Divisor
About Divisor:
Context//
Divisor, although not explained clearly, the animation appears to depict the killing and harvesting of robot 'slaves'; a possible metaphor of recycling, albeit within a dystopian future.
Mind Map:
Initial Thoughts//
My first few thoughts and reactions to this piece was sadness, death and the mentality of 'it was all for nothing'. I wanted to reflect this in my sound design. I will use machinery sounds, keep the 'soundscape' bare at times, show the pain and sacrifice of the robots. Below is a mind-map that graphically shows the initial thoughts.
In Divisor, I wanted the sound world to speak for itself and form a specific emotion rather than relying on a theme or melody to set the mood, thereby placing this specific track into the world of ‘ambient sound design’. I used low bass patches to add body to the piece, heavy distortion to portray the pain of the robot and high piano sounds which add dissonance to avoid conventional melodies/harmonies. To mark the sudden surge of power into the robot, offering the machine a new sense of life and purpose, I suddenly shifted the music away from unconventional harmonies into minor and major chords.
The fusion between the natural and the unnatural is crucial within Divisor. By adding a natural element to the clip, an empathetic bond is created, one that would not be formed as deeply if they were considered to be ‘simple’ robots. The idea of a blend between natural and unnatural stems from what principal sound designer at Guerrilla Games, Anton Woldhek said in an interview about the sound design for the video game ‘Horizon Zero Dawn’, an Action Role-Playing Game (ARPG) about a hunter in a world overrun by machines. Woldhek says “Is it an animal or is it a machine?” (McGee, 2017) and talks about using a dial to see where the sound is located between the two categories, something I was aware of throughout the recording and editing process. With the main robot’s footsteps, I wanted the sound to be mechanical but not too extreme so I layered the sound of cutlery being gently hit in a metal pot (machine element) with my actual footsteps (organic element). Another example of blending machine with natural sounds is when the robots get harvested. The sound consists of a paper bag being scrunched up but edited through granulation to create a sense of the ‘unnatural’; this process continues throughout the clip. Although the clip contains a limited score in terms of ‘organic’ instruments, the use of different synths, such as Moog’s Minimoog and Native Instrument’s Massive, gives the piece multiple textures and dimensions.
Sound Creation:
Development and Process//
Each sound has been created through layering and stacking different elements. I did it like this because I wanted to give the listener a different experience to one they would normally be used to and to mask the original meaning of a sound. To someone who doesn't understand audio quite so well a sound of a door closing will usually represent a door closing but in this case, I want to it represent the moment before something bad happens.
Here are some isolated examples of my final sounds and an explanation on how I made them