This piece is made up of three stages: the city, the dreamstate, and the disorientation of waking up. 

The city growls, the city startles, the city is uncomfortable. I wanted to recreate these unpleasant sounds of the city, so I did. The “helicopter” sound at the beginning, created synthetically in Protools, was the basis for this piece, with everything being built around this unsettling yet delicate sound. To exemplify this unsettling sound, I added water sounds, which people often describe prompts them to need the toilet. Adding these water sounds is a slight experiment on my half, in my much longer research into how to force the listener into physical uncomfortability. The constant bell sound throughout this part of the piece, it’s a slight grounding, as it is distinctive amongst the other sounds, bringing the listener away from the darker uncomfortability. 

The second part of this piece is indicated by the introduction of the “white noise”, which is actually also a water sound. This is the dreamstate. When we dream, unfortunately it is not always possible to escape entirely, and oftentimes we take with us these city sounds, our current situations into our dreams. We don’t feel rested when we wake up.

Hence, when our alarms go off in the morning, we often feel disorientated. As I do not like the ending of my piece, it shows it has executed the intended effect. There is a nice rhythmic pattern creating a grounding, representing the consciousness of being awake. The bell sounds have turned away from being that grounding, and instead exemplify the disorientation, now almost replicating the iPhone alarm. The city sounds reenter, showing that even just waking up, the city always engulfs us; we cannot seek peace in the city, not even when we sleep. 

When playing this piece to my brother, he was mildly disturbed. He described it as “on beat but completely out of time”. Particularly at the ending of the piece, but even throughout, there is a sense of unsteadiness with the timing, which is representative of the disorientation I earlier explained, and also the internal imbalance of energies being in the city brings upon us. My brother also described parts of the piece as sounding like he was “being eaten”. The low growling “helicopter” sounds, and the rustling that enters at 42 seconds seemed to have a “synaesthesic” effect on him, where he physically felt like he was in danger, like he was literally being eaten. Perhaps this is indicative of the fact that the city does eat us; we become another pawn part of society, being drained by work and disharmony, only to receive nothing but a semi fulfilled life that we lose once we die.

I am hoping for the same or a similar effect on all listeners of this piece that it had on my brother. I am also hoping, however, that the listener is able to grasp onto the small grounding parts of the piece, and that somewhere in this amalgamation of uncomfortability, there is peace and happiness to be found. 

This is my reflective writing for my first sound piece I created. It was very hard to begin- thinking of a concept was very difficult, but reflecting on the sound walk, I wanted to at least imitate the un-comfortability I felt when listening to the sounds of the city.

Here is a private link to my sound piece 🙂