Swan Song Diary 2

This is the second diary entry of the production on Swan Song. This post documents the recording process of the project from Tuesday 1st Nov to Thursday 3rd Nov.

I have been changing the set up everyday to maximise the variety of sounds, to capture the room in more than one ways. On Tuesday I did a wide room set up with barely any close mics, so everything is just distanced and diffused into the space. I did this to begin with to establish the theatre performance sounding feel I wanted from my research. I spend the day recording myself walking, running and doing all sorts of movements, most of the things weren’t very audible but it was crucial that I do it as is and just see what it picks up. It is quite interesting how this piece could be played live because it basically has a script which acts as a score, even when the movements doesn’t make a sound.

This is a picture from Tuesday where I am doing the movements. I also move the things in the space around as sets and props. Everything is physical but only sonic in the end, Being blurred of its original action and purpose. I think it is a way abstraction, it takes away the definitive existence of a stage direction and it becomes part of a chorus.

Wednesday I did an overkill and mic-ed up the piano with 7 microphones, going very close to the strings and the inner structure of it. When you remove the front board and go right in, you can heard the mechanic sounds of strings being hit by the hammer and all the tiny parts reacting with each other. It cancels out the way it would sound usually before all the tiniest sounds melt together to make one whole creamy harmony. This way of recording the piano focused on everything but the musical aspect of the instrument, it sounds weird. It is definitely different from how I am used to hear it being recorded.

The piano in the piece represents the Swan, and the swan in the play is a romantic being. He is manipulated, fooled, taken advantage on, heart broken in the end by the Moth. And I think this way of micing the piano would be nice, as if you are really getting to know a person. And when you look close enough, everyone is clunky and rough and not very attractive.

This is when I recorded the 7 inches I got from a book fair. They includes all sorts of sound effects. I have mentioned them in a previous blogpost. I recorded directly from the pre-amp and also myself putting it on and turning on the turntable. This itself is also an action from a stage direction. Every entrance into the space, every exit, is recorded and is so important to make the impression of this being one live performance. I ended up using plane sounds, birds sounds and church bells ringing to the piece. They create immediately an illusion of place (or a suggestion), which also from the action of me playing it cancels out the realism of it, as well as the crackles of the old records.

I think there is a lot of play in the process, and those playfulness became quite an important part of my story-telling. Rather than have direct meanings and symbols, they post questions, they suggestively means something, while the way I present audio confuses traditions within sound design. This is something I unconsciously do a lot, probably came from my background in theatre, especially with the style ‘new writing’ which I used to do a lot. We tend to present theatre knowing that it is fake, we tear down the huge frame of a stage and tell you directly that the story is not the show, the performance is the real show.

I started searching for old plays I’ve seen to continue thinking about theatre. I haven’t made the connection that my piece is actually about theatre even though it was very obvious. I found this video of a show call Ballads of Expulsion. This theatre Company called On&on Theatre does a lot of very good experimental theatre, and in this particular one my old tutor Ceci Chan was in it and I am actually in the audience in this video.

This scene is about people remembering a famous moment of a rock musician playing live, and how everyone remembered it, worship it and cherish it, while no one actually remembers how it really went, or what was actually going on. This is the nature of live performance, it stays the way you remembered it, not how it actually was, while also there are no truth or real way of seeing one single performance. This video sounded different from how I remember it, I didn’t even know this video exists. The way I remember the piece was that when the actor stood on the step with the speaker in hand, it was actually so so loud and scary. I saw her eyes, gazing so strongly into the abyss, yet you can tell she isn’t. It was so strong, and powerful.

I suddenly see the resemblance of my piece with this piece. Maybe it was always inside of me, the memory of seeing this. I enjoy the ambiguity of us human, it is not linear or logical, it’s just senses and intuitions. This is also how I have decided unconsciously to do things, especially with Swan Song, that nothing would make sense on paper, but they all do, if you know the context.

After three days of recording the structure of the hour long piece is here. There are still bits that needs to be recorded and re-recorded, and then editing, re-amping, sampling. The development within the recording process could be very tiring, I will need to be very alert and aware in this stage in order to remember what is the intentions of making the sounds and not get driven away by the way my ears like them instinctively, but really ask how should I record it, and then present it.