When in Doubt, Go to the Library - Megan McIntyre

When in Doubt, Go to the Library - J.K Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

“When in Doubt, Go to the Library,” is a soundscape composition created to represent the 7th floor reading room in Douglas library, more affectionately known as the “Harry Potter room”. The piece is not only a tribute to my favourite place on campus, but also to my favourite book series that is associated with it. The piece starts as if you were walking into the room for the first time, you hear the creak of the door and then the soft sounds of the library start to surround you as you find your seat. As you start to unpack your bag and settle into a rhythm, different sounds from around you catch your ear, a cough here, a ringtone there. You have some whispered conversations with your friend before focusing deeply on your homework. In your concentration, the sound of the room fades away and you are left with a barely conscious level of what is happening around you. At the sound of your phone vibrating, you are quite suddenly brought back to reality and realise that it’s time to leave. You quickly pack up your things and head to the door, eager to come back.

The composition is created with raw recordings I took on a zoom recorder when I was in the library. The background noise for the majority of the piece is a general recording I made to capture the essence of the room. I staged the more specific sounds such as whispering, writing and typing by holding the recorder close to me as I performed the sounds. There are also a few instances where I took recordings of clips from Harry Potter and incorporated them in my piece to act as people talking in the background (most of the clips were from scenes where the characters were in the library, so I thought it was fitting). The three main technical aspects I included were the Ambeo Orbit, ATK FocusPushPressZoom and NearFieldProximity plugins. I also used basic editing techniques such as altering pitch and speed, fading, reversals, splicing and a lot of automation. For the transition between the two states of mind, I generated a “whooshing” sound by using the Orbit plugin and automating it so it would spin around as quick as possible to create the illusion that your mind was tunnelling and focusing really hard.