Corruption On Childhood Innoncence:
My piece is a reflection upon the corruption of childhood innocence. It mirrors a short journey through life; showing how adulthood and added stimuli from the outside world can destroy innocence. I hoped to portray the negative effect it can have upon life. In this piece, I will be writing about my journey and the reasons behind my creative process.
Originally I wanted to represent how childhood innocence blinds people from the class divide and how your economical status is inevitable due to where and who you are born to. My idea was to take a field recording of private school children playing and state school children playing. However, this created some moral barriers and was not entirely ethically correct. From this, I decided to reflect the piece on something a little more personal – my experiences entering adulthood and my perception of life as a whole.
The piece begins with very little sound and noise. A piano key and low pitched thudding in a rhythmic pattern. To me, this highlights the sound of a heartbeat showing connotations of new life. A heartbeat is what every human share. No matter who you are! This represents a human stripped down to its bare; naked from any outside influence or complexities. The sound is pure with no added other noise. I have played the piano from the age of 4 and chose to include this instrument to represent the heartbeat as it is a personal view of my life. As the piece develops and the beating continues extra noise is added including an increased raw which slowly takes dominance of the piece. This is the corruption from the outside world creeping in and taking over your purity.
As the piece moves on to the next part, I include a field recording taken from an old childhood video from my dad’s recording camera. These videos are something entirely personal to me and my life as it is a true representative of my life growing up. I decided to include a recording from one of my childhood assemblies. This recording involves many young voices, talking, and general chatter while we all play with each other. I liked this recording as I thought it fit the brief of my piece perfectly. The children (including me) are unaware of the camera recording them meaning their conversations are natural and pure. In their eyes, there is no outside influence on their conversation which represents to me how childhood innocence is dependant upon outside corruption. I added reverb and delay along with tampering the volume to go up and down throughout the recording. I used this to create a wave effect and intentionally show how slowly over time certain parts of your life take away that childhood innocence. Adulthood creeps up on your life and I truly believe from my experiences it has not been sudden. By creating a waved effect upon the sound by editing the recording it highlights slow corruption and the process of puberty. Silent parts of the piece demonstrate how I began to feel lost and out of place through my teenage years. Despite the fact, the pieces still going on the silence is lonely and creates a feeling of isolation – mirroring my emotions undergoing my journey into adulthood.
As a sufferer from anxiety and paranoia, I often refer to my head as a “wasps nest”. Throughout the end part of the piece, I wanted to present this and the disarray that life has upon your mental state. The piece then begins to build in intensity through volume and added sounds. I started to include rhythmic beats and percussion as it shows a representation of adult working life and the routines in which we bind ourselves. It begins to get chaotic with several different noises and sound effects ranging from many different synthesisers, midi inputs and field recordings. Banging sounds taken from field recordings are used to add to this disordered sound, highlighting how problems and stress in adulthood life shatter your innocence. The noise ranges in pitch volume and type of recording which I hoped would portray severals paths of influence on the brain and the disordered stimulus it can create. Adults face multiple types of stress which is what I hoped it would indicate.
Finally, the childhood recordings begin to come back into play and build up in sound as the chaos begins to die down. As a result, despite everything, your childhood will always be implemented in your life. It becomes your route for identity and carries on with you mentally throughout your entire existence. To end the piece I chose the heartbeats from the beginning sequence to start playing back again. I believe despite your influences and your positionality in life, everyone shares this process. By repeating the beginning I wanted to show a full circled effect – mirroring the circle of life. It shows me how everyone follows this process through and the heartbeats are leading onto someone else’s life.
Everyone is born innocent and it is your life and society’s choices that destroy this. The frustrations, stress, and business of adult life take away your innocence bit by bit. Everyone shares this process and it is just a cycle waiting to happen. My goal was to produce this within my piece and I hope these visions come across when listening.