, do not worry. I do not have a garden, and work around this by editing recording to sound like they were made outdoors.   

Making Your Recording Environment ‘Clean’

It is important to listen to your recording environment, to see if there are any background noises you can eliminate or reduce. Our homes are full of background noises from a variety of sources:

• Air conditioning/central heating: Turn it off if you can, or cover it with a blanket or coat to reduce the volume;
• Cars/Vans/Planes/Trains: If you live in an area where vehicle traffic is audible, try to choose a room or time of day where it is less invasive;
• Clocks ticking: Remove them from the room and your wrist;
• Fluorescent lighting hum: Turn it off if possible;
• Refrigerators: Select another room, or cover with a blanket;
• Computers/Tablets/TV whirring away or pinging with notifications: Ideally, turn the WIFI or the device off;
• Telephone rings, beeps, vibrations, notifications: All mobile telephones in the room should be put in airplane mode during recording, as opposed to silent. When they are set to silent, they still transmit frequencies and cause electrical interference that is audible in recordings. I once undertook recording on a portable ‘Zoom’ recorder, with my phone on silent. During the recording, I did not know that I had received 10 text messages. When I listened to my recording the next day, I could hear a repetitive tone in the recording that was so loud, my recording was unusable.
• Anything plugged into mains power: Mains powered devices have an electrical hum (AC Buzz). If you can’t turn it off, covering with a coat or blanket helps;
• If outdoors, sounds of people mowing their lawns, chatting, playing, or even the wind on a breezy day: Select another time to record;

Most unwanted background noises can be dealt with by turning items off temporarily, covering items with a blanket or coat, and removing small items from the room. For outdoor recording, selecting a different time of day can be helpful. Battery powered devices—like a mobile telephone—are less likely to cause an electrical hum.

Sound recordists have trained their ears to very aware of sounds we might usually ignore. If you would like to develop your listening skills, check out the Listening Exercises on the website.

A sound effect is any sound recorded or performed live that tells a story. In I Would Rather Walk With You, one sound effect ‘barrage balloon’ simulates the story and effect of the barrage balloon that was tethered near to the West Wing Battery in the 1940s.

A good sound effect sounds like what it is, without needing to tell the listener what they are hearing. Sound effects can make a story come alive; sweeping the listener into the story. Films provide a good example of the importance of sound effects. Without sound effects, films—particularly animated films—lack life and do not sound ‘real’. A great example can be seen in the work of Foley artists, who use objects to create sounds based on a character’s actions in movies and TV programmes.

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You will create sound effects in a similar way to Foley artists, without the visual element. But, I am a strong believer that hearing gets to places sight cannot see. Hearing certain sounds triggers and creates stories and memories without the need to see those stories and memories on a screen. In a location like the West Wing Battery, sound is a powerful way to immerse people in its history and stories.&nbsp; Sound can also help us remember the past. Sounds disappear from our soundscape, and when we hear them again we are transported to a different moment in time. Some of the sounds that were unique to the West Wing Battery and Fort Burgoyne no longer exist. They are lost, with no known recordings. We are going to try and recreate them. Can you record these sound effects as though you are trying to preserve them for a museum collection?

1. WRITE DOWN ALL THE SOUNDS YOU HEAR.

Take a few minutes to do this. If you are with other people, read all your lists out loud, noting differences. Each person will have a different list as listening is very personal. All answers are correct. These sounds describe your acoustic environment. This simple exercise can be performed anywhere by anyone. It would be a good idea to try it several times in contrasting rooms to get into the habit of listening.

2. CATEGORISE THE SOUNDS

Now we are going to divide the lists in various ways. Start by assigning the letters, N, H or T to each sound, depending on whether it is a sound made by nature, a human sound or a technological sound. Which category predominates?

Now place an X beside each sound you produced. Were most of the sounds on your lists produced by you or by others?

Some sounds were constant throughout your listening period; others may have been repetitive, occurring more than once, and some were heard once only. Assign the letter C for constant, R for repetitive and O for once beneath each sound on your list.  (By the way, can you think of a sound that has been going on continuously ever since you began these exercises that you haven’t noticed before?)

We are a part of our acoustic environment, and make sound in our environment. But what is the opposite of sound? And what is silence?

3. WHAT IS SILENCE?

What does silence mean to you? Complete the sentence SILENCE IS ….

Here are some examples:

• Silence is thinking;
• Silence is darkness;
• Silence is tranquillity;

4. SILENT GAMES

Can you stand up and sit down around without making a sound?  If any sound is accidentally made (the brushing of clothing, the floor creaking etc) the person who made it should freeze, think about why the sound occurred and try to avoid making it again. The person who moves without making a sound is the winner.

• Can you move something out of the room and bring it back again without making a single sound?
• Can you pass a piece of paper to another person in absolute silence without making a sound?

5. WHAT DOES SOUND TELL US?

Take a moment to answer this question before reading the examples below. If you are with other people, discuss your answers:

Examples:

• Sound tells us where things are;
• Sound tells us direction things are coming from;
• Sound tells us what and who is in the room;
• Sound tells us a story or a memory.

6. THE SOUNDS OF YOUR NEIGHBOURHOOD

Every community has its own sounds and character. Can you think of any sounds that you only hear where you live? At my house, I often hear my neighbour’s dog barking. It is a unique sound that sometimes annoys me. There is a seagull that tap, tap, taps on a skylight in my house. And sometimes I hear a man called Gary pass by with his dog Brandy. She huffs and puffs so loudly as she pulls Gary along.

• What sounds make your community unique?
• What is their history?
• When and where can they be heard?
• Are they likely to survive?
• If not, perhaps they should be recorded to keep their memory alive.
• Do you like these sounds? Dislike them? Barely notice them?

7. SOUND TREASURE HUNT

Can you find the following sounds?

• • A buzzing sound;

• • A tinkling sound;

• • A thumping sound;

• • A crumbling sound;

• • A bubbling sound;

• • A squeaking sound;

• • A snapping sound;

• • A flaky sound;

If you can’t find them, perhaps you can create them?

These Listening Exercises are adapted from Schafer (1992) A Sound Education: 100 Exercises in Listening and Soundmaking.