Annihilation
A series of Soundscapes/sound design compositions inspired by the novel Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer
Research
There were 3 main sources of inspiration for the project:
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1. Audiobooks that adapt their source material by including creative sound design and music, as well as just narration
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eg. Sandman Audiobook, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Radioshow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0mUMohtCk0&t=133s
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​​2. Sound design based film or tv scores, that blur the lines between sound design and music composition
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eg. Hannibal tv score, Hereditary film score
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_R-zZTiMhs
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​3. Electroacoustic music that features lots of textural elements and strings processing
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eg. Paradise 94 by Lucy Railton, Ocean by Valentina Goncharova
Similar to an audiobook, my project will aim to adapt the book in a new direction, allowing the audience to experience it in an exciting, immersive way. Although historically, audiobooks were mainly just audio recordings of the author or an actor reading a book aloud, they have developed into a much larger production, often with large casts, music composers and sound designers, in order to create a more immersive and dramatic listening experience.
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Although I am also adapting a book, my project aims to take inspiration from it in a much less literal way - I have created my own story based on key events/locations in the original, and design soundscapes inspired by the themes of Annihilation and the general atmosphere the descriptive writing creates.
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Although I did take inspiration from film and tv scores, my project probably has more in common with electroacoustic music and sound design for video games than traditional music composition. My work is somewhat musical - but sound design elements like texture, layering and sense of space were a lot more important to me than the structure, narrative and flow of a composition.
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One specific area of electroacoustic music I took inspiration from is strings processing, more specifically the work of Lucy Railton and Valentina Goncharova. 'Gaslighter' by Lucy Railton contains rough, growling and sliding cello sounds that helped me approach creating wave-like violin sounds to represent the menacing ocean of Area X.
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Development
Before starting each composition, I created graphs inspired by graphical scores to roughly plan out the structure of each piece, and what kind of sonic palette each could use
Overall the materials I used for the project are a mixture of:
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Unedited Audio Recordings
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Processed recordings
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Synthesised material from Vital,
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Additional recordings sourced from Soundsnap.
I made an effort to only use sourced recordings for things I wasn’t able to get access to - things like wave sounds, frogs croaking, cicadas, howling wind and specific bird calls. For the recording process I used a combination of 4 microphones - a Sennheiser MKH 416, a Rode NTG4, an AudioTechnica AT2020 and a pair of Clippy EM72s.
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​For software I used a mixture of Logic Pro for synthesis. some composition and anything midi related, and then ProTools for arranging audio and mixing. As for plugins I used all sorts - Izotope Rx, the GRM Tools bundle, Fabfilter, MAudio, Melda Production, OTT, Vital for synthesis and sampling, and most of the stock Logic and ProTools plugins.
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Area X
This Piece uses mostly nature recordings - things like wind through trees, mud sloshing, water flowing and dripping, frogs croaking, insects buzzing and bird calls, as well as textural material like dry leaves, bark and cloth.
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Most of the processing in this piece comes from the bird and frog sounds, using reverbs, delays and ring modulation. I also created a couple of Vital patches using Magpie sounds to add more variation in tone. This piece is probably the most naturalistic sounding of the four, as it represents the journey into Area X, as the scientists travel from the normal world to a place that is different
The Tower
The second piece uses lots of vocal recordings of me and some friends reciting the message written on the Tower walls, as well as recordings of my dishwasher, toothbrush, wind, underground ambience and textural recordings like grass, cloth, sponges and clicking of tweezers.
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The piece starts with footsteps descending into the underground staircase and then continues on to textural elements and slimy squishy noises that foreshadow what the scientist will encounter further down, ending with many voices of varying intelligibility that eventually become a cacophony of noise. This was achieved through spatial processing with stacking delays and reverbs as well as very harsh bandpass filtering that is automated to create a sweeping effect.
The Crawler
To create the sounds of the monstrous slug/snail monster I used lots of heavily processed food based recordings - squishy grapes, cranberries and grapefruit combined with cracking pretzels and cashew nuts. This is then layered on top of underground ambience, watery cave sounds, pitch shifted sniffing, and a filtered recording of me sitting on the bus.
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For the processing for this piece I used Plugins like DeClick and DeCrackle from Izotope (with only the artifacts playing,) to enhance the harsh sounds of the pretzels and cashews. For the gurgling, slimy sounds I used resonance plugins from GRM and created some Vital patches as well. This piece also uses the most actual synthesis - using Vital for just the oscillators, without adding my own sounds.
The Lighthouse
For the final piece of the project I combined violin recordings with waves and seaside ambiences to create the menacing aura of the Area X coastline. For the strings processing I recording sliding string sounds that are processed in different ways to create a wave like effect. There is also a plucking section with lots of delays, harmonic processing and a melodic synth element.
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This piece also features a lot of reversing audio - the piece as a whole is also mostly symmetrical, utilising reversing to form the shape of a wave.
Examples of Vital Patches
