Wednesday, September 07, 2005

Reflecting


As the city quietens down at night it is possible to hear the space as the details of how the sound ricochets from one building to another becomes more apparent.

Although the streets remain fairly crowded (and the shops open) until late, things begin to quieten down from around ten. First of all the shops close, turning off their different musics that normally broadcast onto the street, and around the same time any audio visual advertising is either turned off or, at least, has the sound turned down. Next is the turn of the buses, which stop their services around 10.30pm helping to further cut down on the background noise.

With much of the continuous daytime noise stopped, it is the turn of the shorter sounds, such as footsteps, occasional taxi klaxons, and the hammering coming from the road workers and building developers who will be working throughout the night. From this time, until when it all begins again the following morning, these sounds are give their own reverb as they bounce round the town.

All this ambient white noise presents me with various recording challenges. lt's not that the sounds that I want to record can't be heard - it's that all the background noise masks the detail. As well as this, as l layer my various recordings to structure my composition it is unhelpful if l am also accumulating an accompanying (and increasing) noise track, and so to get round this I carefully record, edit and clean each sound; however, this is not a quick job.