Sound Design MSc Music Masters Final project
Exploring relationships between morphing soundtracks and human emotion.
The University of Edinburgh
College of Art
Sound Design MSc Final Project
by
Tzu Ya Wang
Supervisor
Dr. Martin Parker
Dr. Tom Mudd
August.2018
Projects Brief
Introduction​
About what inspiring me
According to a study conducted by the World Health Organization ((World Health Organization, Health topics: Environment and health Noise,Data and statistics(www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/environment-and-health)), some people like to switch their moods via watching movies, others prefer listening to some music, while some still use natural sound to help alter their states of mind or current mental state.
This project mainly focuses on sound itself, searching to figure out first and foremost, the changes in my current state and emotions through listening sounds. Based on this personal understanding, I have executed work that may help others, launched an Instagram page along with other online platforms in order to make sounds accessible to a wider public. I aim to use the natural acoustic soundtrack to decode this phenomenon.
Chapter 1:
Field Sound Recording expression
As we know, music is one of the main sounds which can be considered as an element that has an impact on our moods. But in Jenefer Robinson’s essay Music and Emotions, it is also pointed out that “music cannot represent emotions, it can tell psychological stories that lend themselves to expressive interpretations (Jenefer Robinson Robert S. Hatten,Music Theory Spectrum, Volume 34, Issue 2, 1 October 2012, Pages 71–106,). In which case, it might also be that music acts as a person who is able to experience certain emotional journeys but may or may not be sent to specific individuals who were expected to have the same feelings as the original composer. This phenomenon isn’t just for music, but could be found in all kinds of sound, in this particular case, the sound around ourselves: environmental sound. The sound from the environment around us actually has a deep link with our mental status, indirectly influencing human emotions. In this chapter, I divided the sound into four categories and each of them will be illustrated its features.
Chapter 2:
Morphing process: Inner State changed by listening sound
The researchers from the European Commission, Directorate-General for the Environment think that by changing sound environments or soundscapes can benefit people’s health (Noise Impact on Health.47, 2015). This chapter mainly focuses on the change, personal listening experience and how this changes during a sound piece. It’s about feeling, and resolving how recordings become edits and how edits turn to layers and how layers melt into a journey from one place/state to another.
Chapter 3:
Acoustic natural soundtrack: Natural sonic environment based soundtrack.
For this chapter, I intend to illustrate my physical sound works for this project, how did the final soundtrack form and why did I choose these sound pieces together to make a soundtrack. My expectation of my soundtrack, the connections between me and the audience. Personally, I think sound carries more message than I expected whenever I hear it, therefore, I intend to use the soundtrack to arise people’s awareness of themselves, and send the message through the soundtrack I created. In this chapter I divided the above information into two paragraphs, making it easier to read.
Conclusion
What do I get from the project and summary
Besides the above research, there are still some important findings from this thesis, three main parts to be exact: First, through the recording and the research I found main features on the locations where I did the sound recording, and based on the locations I categorised them into two parts: countryside and urban area. To know what are the main features of those locations and what kind of feelings people get when they hear them, also, how does this sound influence people’s inner states. Second, I learned how to use recorders to get better quality sounds in various places and under different conditions. Moreover, for the post productions work, the morphing/transition process from one soundscape to another is the part that I’m most excited about throughout this project: the key to sound design is letting the sound tell me what to do next. After realising this, I get more information from the sound and feel more relieved each time I’m doing sound editing or listening. Third, everyone’s audio experience is different, even for those who share similar life experiences, but one thing’s confirmed: sounds that give response to emotional cues are highly relevant to personal relevance; sounds that do not have an impact on an individual’s life are less likely to be mentioned, given that sounds have qualities to permeate the subconscious, affecting the emotional state in humans (Stocker, 2013). Consequently, perhaps it is more appropriate to use impressions to describe this phenomenon, and this may also reflect the nowadays’ community behaviours. In conclusion, these findings and learnings let me understand how important the integration between human emotions and their surrounding soundscapes, moreover, the morphing phenomenon on soundtracks and people's inner states.
Works cited
reference
Papers
Francisco López, April 1998. Environmental sound matter.
(http://www.franciscolopez.net/pdf/env.pdf)
Devairakkam-Brown Carina Kathleen, April, 2016, Film Sound and Narrative: A Sonic Exploration of the Hollywood Paradigm
(https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/6c0f/f24fdf70909084e9bad2527d1b3a30536710.pdf)
Ma Weiyi, Thompson William Forde, November 24, 2015, Human emotions track changes in the acoustic environment
(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4664334/pdf/pnas.201515087.pdf)
Jenefer Robinson, 2007, Music and Emotions
Jenefer Robinson Robert S. Hatten,Music Theory Spectrum, Volume 34, Issue 2, 1 October 2012, Pages 71–106
Books
R. Murray Schafer, 18 Nov. 1994 ,Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World, The soundscape.
Editions Parenthese, 1995, Sonic experience: a guide to everyday sounds/ edited by Jean-Francois Augoyard and Henry Torgue ; translated by Andrea McCartney and David Paquette
Andy Farwell, 2010, Designing Sound
Websites
World Health Organization, Health topics: Environment and health Noise,Data and statistics
(www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/environment-and-health)
Christopher Packham, Medical Xpress, November 17, 2015, Decoding the natural soundtrack—human emotions influenced by the acoustic environment.
(https://medicalxpress.com/news/2015-11-decoding-natural-soundtrackhuman-emotions-acoustic.html)
Amplifon, Psychology of Sound - The Impact of Sound on the Brain
(http://www.amplifon.ie/resources/impact-of-sound-on-the-brain/)
Sound4film, Soundscape and Film, 21.12,2011
(https://sound4film.wordpress.com/2011/12/21/soundscape-and-film/)
The Times, Darlington Miriam, 28.04.2018, Swarming bees sound like roar of the ocean
(https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/swarming-bees-sound-like-roar-of-the-ocean-6hrs3mspb)
HuffPost UK, 22.03.2016, Why Water Makes Us Feel Calm
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/why-water-makes-you-feel-calm_us_56eaf19be4b09bf44a9ca573)
European Union, 2015, Science for Environment Policy Thematic Issue Noise Impacts on Health
(https://outlook.stpi.narl.org.tw/index/detail?id=7175)
Veruscript, Journal Of Ecoacoustics, 10 January 2018, Emotional associations with soundscape re ect human-environment relationships
(https://www.veruscript.com/journals/journal-of-ecoacoustics)
Frederic Font, Gerard Roma, and Xavier Serra. "Freesound technical demo."
Proceedings of the 21st ACM international conference on Multimedia. ACM, 2013.
(https://freesound.org/)
Lands and Genotypes, by Emmanuel L. Spinelli
(https://emmalorienspinelli.bandcamp.com/album/lands-and-genotypes)