Swan Song R&D 10 – History is but a Sullen Memorabilia

This will be the last blog post on the process of developing Swan Song as a sound piece. It will document the end of the editing process of Swan Song and outline the final steps on finishing the project as we approach hand-in time.

I have now finalised the editing on the piece and produced a second draft of the complete work. It will most likely go through some mixing before the hand in but it is done now. In this editing process I realise that I made the judgement on structuring the piece like this for a reason, and I should stick to it because I understand what I did now. Before I felt it was all a bit random but actually I just need to tweak the project a little bit to highlight my choices and make sure that I am not defeating myself within the work. For example, I was trying to put the “ladies and gentlemen this is an F minor” in the front before ‘Swan Song I’ and see if it would sound more smooth and experiment with timeline or whatever; but actually I don’t need to make such drastic changes at all. So what I did in the end is I did some sound collages around certain parts, and rearranged some of the tracks to have a clearer intention of each part. These collages includes now a reversed short clip after ‘Swan Song II’, the violins which is now everywhere in the piece, some machine sounding sounds on ‘War’ and so on.

I don’t know how to describe these collages yet, but they are different from the first draft as they are not live recordings and basically like post-production film magic compare to the theatre realness of what’s before. I started to see the recordings as not takes on scenes but just imageries. This way I think of them in a more modular way, and more possibilities on editing. I thought changing the way of look at it means I will make big changes, but actually even when I see the different parts or recordings as more deconstructed building blocks I still see why I structured it this way, which means there is something I am very certain about the way I am telling the story now. Perhaps I just need to make the piece tighter in the first place, that’s the only thing I needed to edit – the things I couldn’t at the moment of recording make sense of.

One biggest decision I made with the new edit is that, now the ending of the piece is abrupt. It is unexpected and sudden and you feel like there must be more. I don’t really know yet why I made that choice, but it felt right at the moment, so I decide to keep it and see what I think of it later.

This whole process made me realise the importance of not knowing. The process that is driven by trying to figure myself out through doing and making. It is a lie if someone tells you they know exactly what they are going for from the beginning I think. Art is a unique expressive tool, it is not solid, especially sound, no matter how much you think you know about it, it will surprise you over and over. It is like a conversation, you make something and it speaks to you in a new way from what you thought, and you continue and change something and it speaks to you in a way again. This project also tells me that it is important to trust myself, to believe that I do everything for a reason, there is never truly unconscious choices made, no matter how small the reason is. But also, don’t be obsessed about everything, just do it one day at a time and you will know when to stop and when to finish it. I think I am finally ready to name the project, which is the perfect indicator that I’ve grown out of it, that I am now past producing it and transitioning into the next project now. This piece is called ‘History is but a Sullen Memorabilia’.

This is the link to the piece: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wPGENY_VVZd2-q3uzer7EQinHrKVe9Hh/view?usp=share_link