Pro Tools - Editing Sound

I started editing my sound with a clear idea of how I wanted it to sound. I started by editing my voice over by cutting the clips and spacing them out according to how I wanted the poem to flow. I then played with adding some reverb to see what I liked the most.

I originally set out to have multiple voice tracks and editing them to sound jittery and jarring however I found that having multiple voiceovers layered on top of one another sounded too possessed by multiple demons-ee which I didn't want and scraped that.

I used timeshift in audiosuite to speed up some of my audio as I needed the longer spoken word bits quicker in pace than they were originally.

I started adding in some of my sounds after settling with the voice over I liked the sound of. I needed to create the illusion of a couple arguing behind a wall, I had the audio which I recorded through a wall however this didn't sound enough like what I wanted. I lowered the dB scale and added some mid range reverb which created the effect I wanted. I applied the same method and effects onto a laughing track too for the illusion that they had the TV on behind the wall too.

At this stage I managed to order some of the first part of the piece, I layered a door slamming sound on top of one another to get the depth of sound I wanted then started on adding the foot steeps for the second part.

I thought about how the foot steps sounded on their own and I thought they sounded too dry and put some slight reverb on it to mimic walking.

I lowered the pitch of the voice of my person walking by as I wanted a lot of the background/more literal sounds to be lower in pitch and the sounds I wanted the more abstract sounds to be higher in pitch. Plus in my head the person walking past on the phone was a male voice which needed to be lower in pitch. 

I also added some reverb onto this clip as it sounded too dry and if someone is walking along and you hear someone on the phone the sound bounces off of things.

I started to assemble my walking towards the pub section of my piece. I needed to build the sound gradually coming up to the pub because when have you ever been outside of a busy pub and its quiet outside? never. I took to a more realistic approach and used the faders to build the sound gradually. I then cut the footsteps out and added the same door slam as "leaving the house" section. My pub sound needed to have more depth to it and therefore added in football on the TV to the background. I didn't adjust these sounds as they were exactly how I wanted them.

This is what I had ordered for my piece so far. Next I needed to create the sound of being in a pub toilet.

To create this "pub toilet" I started by splitting the pub clip into two and then added some reverb onto the second clip which added more wetness and created the illusion that it was in the distance and behind a wall.

I was not happy with the "toilet pub" and left it to come back to with a clearer mind set. I started by adding my literal sounds in which correspond to the voice over such as the keys, coughing and sneezing. I added my "fuck you" and burping for some comedic value.

I lowered the pitch for my "fuck you" as I needed it to be lower to blend with the background sounds.

Putting my screenshots of my process into this poorly designed platform for blogging meant that most of them are not in order so this, is my timeshift for speeding up my voice over. 

I added in my "roll clicking" sound which I wanted to mimic the sound of bones clicking so I lowered the pitch which made it sound more realistic. 

I went back to editing my "pub toilet" soundscape and added in my flush, I needed my flush to end at a certain time and used the fader to do so accordingly.

In my piece I needed to have some people talking in the bathroom which in my mind sounded echoy and a little dry and the sound would bounce off all the surfaces. Achieving this however is another story. I started by lowering the pitch and taking away the feedback to achieve this crispness. I tried to add some reverb however I simply couldn't achieve the sound I wanted and left it to come back to.

I started editing my final piece of my sound, I wanted the ending to be irregular with the high pitched sounds for the abstractness of the piece and the intensity to be loud.  With such a short spoken ending I knew I needed it to be fast and have multiple layers. I started by adding in my bubbling pipe sound and exhale, I placed the accordingly to the voice over and added a fade to the end where I wanted the "silence" to be the only sound heard.

At this stage I managed to have most of my literal sounds down. Some of which I liked, some of which I didn't. I recorded my own voice for the voice over as I knew how to speak it the way I wanted it. However I didn't like the high pitched tone to my voice and decided to lower is slightly using pitch in audio suite. I also used the EQ to take away the feedback in the background to make it sound clearer.

Some more sounds I added were the glass rattle, outside atmosphere, doorslam for entering and leaving the bathroom, cars going past, breathing a dog barks. The dog barks were the hardest as I couldn't get the right tone I wanted from the bark. I played with the placement of the bark a lot as dogs bark a couple of times a bark (if that makes sense) I turned the Pitch lower too.

I changed the pitch to be slightly lower on the outside atmosphere clip so it had a more eerie tone to it and added a fade at the start too.

I went back to the dog bark as it sounded too dry and added some reverb to the bark.

I experimented with laying the barking but it didn't work the way I wanted as it sounded too random.

I added some reverb to the sink dripping clip as I wanted it to have more depth.

I also altered the pitch as it was too high pitched and as I wanted it to be in the background I  needed it to be lower.

I added some reverb to the first door slam as it would have been realistically coming outside and therefore it would have a deeper sound.

I went back to my "pub toilet" atmosphere and split my football tv clip and added some reverb to make it sound distancey and fuller. 

I added a laughing track to this "pub toilet scene" I wanted to continue it through to the very end also. I added some reverb to the clip as I wanted it to sound fuller as if you were in an echoy toilet. 

At this point I had most of my sounds placed. I started to play with some of the sounds such as reversing the glass sound. I really liked this sound and used it towards the end too. 

I had another listen to the start to work my way back through the piece and I didn't think that the argument through the wall sounded muffled enough and took to my EQ and dropped the higher pitched sounds and raised the lower. 

I then started to play around with the way I wanted my sounds to travel.

I started to think about my more abstract sounds and started to experiment with the LoFi in audio suite and other effects such as pitch and reverb and time shift.

This is a screenshot of my final outcome.