1. ‘Sounds from a By-Gone Time’ – Justification
As part of my Stage Sound Design unit, I have completed a task which required me to create
a 3-minute-long sound scape which captured specific ‘sounds from a by-gone time’. The
Liverpool Albert Docks as well as Bill Fontana were our stimulus and, in groups, we chose a
particular theme to focus on which represented Liverpool. We considered how Bill Fontana
creates his sound scapes by simply listening to the environment around him and
manipulating them into something that isn’t obvious.
My group chose Slavery to focus on as many slave ships were docked in Albert Dock. My
sound scape recreatesthe emotions, environmental and natural sounds that would have
been associated with suffering slaves being transported on ships, yet without telling a story.
Sounds we recorded include the sound of water against boats, general background noise
around the docks and we even asked the owner of an old ship if we could spend some time
recording on it. We recorded the engine noises, people walking around on the deck and
moved rusty rails around so they made a squeaking sound. We visited the Slavery Museum
and the Museum of Liverpool where we were able to record relevant sounds from short films
that were being played, like classical, elegant music and human moans of distress. Below, I
will explain a number of sounds on my sound scape.
This is the beginning of my sound scape. It is the
sound of a part of an old machine in the Slavery
Museum being moved from side to side to make a
squeaking sound. The sound is quite high pitched
with a quick decay, so we didn’t edit it before
putting in onto the scape. It’s an eerie sound and
represents the swaying of the ships on the water.
This sound is played quietly in the background for the majority of the scape and sounds similar
to a fast, low pitched heartbeat. We thought this would be appropriate to represent the emotion
of the slaves on the ships and also create subtle tension by building up and slowing down
multiple times. We retrieved this from Free Sound because we couldn’t source this particular
sound ourselves, and we added a Wah-Wah effect to it at the start to make it not as obvious.
This changed the sound to have a long sustain whereas it didn’t before.

2. Here, we recorded short clips from a tape which was playing in the Slavery Museum. You
can hear shouting and what sounds like a boat horn which, layered with the previous two
sounds, gives an atmospheric feel to the piece. This is already starting to recreate the
unpleasant atmosphere on a slave ship and has the potential to make the audience feel
uneasy. This sound has a long sustain which enables it to carry on in the background for a
while whilst the other sounds play.
Together, these two sounds add massively to the emotional side of the scape. The first is
from Free Sound and is a man sounding panicked and scared, and this links in perfectly with
how the slaves would have felt. We changed the tempo of this sound so that it corresponds
with the fast heartbeat sound which plays earlier in the scape. The second is a found sound
and is my partner’s voice. We aimed to recreate crying and moaning and the feeling of
severe distress so we also edited this sound, but lowered the pitch a lot and slowed down
the pace to make it sound like a man in pain.
This sound begins to play mid-way through the sound scape and is the last thing that is
heard at the end. It is classical sounding music which would have been associated with a
higher class society at that time, and so we decided to play it at the end because it
juxtaposes with the pain and emotion that the rest of the sound scape creates. We edited
this slightly so that the pitch was higher, ultimately making the whole piece quite emotional
and hard-hitting.

3. In conclusion, my final sound scape has met my group’s initial ideas. We have created an
emotional sound scape that allows the audience to imagine what the reality of the Slavery
era really was, without a narrative. The sound scape is a success in the sense that it doesn’t
give away anything obvious – the audience is supposed to listen to it and not immediately
recognise what it is trying to portray. Like Bill Fontana, we have recorded found and natural,
environmental sounds and “put them where they shouldn’t be”, making it so whoever listens
is left interpreting the sounds in their own way.