AA1 - Semester 2 - Project

This project is a recreation of the sonic environment of a bus stop. There are various sounds of people walking, the pedestrian road signal, cars assing, moble phones beeping for text messages and rings, people speaking on the phone, etc. None of the sounds used (except for person talking to phone in Dutch language) are recorded from the original source; i.e. the sounds of the cars are made of other sounds and noises. In some cases -such as the ring of the mobile phone) MIDI technology has been utilised. There are also other sounds (particularly sounds of car engines), which are made using Plogue bidule. In reality however, there are many more sounds audible to an individual standing in a bus stop.
A number of sounds, which I used in this project, actually come out of my mouth! In these cases, I have recorded the sounds and have modified them using Protools. Utilising various effects, time stretch and other processes in protocols, in some cases I have dramatically changed the original sound and have simulated a real-world sound.
There also are a number of sounds, which I have used Plogue for. Particularly digital (or rather artificial) sounds such as mobile beeps are made by plogue.
My approach was to get as close as possible to the real situation of a bus stop. Although the result is not the best simulation of that particular situation, I have come very close to some of my aims.
Most of the issues, which I had to deal with, were regarding the ordinary errors and problems of using digital mediums such as computers.
The software that I had to use in order to compile my project (Cubase) was/is not the most reliable software and it occasionally slowed me very down.
In general I experimented new ways of manipulating various sounds and noises; The most important part was that each single element of this project should imitate the some existing sounds and should lead the listeners’ imagination! This needed a new approach to observe the sound scene.
The MP3 of the final result is here:



The documentation for this project can be downloaded too: