African-American Civil Rights Soundscape – Support and Opposition

The soundscape for my project is now completed and ready for submission and I have decided that the title of my soundscape will be called Freedom due to the subject of the piece. This blog entry will give a breakdown of the soundscape and talk of why I did certain things the way I did in the track.

Intro: 0:00-0:43

The beginning of the track briefly introduces the four main individuals that are involved in the soundscape (JFK, Malcolm X, George Lincoln Rockwell and Martin Luther King, Jr.) with The Star Spangled Banner being played on guitar behind the different parts. I wanted the guitar part to sound bad and out of tune so I stretched the clip using elastic audio in pro tools, this was to reflect on how much of a mess America was in during the 1960s in regards to the civil rights situation. As the intro comes to a close the audio is slowed down at which point a gunshot is heard, this was done to highlight how all the individuals involved were assassinated during the civil rights movement.

The JFK Movement: 0:44-2:30

The soundscape bases itself on the four individuals and is told in chronological order of the year in which each was assassinated and so John F. Kennedy was to be the first movement. The part starts with the audio taken from Kennedy’s election campaign and the into a drum and keyboard part in which the narration sits on. The drum part was a four bar sample I found on the internet but I cut up the parts and changed it to sound how I wanted, the keyboard was created using a plug-in on my computer with basic chords of a minor key. The use of the minor key was made throughout my whole soundscape as I wanted it to reflect the sadness of the content involved. A lot of time stretching is used on the keyboard part in this movement and this helped reflect the disbelief when the news bulletin telling the world that JFK is dead. The texture of the music is thin here as I only wanted the music to bring the soundscape to life, a lot of instrumentation would have taken the listener away form the narration and the story.

The Malcolm X Movement: 2:31-4:18

This movement begins with the audio of a man introducing Malcolm X to the stage at a reading, this audio was taken from the film Malcolm X which starred Denzel Washington. Once again the drums were taken from a sample on the internet but I applied heavy reverb to the clip and cut it up and played around with the rhythm to suit the movement. The vocal track is another sample but is time stretched with a slight amount of reverb to give the vocals some space in the mix. I played around with reversing an audio sample on the part ‘The Muslim’s believe in the god that created the universe’, this was to confuse the listener as Malcolm X later went on to leave the Nation of Islam. Stopping the drums when Malcolm X is talking about JFK was done to highlight how the Nation of Islam banned Malcolm X from giving speeches after he said that. The shooting of Malcolm X was once again audio from the film as the sound effects I found of shootings wouldn’t have fit with the soundscape and would have sounded weak. Of all the parts in the piece, this movement is my favorite and I consider it to be the strongest part of the soundscape.

The George Lincoln Rockwell Movement: 4:19-5:26

As this individual was so radical with his beliefs during the civil rights movement, I wanted the listener to concentrate more on the narration rather than the music. This led to me leaving out drums and only have a keyboard that consisted of a few sampled chords, I used a delay to give the part a rhythm and used elastic audio to bring the chords out of tune at times to highlight on Rockwell’s highly controversial views. The sound of the two sniper shots are taken from the BBC sound library and I used panning to put them slightly to the left of the stereo field, adding reverb and a boost in the low frequencies to give the shots some power in the mix. Although this movement lacks a lot of texture, I feel that it suits the piece well but on reflection I could have added more instrumentation such as a bass line. As with most of the audio samples used in my soundscape, I had to use a high cut on many to remove a hiss that a lot of the audio had due to the recordings being very old.

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Movement: 5:27-6:55

The movement begins with ‘I have a dream’ being heard and this was used because the words are historic and it seemed only right to begin the part with this having a heavy amount of reverb on it. Both the drums and key parts are samples but have been cut up and made the way I wanted them to sound with the keys track having a chorus effect applied to the part. Using chorus was done to give the movement a ‘dreamlike’ quality to it and I feel it does this very well with the music. When the three ‘I have a dream’ parts are heard overlapping, I feel that this could have been done a lot better and I would have used a different production technique here if I was to do it again. This is because I think this bit sounds too quick in respect of the time I had to do something more creative. Towards the end of the movement the drums suddenly stop and this is done to let the listener hear the narrator talk of how important King was to the civil rights movement. This movement could have been stronger in some areas but overall I think that the music once again fits well and too much may have ruined it.

Outro: 6:56-8:36

The soundscape ends with an excerpt from King’s, ‘I have a dream’ speech and this fades in to a point where the song ‘Oh, Freedom’ comes in to play behind King’s words. I did this as the song is associated with the civil rights movement and was performed at the March of Washington on the day King gave his historic speech. I feel that it ends the soundscape perfectly and fits well behind the speech. This is one of the areas I feel sounds best in my project even though it is essentially just two tracks playing without any music, narration or effects.

The final week of the project has been spent putting the finishing touches to the soundscape with things such as last minute sound effects, mixing and mastering. It has been a hectic week but I feel reasonably happy about the finished product, it could have been a lot better if certain ideas had worked out and I had used recorded drums on certain parts but the sound and samples I have aren’t too bad. The mixing stage this week went well despite a few problems with certain audio samples of the old speeches, to solve these little problems I applied a high-cut to many of the parts to make the quality slightly better, yet to still hold the authenticity. The way I mix is to go through the whole piece and change things slightly as I go, I then keep repeating this process over and over again until I am happy, this is opposed to the other method of listening to certain sections at a time. I listened through the whole  piece as I think it ensures that the transitions between each section are as smooth as possible and this is how the listener will listen to the track anyway. My learning of this method came from mixing an EP in my second year of the course and I thought that it was the easiest way for me to work so I applied the technique to the mixing on this project. I kept some headroom on the master track when mixing to make sure I could push it up if needed in the mastering stage, this technique was taught to me by Ian Shepherd in a lecture at university and I have done it this way ever since when mastering.

At the mastering stage I brought up the mids of the overall track slightly and applied some gentle limiting before I bounced the track to listen to on certain devices such as my iPod, laptop and in my car. Doing this ensures that the mix sounds good on a range of different speakers and if there are any problems I can go back and fix them before submitting my final piece. On the first bounce I realised that there was a phasing issue which had to be sorted out, I went back into pro tools and brought up the phase scope plug-in to help me fix the issue and I then bounced the piece again. Once I was happy with the overall soundscape I got it ready to upload to blackboard in time for the deadline. After 11 weeks I was very happy with my project but there were some minor issues that could have been done better, these will be listed in my next blog post.

The further I got into this project I was realising more and more that something else was needed to liven the overall mix up and I realised that sound effects may be the answer. Using the BBC sound effects library I have been introducing sounds at certain points to bring the story to life more. This has worked in some areas and not in others, on many occasions I have had to use some processing on the sounds using EQ. This was the case on a certain point in the ‘Rockwell’ movement with a sniper gunshot that was very thin and lacked suitable bass frequencies, I solved this by boosting the low-end and added a high-cut to help the sound stand out in the mix. Using these sound effects has been trial and error as many of the sounds aren’t always appropriate to use. At one point I needed the sound of a crowd and then for them all to suddenly start screaming, I could have recorded this myself but at this point in the project I didn’t have the time to do this as I am just putting the finishing touches to the editing before mixing and mastering next week.

As the pro tools session has got a lot going on in it I have been saving on CPU by using the ‘AudioSuite’ function to process my audio clips as opposed to running the processing on the track. Doing this means that once I have rendered the processing on a clip then it cannot be undone, this has meant that I have had to make decisions there and then. At first I didn’t really like this way of working but I have found that it has been a good way of working for me as I progress through the project, quick decision making with editing is a bit like how music was made in the decades gone by with four-track machines and bouncing down to one track to free up other tracks for recording. Although there is a big difference, it has meant that everything with delays, reversed effects and EQ has been rendered on audio clips there and then with no going back if I wanted to change my mind at a later point. This technique during the editing has taught me that if it sounds good then there is no need to keep going back time and time again if you aren’t happy later on with your decision. Next week is the final week working on the project and I will spend the majority of the week mixing, mastering and putting the final touches to my soundscape.

As I was unhappy with the rough idea for the beginning of the soundscape, I have decided this week to record the guitar part myself. This was done by learning the intro to ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ on my guitar and then using an SM57 on the cab an inch away from the speaker cone to capture the sound. It took around three takes to settle on deciding that the third take was good enough to work behind the audio samples at the start. The rest of this week was once again spent making sure my music sounded right in each of the movements and changing different levels. As the end of the project is coming closer I am hoping to start mixing next week and this will leave me a bit of time before the deadline to master the whole mix. I have been adding to my research area of the blog too this week and I feel that during this project I have learnt a lot about the history of the civil rights movement in America, not to mention learning a lot of how to integrate samples around music.

I also spent time this week making sure that all the scripts I used in the narration were made visible in the ‘Supporting Materials’. This was to let people know what was recorded in the narration recordings and what was used and what wasn’t in the final piece. The research from the four main people used in this project was used for the script writing process and it helped me gain a better understanding when it came to piecing together different samples edits. There are just a few sound effects that I need to put into project in the upcoming week which will hopefully really bring the soundscape to life, then it is a case of adding processing to certain tracks and using panning to create a good stereo field within the soundscape. I have learnt that a lot goes into the production of a soundscape, much more than I imagined before starting this project.

After completing the narration recording and collecting the samples I needed for my soundscape, this week was spent editing together all my parts for the project. Using pro tools, I have been placing together all the parts where I needed them and keeping a rough mix throughout while I got everything sounding fluent. One major issue was the fades on each clip and cutting them exactly where I needed them, this produced an issue when ‘breathes’ could be heard but with careful cutting this was solved. I used compression on my narration tracks to give the dialogue some strength in the mix and I will also be processing the tracks further in the weeks to come with a light reverb and EQ. I have not began to pan any tracks yet as I feel this should be a job to be done at the end, editing the session has taken a lot of time this week but it is very important to ensure that the music and rhythm’s work against the narration and samples.

This week has also involved roughly mixing my levels and getting the narration and samples to blend together. As a lot of the samples are very old, they are low quality but I feel that this gives them a more authentic sound to them. The next week will include recording a guitar part for the beginning of the piece and a completion of all the editing tasks. I intend to have a week to fully mix and master the project before the deadline and so the upcoming weeks will involve applying certain production techniques and checking I have everything I need in the soundscape. So far the soundscape is slowly coming together and I am starting to hear the piece I envisioned.