I noticed many clever auditory techniques used in Lance Dann’s, The Flickerman. Immediately, the overlapping of hushed vocals stood out to me, creating a seamless conversation that also, however, felt like a collage of words. A sense of hurriedness is apparent through this and starts the piece with an air of nervousness and secretiveness. All of this is cleverly coloured with well placed drone sounds and deep gong like drums. I also picked up on the muffledness of the backing soundscape and the stretched, pitched down background vocals once the narrator says ‘and then everything started to happen really slowly’ as the first climax starts to begin. It seems that throughout the story the actual sounds involved in the tale, whether that be birds taking off or the sound of vocals, as opposed to external unrelated sound effects or instruments, are manipulated to accompany the scripts current mood, integrating the story itself with our auditory experience.
At times it seems as if the surrounding voices feel distorted as they get louder. This brings into question the grain of the human voice and its importance in radio art. Having been given the role of interviewer in my groups sound piece this observation may be useful to implement. Taking special care in how I present/ project my voice in order to compliment its theme. Though it may be more important in the actual editing of the vocals, exploring ways in which the tone of the voices involved can be altered.
Silence too plays an important role in emphasis, but also as a marker for the direction or culmination of events. This can be heard at the end of The Flickerman’s sound effect sequence, just before what seems quite obviously to be an explosion of some sort. The silence makes it all the more potent but also gives the listener an even more accurate idea of what is being experienced, as if the world stands still for us and the characters just before the inevitable explosion.
After this weeks lecture I discovered that the ‘whooshing’ that follows the silence was achieved by reversing a sample. Further to this, at another point in the piece, the sound of birds flapping their wings seems to be drowned in reverb. These examples of manipulating the stories inherent sounds to aid in the visual imagery will make the process of curating samples for the group collaboration more specific, as I’ll be searching for sounds and effects that actually identify with the piece.