African-American Civil Rights Soundscape – Support and Opposition

Week 2 involved a lot of my time spent online searching for good recordings of famous speeches by John F. Kennedy and good poems that were written about the movement. My idea is to have either a poem or a song at the beginning which will be read out by someone and recorded at the university, this will hopefully give the soundscape a good powerful opening. After thinking about the intro, I decided on using ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ which is the national anthem for the United States. This will be used as a bed of music for audio samples to go on top of from the main four individuals that my project is focusing on, this intro will be roughly a minute long before a gunshot rings out before the first movement of the piece begins. Below is a very rough idea of the intro:

The tune of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ is being played on an acoustic guitar which was found on YouTube but in the upcoming weeks this will be replaced by an actual recording of myself playing the US national anthem on my acoustic or electric guitar to bring a more authentic element to the intro. After listening back to the rough idea for the intro I have been thinking of what I will base the following movement about and I have decided to tell the story of JFK and how he came to be in office, his stance on the civil rights movement and his assassination. This will be done with samples, narration and through the use of music. Overall, I feel that so far the piece is coming together and that I have made a good start to the project. I have also been researching the civil rights movement and have been watching videos of speeches and rallies online as well as notable movies that highlight racism. One of these movies is Hurricane which is a biographical film based on a boxing champion who was convicted for a triple homicide.

In the opening week of my audio project I have been gathering ideas together and research material to enable me to make a good start to the African-American civil rights movement soundscape. During this planning stage I have been looking at the four main people that I will be centering my soundscape around and their role during the civil rights movement and if and how they supported or opposed the movement. I have made the decision to start the piece with either a prayer or a poem being read with the sound of a civil rights rally going on in the background, at the moment I have been looking at poems written about the civil rights movement. This week I also used the multitrack studio to record some drum samples that I could maybe use at some point on the project, the samples recording session involved me playing the drums and recording drum hits while a fellow course mate (Philip Rollett) engineered the session. As this project needs to have a good understanding of the history of the civil rights movement, this week was spent compiling together a lot of ideas about how I would approach the soundscape.

Project Overview

This audio project will concentrate on the subject of the African-American Civil Rights Movement that occurred from 1955 to 1968 in the form of an eight minute soundscape. The soundscape will consist of music accompaniment composed by myself and include audio samples and some recorded narration. The main focus of the soundscape will revolve around the stories of four assassinations that happened in the 1960s that changed America:

– John F. Kennedy

– Malcolm X

– George Lincoln Rockwell

– Martin Luther King, Jr.

Aims and Objectives

The aim for this project is to highlight how the African-American Civil Rights Movement in America during the 1960’s involved leaders of certain groups holding such strong views on the subject and how some supported and opposed the matter.

The objective for this project is to create a soundscape of roughly eight to twelve minutes which consists of music composed by myself, a recorded narrative and audio samples before the deadline in May.

Format

The format for the project will be a sound piece of around roughly 8 to 12 minutes and will be submitted as a wav file. There will be four movements during the piece and each one will centre around the story of one of the poignant people involved in the civil rights movement.

Timescale/Planning

Week 1 – Gathering ideas around which people to use in my soundscape and who was an important figure during the civil rights movement. Researching how certain figures either supported or opposed the civil rights campaign.

Week 2 – Starting to search for audio samples of famous speeches and voice recordings. Also starting to figure out some musical ideas for the project.

Week 3 – Using pro tools, session will be stared and samples and beat ideas will start to be built up.

Week 4 – Recording will begin on any drum or bass tracks that I will need in the multitrack studio.

Week 5 – Narration will be recorded in the sound theatre by someone I will have found who I feel will best suit the role.

Week 6 – Any sound effects or foley that the piece may need will be recorded in the sound theatre this week.

Week 7 – Editing the music, samples, effects, narration and foley will take place during this week.

Week 8 – Piecing together all the parts, processing and editing will be done from home and looking into whether any more parts are needed for the soundscape.

Week 9 – If anymore recorded material is needed then this week will be spent recording, if not a start will be made into mixing.

Week 10 – Mixing will begin on the track and then afterwards the track will be mastered.

Week 11 – This week will be spent reflecting on the piece and if any changes need to be made then this will be the time to do that.

Roles

My role will be overlooking the project as a whole and acting as a producer. The majority of the instrumentation will be recorded by me for the music with the exception of any vocals that may need to be required. Narration will be done by finding someone who is suitable for the roles and these sessions will be engineered by myself.

Research

As my research is a big part of American history, I will be using books, documentaries and music as research tools. My research agenda will be ongoing throughout the project and will be noted down in a tab at the top of my blog (Individual Research). Hopefully my research findings will help me to provide an accurate representation of who and how certain individuals either supported or opposed the African-American Civil Rights Movement.