African-American Civil Rights Soundscape – Support and Opposition

As the Easter break is coming up I thought it was best to bring Oliver Dyson back into the studio and record the narration for the two other people that my project will in centre around. These two individuals are George Lincoln Rockwell and Martin Luther King, Jr. It made sense to get all the narration recorded before Oliver went home for Easter as it would mean that all that was left to do in the upcoming weeks is music and editing before the final mixing and mastering stages. Before Oliver came to the sound theatre to record, I once again wrote a script for the Rockwell and King pieces which was based on research I had found using the university library and various sources on the internet. The recording situtaion and setup was exactly the same as before as I wanted the same sound and feel to the recording so it would flow throughout my whole soundscape.

There were no problems during the recording session and I got enough takes of the narration to cover me incase there were any problems at a later date. After the session I thanked him for his time and agreed to send him a copy of my soundscape once it had been completed and handed-in. Week 8 will involve composing music for the first two movements and this will then give me a good idea of how the project is coming on in regards to the timescale. With music behind my narration and samples I will be able to get a vision of how the final product may sound when it is completed. I was very happy with the tone of Oliver’s voice in the narration and I feel it went perfectly with my audio samples.

As narration is going to play a big part in telling the story in my soundscape, week 6 involved recording narration in the sound theatre. The narration was done by Oliver Dyson who is a student at the university and this week he recorded some parts for the JFK and Malcolm X parts of my audio project. I had previously compiled a script for Oliver to read and I recorded this in the ADR room of the sound theatre using a Rode NT-1A condenser microphone. This was the microphone I chose because I have had good results in the past when recording dialogue in other projects. The microphone has a cardioid polar pattern and it is renowned for its clarity and this was perfect for the narration.

During the recording session I asked Oliver to say each sentence three times as clear as he possibly could which would therefore enable me to choose between three different takes of the same sentence when it came to editing. After the session I felt that I had good enough material to take away and edit and I thanked Oliver for his time. Towards the end of this week I will be concentrating on editing the audio together to achieve a rough mix of the JFK movement. I will also make a start on the following movement which will tell the brief story of Malcolm X and his role within the African-American Civil Rights Movement.

Surfing the internet to look for useful and relevant sample recordings of JFK has been what the fifth week of my project has been all about. I have spent many hours downloading audio clips from JFK speaking about his policies on civil rights. Much of the material I have found was recorded after he came to be in office but some of the samples were during his election campaign. After finding these samples I have been using Pro Tools to edit the clips and place them where I feel they need to go to successfully tell the story of what JFK felt about the subject of civil rights. I have also booked out the Sound Theatre for the following week to record narration for this part of my soundscape. The narrator will be a friend who also studies at the University of Lincoln and I have worked with him before on previous projects.

YouTube has been a great resource for my samples and I have been downloading videos and ripping the audio form the video to achieve my samples. Towards the end of the week I have been preparing for the narration recording by writing a script based on my content research to ensure I give accurate information in my audio project. Week 6 will involve putting my samples, music and narration together to complete a rough version of the JFK movement of the piece. The scripts can be found in the ‘Supporting Materials’ tab and include all the narration of the four movements.

Music is an integral part of any soundscape and this week I have been writing music for the first movement of my project which tells the story of the role that JFK played in the civil rights movement. To begin with I have been looking at various synth ideas to use that will play throughout the whole JFK part which will last roughly two minutes. I have thought that I may use a drum loop along with the synth and then put in some melody parts over at a later date. The beginning of the movement will tell the story of JFK coming into office and his view on civil rights in the US followed by his assassination. To tell this story I will use narration that will be recorded in the Sound Theatre and the narrator will hopefully be able to fulfill this role for the whole of my soundscape. To find a suitable candidate to use for my project I will put out an email on the university network to drama students as I feel they may be able to bring their own personal touch to the role. As for the script, this will be written by me and I have already started to note down a few ideas for the JFK part of the piece using research and facts of his role within the civil rights movement. By the end of week 5 I intend to have a rough mix of the JFK movement.

The third week has involved me using my time to watch films and video footage based on the African-American Civil Rights Movement to gather more ideas and listen for good samples that I could take to use in my project. Most of the footage I have been looking at has come from YouTube as it is a great source for videos on the subject and many include good samples that will be useful for my piece. One problem I have found when finding good samples is that a lot of the time they have music or narration at the same time which are then no good for me to take as I cannot separate the parts from what I need from the clip. As I am now working on the first movement after the introduction, I am looking at JFK and how he came to be in office and his involvement with the civil rights movement. The 1960 presidential election saw John F. Kennedy and his campaign stating that they would tackle the crucial issue of civil rights and fight for ‘full legal equality’. Through the use of sound I hope to portray this during the first movement of the piece with samples and a recorded narrative of JFK coming to be president, his views on the civil rights subject and his assassination.

The research that I have been looking at to enable me to create this movement in my project is mainly reading transcripts of some of JFK’s famous speeches about civil rights. I have also been thinking of the type of music that will go behind these samples and I have been thinking of using a quick tempo to symbolise how the civil rights issue was a movement that was happening at a very fast pace with the election campaign. Next week will involve me starting to compose the music and also look at starting to put in some sample recordings. The instrumentation I am thinking of using for this movement is drums and keys/piano.