Fall Semester, 2006
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Project 3, "Musique Concrete" from Drama 262, Sound Design, Fall 2006 CHALLENGE: Using "found" sounds, create an original piece of music. Unless noted below, the students utilized Audacity, a free and open-source digital audio editor to complete these compositions. Most all of the source material or "found" sounds came from The Freesound Project, an online database of digital sounds. Not all of these compositions fit the traditional "music concrete" idea, but they are very creative and clever. They are all compositions made by fitting found sounds and loops of instruments together into a new musical context.
	Nick Butler
STATEMENT: Three of my housemates are firefighters, so for my project I thought it would be fun to try to replicate an emergency scene after a natural disaster.  In keeping with the idea of musique concrete, I tried to have an underlying beat of mixed sirens and then added a bit of variation with horn blasts.  The sounds range from firehouse/truck sirens to coast guard horns/sirens.  The sound in the beginning and the end is to act as an intro with a truck on a radio arriving at the scene and then leaving at the end.  All of my sounds can be found at http://www.grsites.com/sounds/ in the emergency section.
	Marley DelDuchetto
STATEMENT: My project represents the sounds of my house (exaggerated, of course). The sounds of my house will work well to create a chaotic musique concrete piece.  It is sort of a look inside my head and what I listen to every day when I am working! I am going to start my piece with footsteps and make it almost start as if I am entering the house, but in an abstract way.  I think it would be boring if all of the sounds were exactly as they naturally appear and only occurring in the sense that they really would.  From there, I will add all of the dog noises and roommate distractions that I can without the piece feeling too cluttered. I am really not in love with my final piece.  I kept trying to add more sounds and it just lost its musicality.  It seems a bit one note to me but I had several of my roommates listen to it and they liked it, so I am hoping that I am just being overly critical.  I wanted to make this really neat house ambiance but with the dog sounds (and they are very close to accurate), it became far too cluttered and non-musical as I added the bathroom sounds, etc.  I think my piece sounds like others I listened to online, so I am hoping I hit the nail on the head with this one and it does not fall flat.  I found all of my sounds at The Free Sound Project.
	David Gassmann
STATEMENT: My goal with this piece is to create something that was rhythmic and accessible, while still somewhat disorienting. This is, I feel, in line with the larger idea of musique concrete – it is music, after a fashion, but the fact that it is built out of sounds that are not traditionally considered music make it somewhat off-putting. To accomplish this, I will create an underlying rhythmic element that will not change, the repeated sound of a typewriter. I will add other polyrhythmic elements over the course of the piece and try to synchronize them with the typewriter, but in a manner that will seem destabilizing. For example, I will have a telephone beep sample go off on every fifth typewriter click – it is a regular, repeated element, but the average listener will expect on the second, third, or fourth click. I will also have a loop of a slamming door, where it will slam twice normally and in sync with the typewriter, then once with the sample reversed. This reversed slam will be out of time with the typewriter, but since it is reversed, it will take the same amount of time as the normal one, and the next will be back in time with the constant beat. I will try to use mostly mechanical sounds. This is in service of my goal, since natural sounds, I feel, seem more familiar to the average listener. Mechanical sounds have a tendency to be more ambiguous; I have, for example, a sample of DVD cases being dropped, which have an artificial plastic sound, but could easily be mistaken for a number of things.
	Takisha Granberry
STATEMENT: I decided I wanted to have a futuristic type feeling in my project.  I used the program Hip Hop EJ 4 to capture the sound effects and to put all of them together.  I used different types of bells and horns to make the heart of the beat.  One of the bells is continuous throughout the whole project, it sounds every fourth of the beat if I’m not mistaken.  I filled in some of the beat with a scratchy type of sound that made me think that it would be in a scary movie.  The rest of the beat was filled in with robotic, futuristic noises.  I wanted to give the audience a feeling of waiting for something to happen and not knowing when it would occur.  So, I added a bomb going off at the end of the project.  It’s not all that exciting or surprising but I think I captured what I was looking for.
	Adam Johnson (coming soon)
STATEMENT: Coming Soon!
	Denesha Kenion
STATEMENT: For this project I played around with a few sound effects to establish a good piece. You will hear the sounds of a monster breathing heavily, wearing a mask while walking through the streets of L.A. As he is walking through the streets of Compton, you will hear the sounds of sirens, loud breathing, hard wind blowing, deep bass, and heavy feet of boots trying to find the person. Other sound effects are heard such as this wiry, computerized “Boing”, a helicopter flying in the air trying to stay with the killer, and unusual noises or images in your mind when frightened or scared to death. This project is put together to scare and make you feel as though you’re the one being stalked by this vicious killer trying his best to have you prosecuted. I want to make you feel the anxiety, nervousness, and quick thinking that need to take place when your life is on the line.
	Alex Levin
STATEMENT: With this project I wanted to create a semi-musical environment based on a potentially real situation (from the first-person).  I knew I wanted to start with the base of a heartbeat, and after layering breath on top of it, I got the idea for a situation where the person is under stress.  Then I found a cool sound of a gun cocking, so that set the situation.  I tried to make the build of sounds rhythmic but also natural, since I was trying to catch an abstract version of a real event.  I got the idea of the concentration starting inside and slowly moving out to the surrounding environment, since that seems to me how intense concentration (like that required for shooting a gun well) moves.  It starts with the most internal sound (the heart), and moves out to the surrounding environment.  I knew that I wanted to take all the sounds out as they came in, refocusing the event on the internal, but I left the gun cocking in place because it becomes the main focus of the sound.  The bird and heart noises all come from the center, but I panned the gun left and the breath right to make things a tad more dynamic.  The main difficulty in this project was syncing up each sound precisely with the original rhythm of the heartbeat, but I eventually figured out a way to do it fairly easily (basically counting the exact time between beats).  Overall, I wanted to use an abstract set of sounds to try and communicate a moment in reality.
	Laura Moore
STATEMENT: With the exception of the first sound, all the sounds in my piece can be made from a coke bottle or can. After a couple seconds of introduction and the beat was established I introduced all the sounds I would use in what I found to be a logical order of someone about to drink a coke. Once that was done, I added a secondary beat and began experimenting with repetition and alteration of the sounds along with filling in small gaps in these repetitions. I think my favorite part was reintroducing a sound heard earlier and then altering repetitions of it. I also really enjoyed playing with panning the sounds to one side or the other throughout the piece. All the sounds used were from The Free Sound Project.
	Luke Nutting (coming soon)
STATEMENT: I want to utilize the sound of a squash ball being hit hard against a wall in a squash court. It’s a great sound, and the room gives it a significant echo. It reminds me of the drums in Led Zeppelin’s “When the Levy Breaks.” I was going to record it live, but the sound on freesoundproject.com was pretty clear and exactly what I was going for. For a sound incorporating pitch, I want to use a siren. Other than that, I want to use a smorgasbord of animal/barnyard sounds combined with visceral human female vocals. I want it to sound like a disgusting funhouse. I’m going to loop a player-piano recording to give it an old West feel. Pretty much I’m going with a sort of John Waters approach; affect the audience with disbelief and disgust. Sawing sounds will add to the funhouse/magician feel and provide a provocative dash of violence. All my sounds are from freesoundproject.com. I want the piece to be overwhelming in its amount of sounds, with a backdrop of sirens, squash balls, and a dusty old player piano.
	Rachael Pickering
STATEMENT: For this project I used sounds from http://www.a1freesoundeffects.com/  and http://www.brandens.net/files/Sounds/FX/sndfx.htm.  I used the sounds of a “1-2-3 punch,” finch, chickens, crickets, bottle pop, clap, general “swamp noise,” rattlesnake, and mockingbirds.  I wanted to create something that sounded a little bit like the noises I’d hear at night or at dawn from my cabin at camp.  Then, I attempted to find some rhythmic qualities and piece together a fairly repetitive, tranquil, natural piece.  Hopefully the individual pieces are hard to identify and it works as a whole, harmonious work.
	Robert Winston
STATEMENT: My inspiration for this project came to me after watching television one morning.  A news channel was discussing how in the year 2031, people will be driving in the sky with new cars that will be able to fly.  I wanted to see how it would sound to drive a car thousands of feet in the air.  I chose certain sounds; all from Hip Hop EJ4 to create what I think it would sound like to drive in the sky. Many of the same sounds heard in a car on ground will change in the air.  I wanted to imagine sounds like cell phones, traffic, and the surrounding atmosphere. For the most part, the sounds I used were not tricky or difficult to recognize, for example the phone ringing.

These materials are examples only. They are not for intended for commercial use.