Emotion as a wave. It rises and recedes. How can I show the onset and passing of an emotion? The transformation from a seemingly normal mental landscape into a flood of emotion.

Some sound artists whose work I drew inspiration from:

• Jóhann Jóhannsson, First Encounter & A Normal Family

First Encounter, featured in the film Arrival, describes the humans’ first encounter with aliens in their weird oblong spaceship. The experience that this sound gives the user is quite interesting: the sound score seems to build slowly to a soft steady beat (as if one were approaching something) with a tone of caution still there. But the listener experiences the “encounter” – it’s sudden, altogether unexpected and very jarring!

• Daphne Oram, Four Aspects & Pulse Persephone.

Oram's work is at once weird and captivating! I had to hear it twice to truly understand it. It gave me a rather eerie vibe - as if I was in a trance and simply floating through the world, fading in and out. I loved how she maintained a steady beat in her works Four Aspects and Pulse Persephone. 

For this piece I did not go into the editing phase right away. Instead I spent some time in a sandbox, exploring editing effects like changing pitch and speed, phasing, distortion, overlapping etc. And also compositional techniques like panning to the left and right and, using silences strategically. This also allowed me to get more comfortable with the software I was using.

Exploring ideas in the sandbox allowed me to think about the overall composition of my piece and how I would like it to flow.  I definitely used some of the components I made in the sandbox, but also created new ones. 

Here is a playlist of each individual sound that made up the entire piece: 

This piece helped me really think about sound as an individual entity of its own and not just consider all roles it can play in film and media. I realized that all this while, I had been hearing sounds but never truly listening!