A Sonic Journey: From University to Park

Location The location of this sound walk gives the listener a glimpse into what it’s like as a UTS student with the focus in Building 1 and 3, Central building and the Music building. The walk can begin from any entrance to either building with the listener starting off with traffic and street sounds. When walking into building 3, The listener is greeted with music from an echo like guitar filling the whole building and small riffs scattered throughout. This ambient sound represents the music students, the creativity and also peace within the building. When crossing over the bridge to the central building, the listener can hear the sounds of rain which is a very common sound to experience during this season and especially recently. If the listener enters building 1 through the main entrance, they will be greeted with the natural sound of some distant chatter and people passing by. Then by walking down to The Underground, there will be sounds of people playing ping pong, chattering and dissonant piano sounds which is placed near where the piano is in The Underground. By walking through the left of the building, the listener will hear sounds ranging from guitar riffs, chords and synths. Then on the right side of the building, the listener will hear sounds of study through the keyboard typing, some chatter and more guitar echoes. When leaving the building, the listener will experience the sound of leaving to go home, by passing by the sound of a bike ringing its bell and finally the sound of a bus arriving and getting onto the bus. Context The context of this walk was inspired by our teacher who pitched the idea to us in the early days of working on the assessment. He suggested that recording around campus would be an interesting approach as we can add our own spin as to what it was like being a student there which then prompted us to think about our own individual aims as to what goes on in our head when walking through the campus. The Creative Aims The aim of my sound walk was to give the listener an experience that is realistic yet ambient but the aim is also a small insight into my own head when walking through campus of small little guitar riffs scattered around that I come up with whilst walking from class to class. The natural sounds of the chattering and walking through campus can invite the listener into the shoes of a student and what they hear on a daily basis but also the ambient sounds such as the guitar chords and echoes gives the listener a calming walk and experience. The Sound Materials When recording our sounds, the group used a vast array of sound materials. The main recording material that we used for the natural sounds was the Zoom Shotgun Microphone that provided us with good quality recordings. The sounds recorded through this mic can include the bike bell, air vents, rain, doors and footsteps. We also pressed record when just walking through and around the campus to create that natural feel that can be heard on the border of building three and walking into building 1. We used a midi to record some synth and piano sounds and we did this by holding the microphone up to the speakers in an edit suit studio which allowed for a distorted and dissonant tone colour. When recording my own guitar sounds, I used an interface which was plugged into my computer in my home studio and used Pro Tools to add some reverb effects to create the echo feel. The Technical Process The technical process following the recording process was personally a long and confusing journey. With Echoes.xyz being a completely new program to me it took quite a while for me to wrap my head around how things worked. To edit my recorded sounds and ensure they were WAV files, I put them into Pro Tools and converted them through the clip list. With my interface recorded sounds, after adding the reverb plug-ins, I also had to convert them into WAV files to ensure the best quality of sound. I had created many drafts of my walk that I used as practice and also a way to figure out what I wanted to portray to my listener, and eventually, I begun on my final project. This was done by creating sound elements in different shapes which would fill certain areas. These shapes were circles or drawn shapes that covered an entire area, such as the entirety of building three, bus stops and traffic areas. For areas such as The Underground, I tried my hardest to find the most accurate spot to place my sounds which was hard, but I believe I have placed them in the right space. Overall, the technical process was aimed to create the most geographically and realistic soundwalk as possible so that the listener can experience a truly authentic experience of walking through UTS.

The beautiful Chippendale green located in the heart of Sydney's CBD, two minutes away from central station, has a deep and enriching history that dates back all the way to the early 1800s. This project delves into that rich history while only focusing on the beautiful and distinctive sounds that represent all the generational change that Chippendale Park has experienced. For this walk you are able to visually explore the surroundings of chippendale park while having the total history of chippendale park; from before humans inhabited it, to its modern day contemporary state. You will travel on an immersive journey and will be able to perceive Chippendale Green's lengthy history through the sounds I have introduced, as well as the historical signs set up around the park presenting factual historical information for individuals to read. I suggest that you follow the path as its audioscape is in an ascending order, going from generation to generation and ending in modern day Chippendale green. The walk does not include dialogue, only sounds, which was my intention as I want you to create a story within your minds through the sounds of history I have introduced. My intent for you as a listener is to immerse yourself fully into the walk, turn your sound up as loud as is safe for your ears so you don’t hear any outside sound, and discover how through only sounds you can learn a whole green's history and its existence before even you were born. Echo 1: The walk starts at the entrance of Chippendale green, from parramatta road, where tall buildings surround and there is a long pathway into the park. Here you will hear nothing but the pure sounds of nature; birds chirping, wind blowing, anything that would have been heard prior to the urbanscape being built and noise pollution becoming prevalent. This represents chippendale park before human civilization, all you can hear is the birds, the wind, the ocean and rain, it represents a more peaceful time where the green wasn't called chippendale green, it was just called earth. You’ll be able to see this past life of the green through the waterfall near the start of the walk. Echo 2: Listeners are then advised to turn to the right when they reach the end of the pathway and are standing right in front of the green. If you look to your left you'll see a sign with information on the breweries that existed before chippendale green. After that, turn on your sounds and listen to the brewery ambience. This part of the walk presents chippendale green in the early 1900s; when it was the home to a popular brewing company Carlton and United breweries. Throughout this period of the walk you will be able to apprehend the sounds of a thriving brewery; with people conversing and glasses clinking together as well as music being played. This area of chippendale green has come a long way since the breweries, but still has echoes of its past through signage and its commercial growth. Echo 3: The last part of this walk is Chippendale green in its modern state, which the listeners see is the green surrounded by buildings. It is filled with people sitting down or playing with their children or walking their dogs. Although it has become the only big piece of nature in an urban construction filled area, it has given residents of Sydney's bustling CBD a place to go to get their daily dose of greenage. We also can hear the faint noise of nature, when not listening to the background sounds of parramatta road as well as birds chirping in the trees all around the green. Ultimately this is chippendale green today, as is and as it will be for the future, and if it changes i guess i have another echo to make. Overall I hope this walk enlightens you as a listener and attracts you to the different eras of this beautiful green and everything that surrounds it. I hope this has helped you discover how through only sounds and not reading or having someone talk to you, you can learn something about history and how something like a park or green can have many forms, whether commercialised or in its pure natural state. Thank you for listening!! Juliette Triccas References NSW Department of Customer Service, T. for N. (2023, February 23). Chippendale Green | NSW Government. Www.nsw.gov.au. https://www.nsw.gov.au/visiting-and-exploring-nsw/locations-and-attractions/chippendale-green Background music: Jude Price, Durham Mcnamara, Daniel Osbourne

UTS Test 1

Synthetic Harmony begins within the foyer of a Sydney train in transit. From here, the listener is transported between the soundscapes of four alternate settings: the train, Central Station, the tunnel and the UTS campus. Each element explores a different aspect of the industrial soundscape within this narrative, as the listener is framed as the protagonist.

My Echo is set walking from the corner of Lee street onto George street and down into the subway, taking the escalator down and walking through the long hallway that takes you to the opal card readers into central. The speed should be set to 4.8kms Walking through Sydney everytime I come to Uni leads me to meet and see a lot of different people, but one thing I have noticed specifically was the homeless population. Many people nowadays struggle deeply with mental health including people I know and having that develop into something that may leave you homeless is a terrifying thought that unfortunately many people struggle with. Unable to cope with the weight of their own psychology these people are abandoned by society, isolated, ignored and helpless. I wanted to empathise with that concept in my walk, starting at the traffic island in broadway where many homeless people kneel day after day begging for money, the track creates the sensation of rising, albeit dazed and disoriented. The concept is that you are currently suffering a mental breakdown and due to your circumstance, both physical and financial you are trapped in a cycle of torment as many people are today. You travel across the road as the intensity and confusion seems to build. This section is composed entirely of Guitar, the purpose of which was to take something everyone is familiar with and make it almost unrecognisable, the combinations of tremolo and delay create a synth like texture which I found most people were unable to pinpoint as a guitar. The larger more dynamic power chords take you back to that familiarity but still leaves you with this unfamiliar texture and a growing dynamic field. Your character knows where he is, just not completely. Down into central you are surrounded with people all ignoring your presence, the rolling sound of suitcases become deafening as the track erupts into its second section. The track now emulates Pink floyd's Breathe in the Air, a song that catalogues the psychotic break of Syd Barrett. Drawing on this idea I tried to make the track feel like you're floating, cruising along albeit with a suspense riding beside you, some sense of unknown danger, building towards something. The section is haunted with subway inspired bells which pan ear to ear, designed to make you turn your head and surprise you, emulating paranoia and a lack of spatial awareness. An ambient texture is layered underneath containing voices, laughter and room sounds to fill the soundscape and flesh out the ‘picture’. As you exit the tunnel the last section begins, its short and full as you have now come into a large spacious room with nowhere to go other than up the stairs and back out again. As all the other people around you flock past the opal card readers you are bound by a financial boundary, symbolising both your lack of money and the struggles of escaping homelessness in Australia. The last section is heavily inspired by Eurithmic’s themesong for the movie 1984 in which the main character Winston is left broken and helpless at the end of the film. This was an idea I wanted to continue, forcing you to restart your journey, leave the subway station, head up the stairs and back onto the streets, unable to ever really escape. The instrumentation I chose was retro and psychedelic, drawing on those Pink floyd and Eurythmics inspired sounds I mentioned earlier. I wanted to frame the echo from an older perspective, someone who had seen the world and through their inner struggles now found themself helpless.

Industrial Currents is an abstract soundscape intended to evoke oceanic imagery with industrial sounds collected from train station recordings and foley from mechanical appliances such as a kettle or fridge. Every sound in the piece has been constructed using these strict parameters of recordings in order to create something truly alienating in its contrast. I utilised Kilohearts Phaseplant for majority of the sound editing, often utilising granular sample engines, manipulated with multiple LFOs for unpredictability and a sense of natural movement. I accidentally closed my project without saving so I will be recalling my processes from memory for the first and last echo, and will not have the exact file names. To create the first echo, titled “Industrialisation”, I took two recordings of a train announcement and general ambience of the station and opal gates, and put them in separate granular sample engines. I then modulated the output gain of both with an LFO that was opposed in value for each meaning creating somewhat of a sidechain pumping effect between the two audio sources. I then mapped a second LFO to affect the rate of the first LFO. I also used another slightly different speed LFO that was also having its rate modified by a more exponential curve to modulate the harmonics creating an intense build up of energy. Finally I added a ring modulator and raised the wet signal and rate gradually towards the end to enforce the effect of warping exhilarating speed. The result is a soundscape resembling the familiarity of a train taking off from a station but twists and accelerates far beyond what is expected, palette cleansing the listener of their normal listening environment and catapulting them into a disorientating new space. The name “industrialisation” alludes to the rate and pace of human advancement, particularly the sonic effects of this advancement raised in subject readings from individuals such as R.M.Schafer. The second echo, “Mechanical Dissonance”, delivers a significantly heavier sense of dread in its sonic makeup. It represents time passing beyond humanity, leaving behind advanced mechanical creations to inhabit the earth as they slowly degrade and malfunction from centuries of neglect and the dissonant, howling winds of a corrupted climate. To create this sonic palette I utilised the file “Haymarket_train coming into station with street noise (mono)_1”, looping it in a sampler and then modulating the output gain with a steep LFO ramped down to create a sharp transient, which I modulated with a complex chain of other LFOs of a variety of shapes and rates to create volatility in the rate of the sound whilst still eluding to some sense of a broken rhythm. I then sent this signal through an effect chain consisting of several dispersers to give the sound a laser-like timbre and some slight EQ adjustments and compression, amongst other minor edits. I then used a combination of “Elizabeth Street_traffic light with traffic noise (mono)_1” and “lighting stovetop (stereo)_1” with the same web of LFOs from the first component, modulating the gain. This was all sent through chorus and a rate modulated dual delay to create a dynamic, textural and wide high end. Finally I used the files recorded by Sophia entitled “doors closing” and “doors opening and vo at central” in granular engines to create the wind sounds, sending this through a chorus and convolution reverb. I also slightly modulated the output gain of this with the LFO used to modulate the gain of the other two signals for a slight ducking effect and added clarity. The third echo, “Returned to water” represents nature's reclamation of the space as the station is slowly consumed by the ocean. Remnants of human existence and impact remain but they are drowned and barely comprehensible, becoming a small, balanced piece in this new sonic landscape. Many techniques from earlier echoes were used in this too but just with significantly more layering and the use of the plugin trackspacer to ensure that different components did not clash in the frequency range and filled up empty pockets of space in real time creating the constant ebbing and flowing. One component in the tapestry is the file, “inside the fridge microphone standing in fridge (stereo)_1”, harmonically modulated in a way that creates a sound reminiscent of a whale, reinforcing the overarching narrative of future machines returning to nature and being consumed by water. The last echo, “Renewal” finishes the existential theme of the piece on a more hopeful note. The use of a sparse, slightly out of tune and still partially submerged musical piece represents the idea of hope for new life and melancholy of the last memories of humanity fading. The original recording of the melody was done with much cleaner synths but after revisiting the conditions of the assessment I realised I would have to find another way to create it through the recorded sound. The solution to this problem was oscillating small pieces of the recordings in granular engines creating complex and rather unpredictable fm synthesis. After a lot of trial I somewhat got each melodic component to a state that was relatively tuned but due to the nature of the method they eb and flow in and out slightly which after further consideration somewhat becomes a strength of the piece in its representation of a last breath of hope for life and a sorrowful goodbye to humanity.

Surrounded by a bustling city environment and flowing traffic from all directions Victoria Park can appear to some as a central location for noise pollution and heavy foot traffic. However, through a collation of the many sounds other than that of the urban soundscape that entraps the park, its centrality in supporting the student life of the surrounding universities can be seen. As you walk from the University of Technology Sydney the relentless sound of traffic tapers off as students walk down to the pond as a place of solace and peace. Muddied footsteps and flowing water highlight how whilst the city has been engulfed in one of its wettest seasons, the park and its purpose as an escape for students still thrive. The sounds of gardeners and birds chirping almost hint at a persistent effort to preserve that environment by nature and those who look to uphold its natural beauty. As one walks deeper into the park towards the University of Sydney, the presence of student life, even during quiet study periods, can be heard with compilations of laughter, banter, and conversation. Above that, Victoria Park acts as a cornerstone for student activism and protest, as it offers an open and inclusive space for students to celebrate and protest their beliefs and the change they want to see in their universities. Walking towards Parramatta Road and the gates of the University of Sydney, a student picket can be heard all around the edges of the university as students chant in unison in the hopes of enacting institutional change. It shows the symbolism of the park as a basis point for the future generation of leaders to go about building their campaign for better education, quality of life standards, such as wages, and environmental action. The creative aim of this walk is to represent how through audio, we can illustrate the need for spaces such as Victoria Park for students and young activists to safely and effectively advocate and protest for the change they want to see in their societies. Often through video, these protests are able to be displayed to show the scale and size of these movements, however, through sound, this project points out how in a large environment and soundscape such as Victoria Park, sound can be just as effective as visual aids to illustrate the impact these student movements are making in Sydney. The sound material utilized in the project was collated in between the areas of Broadway (University of Technology Sydney) and the gates of the University of Sydney in Victoria Park. A Rode NTG-3 shotgun microphone was used with a Zoom H6 recorder to capture all content and various mixing techniques were utilized to optimize the audio quality. Subtractive equalizing was used to clean all audio material of resonant frequencies which worsen the listening experience for users, and dynamic processing in the form of a compressor was used for various sound sources in order to control transients and dynamic peaks which cause an un-balance in the mix of the project. Additive equalizing was also used to balance low and high frequencies between foreground and background sounds, with shelf and peak filters allowing for the high frequencies of voices to be heard better in the mix above traffic noise from background sound sources. Further dynamic processing was used on the master channel in the form of a limiter with a ceiling of -1db in order to achieve the loudness requirements for this project. The ‘YouLean’ loudness meter was used to help measure short term and integrated loudness and analyze the mix of foreground and background sounds in order to achieve the target foreground loudness of -16LUFS.

Assessment 2

My Echoes Walk attempts to detail the significance of nature's timbre in this busy city life by providing a personal anecdote of recently moving from the Central Coast to the middle of Sydney, where the surrounding soundscape contradicts each other. I attempt to convey the merit of consuming a different sound environment so close to the city with the example of my local park, Redfern Park. I also capture the importance of Redfern Park in terms of its historical magnitude and the connotation it holds to the people of Redfern. Picking my echoes walk location as Redfern Park carried the creative aim of firstly finding a nonlinear area. In Redfern Park, multiple points of entry and pathways give a sense of non-linearity. Additionally, the park's theme makes it so you don't have to walk in a straight line, and it's up to you to traverse and enjoy the space. In my intro, I implemented sounds that would be most common to those who live in and work in Sydney or any city in general, such as waiting at the lights of a crossing and train announcements, trying to create a point of similarity with the average Sydney resident. With sounds that they would hear on the daily. In Part A, I tried to achieve the use of park ambience and softer sounds that were easy on the ear; in an attempt to set the tone and background of the project, I applied a soft midi keyboard playing a simple chord progression to layer it on the back to create depth and interest, which is played throughout the majority of the piece. I add in my narration to describe the park's visuals and atmosphere so that the listener could invoke and relate to its characterisation. Through figurative language such as 'mature fig trees' and 'welcomed me with a gush of wind,' the listener could sympathise with those who previously visited the park, and it allows me to segway the listener's curiosity to the history of the park, which is what I cover in part B. To my narration then compares the coast to the city it ultimately foreshadows the focal point of the message it is trying to give in that by living in a somewhat opposite soundscape, you gain an appreciation for the other Part B tells the story of the park and its historical value to the people of Redfern and Aboriginal culture. Such as telling the coming of the first Aboriginal AFL team and former prime minister Paul Keating's apology speech. Its epicenter as aboriginal activism gives the Echoes listener intel and justifies a reason to listen while traversing the area. Listening to a tour guide through headphones immerses the listener and informs them of information. It continues with the park atmosphere ambience, and chatter to give a comfortable homely feeling. Then adding footsteps to give a sense of progression within the story and to represent the passing of time and the history of the park Part C and the outro use more city sounds, such as street atmosphere, train announcements, and chatter in shops and alleyways, with narration that recounts my past three months since moving to the city and its experiences that made me miss the soundscape of a quieter, peaceful area. Redfern Park acts as a sanctuary of mind that fulfills Sydney's missing nature and serene soundscape, marking its importance in my local sphere. My creative aim attempts to show the difference between city life's soundscape and the central coast. The sound materials consisted of 'city sounds' that could be heard daily in Sydney, which I collected by covering my daily life, such as commuting to university and hanging out with friends. From this, naturally collected sounds that describe the urbanism sound felt in Sydney. Additionally, for the more idyllic lifestyle, its acoustemology was contained in more peaceful quiet areas such as Redfern Park and parts of the coast. Its composition and layering was done through multiple layers of atmos sound that add depth to the Echoes walk; I layered a midi of a simple four-chord pattern and an intro and outro music to keep the audio not monotonous.