Pressure Project 3 | Highland Soundscapes
Posted: April 20, 2025 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Pressure Project 3 Leave a comment »Our prompt for pressure project 3 was to create an audio soundscape that reflects a cultural narrative that is meaningful to you. Since I am 75 percent Scottish, I choose to use the general narrative of Braveheart as an inspiration. My biggest challenge for this project was my motivation. Since I am concurrently taking Introduction to Immersive Audio, I have already done a project similar to this one just a few weeks ago. I struggled a bit with that project, so this one seemed a bit daunting and unexciting. I must admit, the biggest hurdle was just getting started.
I wanted to establish the setting of the Scottish countryside near the sea. I imagined the Cliffs of Moher, which are actually in Ireland, but the visual helped me to search and evaluate the many different wave sounds available. I used freesound.org for all of my various sound samples. In order to establish the “country side” of the soundscape, I found various animal noises. I primarily focused on “highland cow” and sheep. I found many different samples for these and eventually I got tired of listening to the many moos and trying to decide which sounded more Scottish. I still don’t know how to differentiate.
To put the various sounds together I used Reaper. This is the main program we have been using for my other class, so it seemed like the logical choice. I was able to lay a bunch of different tracks in easily and then shorten or lengthen them based on the narrative. Reaper is easy to use after you get the hang of it and it is free to use when “evaluating” which apparently most people do their entire lives. I enjoyed the ease of editing and fading in and out which is super simple in Reaper. Additionally, the ability to automate panning and volume levels allowed me to craft my sonic experience easily.
For the narrative portion, I began by playing the seaside cliffs with waves crashing. The sound of the wind and crashing waves set it apart from a tranquil beach. I gradually began fading in the sound of hoofs and sheep as if you were walking down a path in the highlands and a herd of cattle or sheep was passing by. The occasional “moo” helped to establish the pasture atmosphere I wanted to establish. The climax of the movie Braveheart is a large battle where the rival factions charge one another. For this, I found some sword battle sounds and groups of people yelling. After the loud intense battle, I gradually faded out the sounds of clashing swords and commotion to signify the end of the battle. To provide a resolution, I brought back in the sounds of the cattle and seaside, this was to signify that things more or less went “back to normal” or, life goes on.
For the presentation portion, I decided to take an extension since my procrastination only lead me to have the samples roughly arranged in the session and the narrative portion wasn’t totally fleshed out. This was valuable not only because I was not fully prepared to present on day 1, but I was also able to hear some of the other soundscapes that helped me to better prepare and understand the assignment. While I am not proud that I needed an extension, I am glad I didn’t decide to present something that I didn’t give the proper amount of effort to. While, I don’t think it was my best work, I do think it was a valuable exercise in using time as a resource and how stories can sometimes take on a life of their own when a listener has limited visual and lingual information and must rely totally on the sounds to establish the scene and story. I felt the pressure of project 3 and I am glad I got the experience, but I’m also glad it’s over 🙂