Sounds and Strategy for Experimental Sound Project

Our idea for our experimental sound piece revolves around the idea of a person's repetitive morning routine. We intend for the piece to consist of several sounds associated with a person's morning (e.g. - getting up, eating breakfast. brushing teeth) which will all be played individually (and chronologically) initially, and will then proceed to overlap and intertwine with one another; breaking the chronological structure. Doing so will create a rhythm to the piece, not necessarily in the sense of a song, but some form of pattern and repetition within the sounds. The idea of a rhythm is that it is the same idea repeated several times, which would therefore be an ideal metaphor for a person's repetitive routine. Life's rhythm is found by living it.

The idea is somewhat inspired by the experimental short film Tango (Zbigniew Rybczynski, 1980). The film takes place entirely within a single room, with a huge plethora of characters within it; none of which ever seem to acknowledge one another, and seem to repeat the same actions over and over. The setting becomes so chaotic that it quickly becomes apparent that these people cannot all be occupying the room simultaneously. The characters more likely represent numerous stories that have occurred within the room throughout what is most likely several years. This manipulation of images, in that multiple events can be presented as though the were occurring simultaneously, creates a chaotic and deliberately repetitive tone; this being the idea that inspired this sound project. The sounds within our project will intertwine and collide as thought they were all happening simultaneously, even though realistically, this would be absurd (e.g. - brushing teeth coupled with eating breakfast).

Below is a few ideas of some sounds we may record. Note that this list may not comprehensively cover the sounds that we record; some extras may be added and some may be removed.

• Waking up/getting out of bed
• Yawning
• Brushing teeth
• Gargling
• Sound of a bowl being taken from a cupboard
• Cereal being poured into a bowl
• Fridge opening
• Milk being poured on cereal
• Sounds of cereal popping due to moisture of milk
• Chewing
• Washing up
• Showering
• Sound of a door slamming
• Possibly further some further sounds (e.g. - walking, getting on train, etc.)

We plan to record these sounds shortly. It has been arranged that we will record most of these sounds in James' room at the University accommodation at 11am on 26th October. Other sounds such as "getting on a train" will of course need to be recorded elsewhere. Ideally, the only piece of recording equipment that will be required will be an H5 Zoom Recorder, along with its windbreaks and pair of headphones. Many of the sounds we will be recording are rather subtle and so will require the level of recording detail that the H5 provides. Hopefully, we wont need to use any other pieces of equipment when recording. Each sound will be recorded at least 3 times in order to maximise the amount of usable sound. The windbreak will be equipped onto the H5 to make sure there is as little clipping as possible (for example, slamming a door could create a gust of air that could cause audio clipping). We will hopefully be able to record these sounds in a single session, although it is likely that further sounds may need to be recorded in the future, and thus we may have to arrange future sessions at some point.