Soundscaping:

Soundscaping is an acoustic environment made by sound to imitate an environment for humans. This was first coined by the Canadian composer Murray Schafer in the 1960s. Schafer was a naturalist composer who centred his work around realism. I took inspiration from Schafer’s work; he quoted “A soundscape is any collection of sounds like a painting is a collection of visual actions”. This can be fascinating, I believe it’s possible to portray any type of environment even better than a composed piece of music can. By capturing a sense of reality soundscaping serves me as the composer an opportunity to immerse the listener into my work. Playing with realism makes the listener believe they are the main character immersed by the feelings the composer is trying to create. When creating my audio podcast I chose to use soundscaping throughout the entire piece. I aimed to create the most realistic performance possible. Adding narrative audio on top will make the story clear and effective, almost as if the listener can paint the story inside their heads. As I continued this creative process I found that the more immersive the piece – the more it affected it became to the listener.