Free Activity

close-far

Main content: the effect of sonic perspective (depth)

Pedagogical objective

  • The student is able to locate sounds within an acoustic space.

 

 

Pedagogical intentions

  • Familiarize the student with the concepts of sonic layering and sonic depth.
  • Develop the students’ abilities to simulate sonic depth.

Tools

Mixer
Reverberation
Filter

Déroulement

1

Create an effect of sonic perspective

[individual work]

 

  • Ask each student to choose two sounds from the [close-far] bank of sounds: one that is far and one that is close.
  • The student plays both sounds with the help of the mixer, and adjusts their volumes so as to clearly perceive the two sonic perspectives (far and close).
  • Each student presents and comments upon their results to the group.
  • Assessment: do we hear the two sounds clearly? Do we distinguish clearly, the far sound and the close sound? What differentiates one from the other? Some guidelines: precision (clear/blurry) - colour - volume - balance of dry-wet (reverberation)...

2

Creating a “far” perspective by manipulation

[individual work]

  • Ask each student to place the sound [gymnasium] into tab-1 and the sound [hello] into tab-2 and tab-3.
  • Students must find a way to “place” the sound [hello] into the same space as the sound [gymnasium].
  • Listen to the results. With the help of the mixer, compare the original with the “far” version.

Variation

  • Re-do the exercise, but this time, using sounds chosen by each student.
  • Assessment: Does raising the volume of a “far” sound make it sound “close”? Is a sound that we sense as “close” necessarily louder? For example, if we compare the sounds [train] and [footsteps-leaves], which seems louder? (Load both sounds and compare their waveforms.) What is it that tells me that the train is far and that the person walking in the leaves is close?

Pushing the envelope

  [individual work]

  • Propose to the students that they create a sonic-image with three distinct depths (close-mid-far), using three sounds of their choice.
  • Listen to the results and share comments as a group.
  • Assessment: are the three depths of the sonic image clear? Which sound seems the farthest? What characterizes each of the depths in terms of volume, colour, space, subjective impression…?

An example..

Beginning to create 

Listen to the sounds created by each participant.

 

Begin to imagine a story from these sounds…