Before starting the course, I had heard of the practice of sound walking, mostly from the perspective of improving audio mixing skills from online tutorials. The concept is similar to what we learnt in Jose’s first session, listening to an environment blindfolded and plotting down a ‘soundscan’ visualised in circles. Recreating the 3D space heard in real life in a DAW helps to develop skills of sound placement and creating a wide, realistic mix. Despite this limited experience, I had never consciously done a sound walk for an extended amount of time over a larger area such as Elephant and Castle.
As it was my first sound walk, I initially struggled to divert the entirety of my focus to what I was hearing. The visual clutter in the area made it easy to lose concentration on sound, and I found myself being distracted by the happenings of the city, as well as the reactions of my peers in the group. This exercise helped demonstrate clearly how active listening is a skill that can take years to develop, as clearing my mind and focusing wholly on what was audible proved very challenging. Because of these distractions, once we had completed the sound walk, I found it hard to realise what I had experienced and taken from the activity. However, I found that sharing my experience with the class in the discussion that followed, as well as hearing other people’s perspectives on the experience, helped give me a much clearer understanding of the basics of sound walk practice.
For me, the element of sound walking that has been most interesting is when a walk is done using headphones and a recording device. Following Rory’s first session on field recording, I took a Zoom H5 to areas of the London underground and train stations, using the directionality of its mic arrangement to isolate and amplify sound sources that wouldn’t be heard otherwise. I found that I was hearing some higher frequencies, such as the stretching and scratching of the escalator handle, that I had never noticed before whilst in the same areas I had visited many times. Combining this experience with listening to Hildegard Westerkamp’s 1989 Kits Beach Sound Walk, I became fascinated with the idea of manipulating field recordings from sound walks by either removing frequencies or adding completely new sounds. Whilst some people in class thought this was negative and took away from the ‘purity’ of the recording, I found it to be positive as it allows the recorder to shape a listening experience that would otherwise be impossible to hear ‘naturally’.