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During Week Ten’s session on listening and the soundscape, I was initially overwhelmed by the volume of terminology created and defined by R Murray Schafer. Terms such as ‘Earwitness’, ‘Schizophonia’, and ‘Acoustic Ecology’ seemed at first to be buzzwords created in order to justify Schafer’s controversial views on the purity of sounds within a space. Before diving into these terms, I want to discuss some of Hildegard Westerkamp’s ideas of soundscape composition in relation to composition for Video Games.

Westerkamp’s (2002) view that soundscape studies are ‘the study of the interrelationship between sound, nature and society’ reminded me of an interview by Jennifer Walden featuring CD Projekt RED sound designer Paweł Daudzward (2021), in which he discussed how the ‘Distinct Ambiences for all six regions’ in the game Cyberpunk 2077 were created. He explained how the built-up urban areas of the game needed to feel ‘heavy, oppressive and dirty’, showing that the fragile relationships between society, nature and the player (humans) described by Westercamp were considered in order to bring the dystopian and unnatural setting of Night City to life. There is a complete lack of nature recordings, and foley is limited to the roar of car engines and multiple layers of human noise (voices, footsteps, etc). Having experienced these areas of the game, I think that the practice of amplifying sounds that Schafer would describe as ‘boring’ and ‘destructive’ is what makes the soundscape of Cyberpunk 2077 so eerily convincing to the player. This is why I believe that contentious claims made by Schafer that certain sounds must be ‘eliminated’ are counterproductive and limit the possibilities of what can be achieved when crafting and shaping a convincing soundscape, particularly in a digital setting.

Out of all of Schafer’s terms, I find ‘Schizophonia’ to be the most interesting. His initial definition- that electroacoustically reproduced sounds are ‘aberrational’- doesn’t necessarily imply that he regarded them as ‘destructive’ and in need of being eliminated. Instead, it seems that although Schafer views said sounds to be abnormal, he never claimed they could not be used as an effective tool to craft a soundscape. He is simply highlighting the distinct difference between sounds with an original source and those without. However, his term ‘Moozak’ that describes schizophonic sounds as ‘musical drool’ confuses the original definition. In my opinion, these two terms can co-exist without implying that all schizophonic sounds are unwanted ‘drool’; this is because Moozak is used primarily to describe sounds heard in public places. Therefore, I believe that in using the term Moozak, Schafer was aiming to describe the negatives of being bombarded with electroacoustic noise in everyday life, meaning that Schizophonic sounds can still be effective when mixed with ‘pure’ recordings or in the creation of entirely digital soundscapes.

Reference list

Westerkamp, H. (2002) ‘Linking soundscape composition and acoustic ecology’, Organised Sound, 7(1), pp. 51–56.Available at: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1355771802001085

Walden, J. (2021) Cyberpunk 2077: inventing the Sound of the Future. Available at: https://www.asoundeffect.com/cyberpunk-2077-sound/ (Accessed: 10 December 2025).

Having chosen the design pathway of the course because of my interests in media such as films and video games, I was eager to begin to learn about how sound design for film relates to sound arts practice in a historical and contemporary sense.

The first thing that interested me about this session was the history of sound for picture. Having been interested in film for a long time but never taking any classes in film studies, this was my first formal introduction to the history of film in a classroom. I found the exercise of assessing wether sounds were recorded on set or added in post-production interesting as I would usually consider post-production editing to be a relatively modern development; seeing that Experimental early sound film 1905 ‘Five O’Clock Tea’ was produced by combining pre-recorded audio with a lip synced performance was surprising to me and demonstrated that the techniques that are more convenient today (like recording live on set) have taken over a decade to develop.

One discussion in class that surfaced repeatedly over the unit, but particularly in this session, was how sound design is commonly viewed as subservient to another medium (e.g. film) rather than being viewed as its own art form. Whilst others in the class saw this view to be harmful and counterproductive to the practice of sound art, I am a firm believer that sound, being used as an accessory to other artistic mediums demonstrates its value more than it denounces it. Whether it be gallery viewings with background music, film, Television, or video games, the fact that sound can be used to greatly enhance and shape these mediums demonstrates its flexibility and universal appeal. Although sound- especially in film- often goes unnoticed by the viewer, it nearly always completely dictates the emotional impact of a scene. I believe that sound’s ability to do this, whilst acting as a supplement to another piece, makes it truly unique and in no way reduces its credibility as an art form. When listened to on its own, sound is a rather ‘2D’ medium- in the sense that without the presence of picture, it is (for the most part) unable to act empathetically or diegetically (to communicate existing emotion) or Anempathetically / non-diegetically (to drastically shift the emotion felt in the medium). To put it simply, when acting as a supplement to film, sound is given more opportunity to be ‘3D’ and introduces more variation.

Following this session, I was motivated to continue to develop my technical sound design skills learnt in Jake and Jose’s sessions, such as synthesis. After some more experimentation with this, I will be eager to collaborate with other students in the film school.

Out of the two gallery visits in the Intro to Sound Arts unit, LINKED was definitely my favourite of the two. Before visiting, I visited Graeme Miller’s website and loved the concept of creating a sort of time capsule of recorded sound, immortalising people’s narratives and experiences. Upon arriving at Leytonstone Library, I was lucky enough to have a one-on-one chat with Miller in which I gained an insight into his personal musical and artistic background. The rare privilege of being able to speak to the artist behind a work about their motivations always improves my personal understanding and enjoyment of a piece. I felt this to be especially true with this specific sound artwork, as Miller’s experience living in the local area was central to the themes and process behind LINKED. His anecdotes about his relationship with the individuals featured in the recordings were invaluable, and I don’t think I would have felt the same connection with the work if it weren’t for my conversation with Miller.

After taking an hour or so to experience the piece, we were invited to have a group conversation, sharing our thoughts and feelings about the experience. In my opinion, the most interesting conversation we had was about the importance of the presence (or lack) of listeners. Miller’s view on this was that the listeners were an integral part of the experience; on his website, Miller (2025) states that the work is ‘in perpetual dialogue with the walker/listener who animates the work with their attention’. His views in this quote and in person suggest that the work is inactive when not being listened to. Personally, though, I believe that the lack of a listener’s presence can be just as valuable to a work of this sort. In our discussion, we mentioned a transmitter near Leytonstone tube station that was inaudible due to the construction of a new radio tower nearby. I find this disruption to go hand in hand with the themes of LINKED; the endless desperation of people telling their stories repeatedly, even when disrupted by continued development, is powerful. Although, after talking to Miller, I know this wasn’t intended at first, it adds a completely new layer to the artwork and was my strongest takeaway from the visit.

In my future works, I would like to further explore the concept of unheard and/or disrupted sound that I experienced during this visit.

Reference list

Miller, G. (2025) LINKED. Available at: https://graememiller.org/project/linked/ (Accessed: 9 December 2025).

Personally, the contact mic workshop with Rory was definitely one of my favourite sessions in the unit. For the past few years, physical electronics have been one of my bigger interests, and I have spent a lot of time on personal projects such as undergoing repairs on phones and iPods, as well as building and fixing computers for friends and (a few) paying clients! Because of this, I knew that I would enjoy the workshop- my soldering skills are adequate- so I felt quite comfortable with this element of the mic building.

Although I did have some prior electronics experience, I had never created any audio equipment before, so I was unfamiliar with how to connect most of the components, for example, the AUX jack and piezo elements. I found soldering the cables to the different contacts of the AUX jack challenging, due to the small size of the jack’s interior as well as the requirement to keep the wires from touching. This, alongside the uneven heat of the soldering iron, made the start of the workshop more challenging than I initially expected. I was also unfamiliar with how to attach the cable housing snugly without interfering with the wires. This took some time, but after some advice from Rory and more force than I expected, I managed to connect and house the wires correctly.

When testing the mic, I was surprised that it worked the first try perfectly, and I was impressed by the signal quality that could be achieved through two piezo elements and affordable equipment. Since finishing the workshop, I haven’t had the chance to test the mic as it is still being waterproofed; however, I experimented with the Geophone mic from the kit room whilst on the Greenwich trip with Jose. I found that contact mic recordings can be manipulated into effective percussive sounds, such as kick drums recorded by stomping on the ground near the mic. I have also been talking to my course mate Isaac about his experimentation converting a retro drum toy into a programmable drum machine with a direct output. This aspect of sound art interests me a lot, and I am excited to continue experimenting with physical electronics to create unique effects and samples by going to the Creative Technology Hub and using their equipment. I will also experiment with creating guitar pedals over Christmas, as my friend has recently taken it up; I am looking forward to learn the process.

Below are two photos of my contact mic- one work in progress and one of the finished product.

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’.

Having gotten my sound study to a level where I am happy to submit it, this post will provide a critical reflection on different areas in my study- those that successfully achieved what I set out to accomplish in my statement of intent, as well as those that could have been improved to bring the project to a fuller realisation.

Firstly, one of the main challenges I faced whilst making my track was the use of Ableton; this was my first time producing a finished project within the DAW, which meant that especially when starting the project, my creative process was slowed due to being unfamiliar with some technical aspects of the software. Although this definitely was a setback in the early stages, ultimately, I am happy with my choice to continue using Ableton for this project over FL Studio (the DAW I am most familiar with), as it forced me to learn and apply the new techniques I learnt in the workshops to my project rather than relying on ones that I have used before. I will definitely continue to use Ableton in future projects as I have found its non-linear elements such as session view to complement my workflow.

Beginning my project, the first thing I did was start processing some of my field recordings of the underground, creating vocal chops to use in the groove sections as well as ambience. I think that the way these were edited was successful- I preserved their original sound- keeping them recognisable and making the track’s theme of finding place in London represented by transport clear. Despite having used some foley recordings in projects prior to this, I found their implementation in this track to be much more ambitious and they make up the majority of sounds used in the composition.

A flaw in my process at the start of the project, however, was not considering the recited text aspect until later on in its development. Although I am happy with the way the recording is harmonically, it feels slightly forced in my opinion, and could confuse the track’s themes. If I were to start the project again, I would have researched texts either at the same stage or before I gathered field recordings- to allow myself to begin producing with a very clear vision of what I wanted to achieve through the use of each sound.

Another improvement I would make given more time would be to introduce more variation into the sound selection of the track, particularly with percussion. I used variations in arrangement effectively, however using a wider range of samples, as well as introducing more experimental processing to said samples would have improved the variety of sound, and brought more movement to the groove sections, making them less predictable to listen to.

As I stated at the end of my last update, my final goals to finish my sound study were to improve the mix across the whole track, focusing in particular on the sections with field recordings, vocals, and bass.

The first recording I edited was of the escalator noise, that plays alongside my vocals in 2 parts of the track. Due to the busyness of the recording environment, the recording had noise from all frequencies, which led to it obstructing the vocals and muddying the bass. During week 8’s workshop focusing on mixing, I learnt the technique of duplicating the same audio track with separate EQ filters to create layers that allow one to sculpt the sound into specific frequencies. Using this technique on my field recording, I used a high pass from 1k-10k hz on one layer to isolate the high-end ‘scratching noise’ and a filter in the mid range from 145-1k hz on the other layer to preserve some of the fuzz in that frequency range. This technique allowed my vocals to shine through in the mid-high range, and my bass and kick to have needed space in the lower mid range. This led to my vocal sections becoming clearer, and allowed its reverb and delay effects to crate the desired atmosphere.

Secondly, I wanted to focus on reducing the harshness of both the drum breaks and the arpeggiator synth. I achieved this primarily through the use of automation- which I had already used a lot within the track- however this time focusing on dipping the volume for longer sections where side-chaining wasn’t sufficient. I found this effective as, again, it gave my vocals prevalence- particularly near the end of the track. I also decided to switch the synthesiser used for the arp to a slightly less harsh combination of a square and sine wave. This, alongside some light compression, gave my track the desired sound and allowed the vocals to become a primary focus rather than being forced to the background, developing the emotional aspect of place in those segments. Listening through studio headphones, I was happy with the mix at this stage- however when played through laptop speakers I noticed that the bass lacked prevalence, and on EarPods the low end was muddying my vocals. To alleviate this problem, I added a small EQ boost to the mid range of the bass to allow its harmonics to shine through on less bass heavy speakers. I also introduced a vocal side-chain to the bass to bring them some space on EarPods with exaggerated low end.

At this stage I was happy with the mix, and I felt that the spatial processing and mixing techniques I learnt in weeks 7 and 8 helped to greatly improve the quality of the track, and allowed my personal experience of London to be properly conveyed through the sound study.

Having finished my vocal recording of ‘Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1801’ by William Wordsworth, my next steps to develop my project were to introduce the recordings into the track. This meant creating a basic arrangement of the whole song, as well as using more field recordings to complement the vocal track.

Starting with the arrangement, I knew I wanted to start the vocal with minimal noise from other tracks, taking a break from the techno / dance sections of the track and introducing atmosphere. Knowing this, I created an arrangement that reduced the groove, leaving space, then brought it back in again. This would allow me to have sections of the track for the vocal to stand out with minimal interference, as well as, later on, sections where the vocal was connected to the groove. As for a field recording to complement the vocal being introduced, I decided to use one taken from the escalators of a tube station- its combination of white noise and delicate scratching noises were a good background.

After introducing this recording, I needed to continue the track by creating a build-up back into the groove. In Jake’s week 7 workshop, we studied spatial processing, including reverb. During this session, I recorded an impulse response from a clap in the stairwell of LCC (see below), which created a lush echo effect when loaded into Hybrid Reverb on Ableton. After taking Jake’s feedback on my Work In Progress where he suggested introducing movement / variation into my kick samples using reverb and automation, I applied the effect to my kick to create an effective build-up into the next groove section of the track.

After finalising the reverb on the kick sample, I continued to finish the arrangement of the track- reintroducing the groove with variations to the patterns and instruments used. At this stage, I was happy with the structure of the melodic components of the song, but I felt that the main aspects that needed to be improved before submission were the implementation of vocals in the end part of the track, as well as the mix of the various components. The field recordings (particularly the escalator noise) were interfering with the vocal, arp, and bass, meaning I hadn’t yet achieved the clean, dreamy sound I was aiming for in regards to the mix.

This meant my final focus would be to finalise the mix by carving out space for all my instruments, as well as considering the sounds used for some layers and wether they needed adjustments.

As I stated in the last update, my next main focus for my piece was to find a text that reflected the sense of place I felt when moving to London. Initially, being inspired by other tracks that use recordings of a text, such as ‘Giorgio by Moroder’ by Daft Punk, I aimed to find an interview from someone that worked on the transport network in London. Although I still think this idea would’ve been fairly successful for the track, after some test recordings I decided that me reciting the words of someone else’s personal experience wasn’t ideal- as it did not carry the personal emotion I was trying to convey through the recording and track as a whole; recordings of me speaking someone else’s words felt unnatural.

Because of this experimentation, I decided to research poetry from London. I believe that due to its figurative language, words spoken from poetry can have a much more personal effect than other writings such as interviews. After some research online, I found a collection- ‘(1991). 100 Poems on the Underground London : Cassell’. These poems were displayed on Underground trains to an audience of commuters. My favourite of these- and the one that resonates most deeply with me is ‘Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1801’ by William Wordsworth (see below).

After deciding on the poem, I had to choose whether to have it recited by myself or someone else. I decided at first to have my friend recite it, and although they read it better than I could, ultimately I chose to recite it myself as it felt more complimentary to the themes of the project. I also decided to make the recording at home rather than in a studio environment on campus, again to emphasise its ‘rawness’. The final recording was done with a AKG perception P4 dynamic microphone in order to reduce unwanted background noise, as although I wanted the recording to feel authentic, it needed to have a level of ‘cleanliness’ in order for me to process it effectively. I added some simple vocal effects such as reverb and subtle delay to achieve the ‘dream-like’ feel I wanted to capture in the track- the reasons for I established in the last post.

I found the final recording successful- my next aims to develop the project were to find suitable recordings to compliment the vocal, as well as carving out space in the arrangement and dynamics for the vocals to sound natural within the track.

After establishing my initial goals and inspirations for my project, I started developing the beginning of my piece. Firstly, I focused on manipulating my samples from the last post so they could be used as a range of instruments and layers in the track.

Listening back through all my recordings, I decided the ‘drone’ recordings of the bus could be very effective when used as low bass layers, and another could be used as a high frequency ambient layer. By running each sample through resonators, I gave them a melodic component, and used these as the starting point to create my sound study.

Whilst doing this, I was conscious to keep in mind the sense of ‘place’ that needed to be captured through the music, which meant only choosing sounds that reflected my personal experience of moving to London. When given a melodic tone through the resonators, the ‘bland’ and ‘depressing’ drones of engine noise became ethereal. I found that this reflected my experience of the city that I held when first moving here; they picture the idealistic, dreamy version of London I experienced when I first moved here, as I was mostly focused on the past- memories from the city- and the future- possibilities to come.

At this point, the track was mostly ambience, and although I found this successful, I decided to develop the track and give it a dance style groove inspired by my past productions, as well as many of the DJs and performances I had experienced since moving. This included vocal chops, which I took from field recordings of the Underground’s speaker announcements. I combined the edited vocal with a more ambient vocal recording from the bus to create movement in the intro of the track. Some final additions in this stage of the process were a synth arp, jungle break, and bassline. Although at this point I was happy with the basics of the track, its arrangement was basic due to its length, and it lacked a recording of a voice reading a text.

My next focuses from this point were on developing the track’s arrangement by introducing more instrumental variation and field recordings, and researching for texts that resonated with my experience of London that could be recorded and added to the track.