Need help visualising the journey you are taking on ‘A Walk to King’s Manor’ soundscape? Then wonder no more. The map below gives rough time stamps to give you an idea where you are in the soundscape in relation to the map. Why not take another listen?
So, after months of work and refining, I can finally let you all hear the first soundscape that I’ve been working on. It’s called imaginatively ‘A Walk to King’s Manor’. This soundscape is made up of ambient sounds to take you back to a day at King’s Manor, York, UK in the 1850s.
In the 1850s, for those new to the project, the King’s Manor was inhabited by the Wilberforce Memorial School for the Blind. This school aimed to teach the kids not only basic lessons such as maths and English, but also ways of supporting themselves from basket making to playing a variety of musical instruments.
I hope to put all this across as you take a virtual, audio journey to the King’s Manor building. So, without further ado, take a listen on the player below:
It is very possible for everyone to create the soundscape of their dreams without having to spend any money. The secret is being resourceful and relying on the vast library of the internet.
Music is a very important tool for setting the tone of a piece. It changes how the audience views a piece, how it makes them feel and how they feel the characters are meant to feel in a scene.
You only have to look at this famous clip of Star Wars without music to see how important music is to a scene:
Do you feel how awkward that is? Well, it’s no different when you’re putting together a soundscape. Particularly ones that centre a lot around music.
A lot of planning actually goes in behind the scenes to create and execute soundscapes in Archaeology. You’ve already gained some ideas as to what that involves with the posts about what existed in the 1850s and researching old maps and photographs. But, there is still more to it than all of that!
With soundscapes, you still need an idea about what you are trying to get across to your listener. It’s not good enough to just say that you want to tell the story of a particular place or a particular time, you need to know which narratives you are bringing to the fore. Do you want to tell the story of one person or do you want to create a general ambience piece? Is it artistic or historical in execution? What is your intended audience for the piece? All these things and more need to be considered.
You also need to consider practical elements such as the time of day the soundscape is occurring in and the general timing for the soundscape. How long does it roughly take to walk from the road to the river etc.
You also need to consider if the soundscape is an MP3 file or whether it is something that will be geolocated. This will effect both the timing and execution of the soundscape.
So, you know what you want to achieve with your soundscape but now you need to build it. You need sound!
Now you can record sounds yourself, recommended if possible, but there is a wealth of free sites out there on the web. Here are a few I’ve been using so far:
Site can be found HERE
Site can be found HERE
I’m using Audacity to layer and edit my clips together into a soundscape. This stage involves a lot of trial and error to get the sound levels, directions, number of repeats etc. to get right. A stage that I’m at and learning from right now!
I will talk more about this stage and later stages i a further blog posts in the near future.
Keep up to date with the new series. There will be a new post on this blog every Wednesday at 12:00 GMT.
Researching the 1850s and thus the Victorian era has been eye opening for me so far. Everything I thought I knew from general knowledge and a good BBC drama has disappeared in front of my eyes. So here’s a comprehensive rundown of:
Slightly longer video than normal, but this is my dissertation in a fifteen-minute nustshell. So, sit back and enjoy! Audience participation is encouraged after the watching of this video!
Time to fangirl for a second. The British Museum have just released a new Audio guide. Click here to take a read of the description of how the audio guide works.
The most common form of Augmented Reality is that of sound or audio. This is where a sound is played, or augmented, over the sound you are hearing naturally. Normally this is achieved by having a handheld audio device where you key in numbers that correspond with numbers on presentation boards around the site. Otherwise, this can be achieved by having an audio track that is downloadable to an ipod/MP3, or on a mobile device.
Me looking very fetching with a handheld audio guide. Photo by Caroline Baker (2012)
An example of Augmented Reality mobile applications in York is the audio tours by the Institute for the Public Understanding of the Past (IPUP). Part of the University of York, IPUP has produced three audio tours for York.
