Sound Scape- Justification

For our soundscape we were sent to the Albert docks in Liverpool and given the task of collecting sounds from a bygone time. As the main theme was a bygone time our individual theme was war. We collected various sounds that related to war including sounds of ships we heard and things we heard inside the museums including the sound of trains we found as they can be used as they were heavily used in world war two for refugees and defensive uses. Our initial ideas were using the sounds we found to create a sound scape that would make you think you’re in world war two like using the ships sound we found to show naval warfare but finally we decided to use the sound scape as a way of showing the home front of war. We mainly chose the effects of the war on children as even though they’re limited with resources they’re also fatherless as mainly children became fatherless after WW2 therefore we showed how children are effected due to war.

This is the entirety of our final soundscape.

This part of the sound scape was manipulated with a ‘wa-wa’ which sounds like the sound is being thrown left to right to make it sound like planes are continuously flying overhead to make you think you’re in the middle of an air

raid. And the sound is thrown across as the sound would be stereo so a left and right speaker while be used to get both sides heard.

This sound of children playing was the main sound throughout the scape and started it off after the voice of the American solider as this was the main influence of adapting our sounds around it. We manipulated this sound by

making it sound warped and making the children playing sound less like children to make it sound like there was an emotional impact on the children due to the trauma of the war.

This sound was the sound of the bombs dropping with it making you think that it’s continuously falling around you. The sound was compressed because it wasn’t clear enough to make the sound distinctive enough for it to have a bigger impact. Reverb was added to nearly all of the sounds because the echo will help create an atmosphere as the air raid wouldn’t be in an enclosed space so it would be out in the open and the reverb would help create the atmosphere.

As the sound scape started off originally as the children sound laughing and playing it was also reversed in a section to make it sound less happy and more stretched and disturbing. As the other sounds were added on a form of story was created with long attacks and short and long sustains with long fading decays. I personally think that the sound of overhead planes worked incredibly as it makes you try and look for the sounds as they would constantly flying over. The sounds make you paint a picture or film in your head as the sound is a story at the beginning it is all happy and at the end it is gloomy and down. We layered the sound upon each other to make it full but big.

As our initial idea was war it was really portrayed through the sound scape by showing the home front and emotional effects of war. I personally think the manipulation of the sounds with reverb and reversing as well as a ‘wa-wa’ worked well due to our initial theme and went well with our task we were given as it is a sound scape based on a bygone time i.e. world war two.