First and foremost, I am proud of the work I produced, even though it was not my first choice of soundscape due to some complications, I feel I have produced a piece of work that I can be proud of, I also feel that it is a step up to any other work I have created using sounds and music, because of the skills I have learnt on the way to creating this.

LO1 – Become more organised whilst working on this project.

Now, this learning objective started great, I had meetings with David and Dylan almost immediately and tried to get the work underway straight away. With my original soundscape idea, I was already in London recording at the start of February, however that is where it went wrong. Once I had the problems with all my recordings, I had to basically start again and although I feel I was well organised throughout the second half of recording when I had a new project to focus on, it was the time in between which was the problem, I didn’t get started on the new project straight away and it took me 2 to 3 weeks before I realised that I needed to start the assignment again otherwise I was never going to finish.

LO2 – Become more competent whilst using Pro Tools

I feel that I have met this learning objective completely. As stated within my Learning Objectives, I said that this would be the first time I would be using Pro Tools by myself, and I feel that I have succeeded in becoming more competent and all around more confident whilst using Pro Tools. I no longer need someone looking over my shoulder whilst I use the program to make sure I am doing the work right.

LO3 – Gain more knowledge in the area of sound that I am working in

Again, I feel that I have met the criteria for this learning objective too. Before starting this project, I knew very little about soundscapes, how they worked, what genres they fell under, basically I did not know anything to do with the area of sound. But as you can see from the research I have done throughout the Blog with research on Genre and Pricing, you can see that I have now grasped an understanding on the genre of soundscapes, and even the different types of soundscapes – Experimental, Formalistic and Naturalistic.

If I were to do this project again, I would give myself more time to get the original idea done, rather than just planning to go down to London just the once I would make sure I planned to go there a few times, just in case something like the files corrupting happened again, so if I went a few more times I could have rerecorded what I had lost. As well as that I would make sure I stay in constant contact with my tutor. One of the biggest problems I faced whilst transitioning from my main idea to the idea I finished with is that it could have all happened two weeks earlier, had I just emailed Dylan about the problems quicker and we could have sorted it out earlier. The tutors are there to help you through problems like that, and I didn’t take advantage of the help enough.

After having a final meeting with Dylan on Monday 24th April, we came to the conclusion that I should change my soundscape from a Naturalistic piece to an Experimental piece. The way I will set out to do this is by having the ‘down the hill’ section compete with the ‘up the hill’ part. I will use the Train line sounds as a metaphor for the ‘down the hill’ section and then have it cut through at different intervals throughout the piece. The idea is to have an ongoing narrative between the two parts of the piece, with the same kinds of sounds at the start of the piece and at the end.

I met with Dylan again on 29th March, before this meeting I had not done much research or recording, because I did not know what I was looking for in terms of my research. In the tutorial, Dylan helped me through some of the questions I had.

The research areas in which I now need to research are Genre:- I need to decide whether it is an Experimental piece, as well as whether it is formalist or naturalistic – I also need to research to find out what these terms mean. I also need to research my subject, which will include taking photos of the route I will be taking through Lincoln. I will also need to research any legal or ethical issues with my recordings – most notably, any buskers that I might record on my way through Lincoln. I will also be doing some technical research, if I use any websites or YouTube videos to help me through the editing process of the soundscape, then I can use that and put that towards my research. Dylan also mentioned that I should research a budget of what I am going to be using because if I was not doing this for a university project and was hired to do this for a client, then I would need a budget, some of the items on the budget will need to include the price of a Zoom recorder, cost of the editing software, maybe train tickets, depending if I needed to travel to another city, and also my hourly rate for doing the job.

I didn’t meet Dylan again until 8^th March because I was trying to fix my problems with the files from London, and since it was not working, I had nothing to show Dylan, so I was waiting until I had something I could show him. However, I went to the tutorial and we spent a little time coming up with the idea in the tutorial, which was to record the sound of a walk through Lincoln, starting at St Catherine’s Roundabout and ending at the otherside of the hill, just past the Ermine Estate. We also watched the BBC video in Lincoln in which the residents of Lincoln overdubbed a Take That song and walked through the whole of Lincoln. My idea, is kind of the same as this video in that I will be walking through Lincoln with just a recording device and instead of a song playing, it will be a soundscape of Lincoln, ‘insert a picture of google maps of where I will be walking’ the walk will take around an hour, which means I plan to get around 15-20 minutes worth of recordings. I will also hope to speak to a few people around each part of Lincoln, some people at the bottom by the high street, some people up the hill by the cathedral and then some people over the other side of the hill by the Ermine Estate.

On the week commencing of 6^th February, I went down to London, I planned to do most of my London recordings on my iPhone, because I enjoyed the stylistic elements that it gave me, a sense of home recordings of home life, rather than the ‘professional’ sound I would get with using mics and recording equipment from Media Loans. I had a plan of what I wanted to record whilst I was in London, which I laid out in the last blog post, however, I also wanted to record some people having a conversation from my home town and some people talking in Lincoln so that in my piece there would be some different accents which would help people differentiate between my London life and my Lincoln life.  I spent the day travelling around London recording all the soundbites that I wanted to use, and it was rather successful.

However, when I got back to Lincoln and put all the sounds I had recorded from London onto my computer, none of them would play and the files were unfortunately corrupted. I spent about a week trying everything I could to try and get the back, I used my iMac, my MacBook, I used the iMacs in university, I tried my friends Apple computers as well as their Windows computers and nothing was working, so at this point I conceded and realised that the files would not be able to be recovered.