Today we were set an exciting task, to work with a musician and record some music that was created in unconventional ways. We had planned to follow a manifesto, but chose to utilise the props we had found and adapt to the instrument we had been given, an acoustic guitar.
We started by getting Rusty to play some chords while a ‘Pringles’ lid was shoved under some of the strings, creating a surprisingly interesting and ‘twangy’ result. We had set up microphones up close and at a distance to ensure we covered all the different variations of sound. Sliding a Christmas bauble lightly over the strings created a small but sinister sound. It made me think of spiders running across a shiny surface and made me feel quite uneasy as a result, it was something that would be very well suited in a horror or thriller film to create tension or suspense. We also experimented with putting a metal funnel over the microphones to create intense, more metallic sounding music, but found this method to be one of the lesser effective ones. I enjoyed the most, methods that involved very unconventional interactions between instrument and object that resulted in totally alien sounding notes/chords.
Much like the granular synthesis exercise from a previous session, experimenting with music this way has introduced me into new techniques for creating underscores for film, and methods of creating them that may prove to be more effective at creating atmosphere and most likely at a cheaper cost.
PCA Isobel Wilkinson - BA Film 