For our second assignment, a Sound Project, I knew I wanted to incorporate the idea of a rainbow. Don't ask me why. Perhaps it has something to do with all of the Mario Kart I've been playing recently (damn you, Rainbow Road!). I wanted to draw on the idea of the sound of a rainbow. A rainbow, being made up of many colours, would have more than just one sound. Now, I could say that I did extensive research to find out the science behind the sound of certain colours, alas I really just made up something that I thought sounded right.
What do you think a rainbow sounds like? (won't embed) is the sound file I have created, blending together a piece of music I created that I believe a rainbow would sound like, and a series of short answers from those around me about what they believe a rainbow would sound like. I wanted to distort the vocals, maybe even get a bit of reverb going on, but in all honesty, after searching around Audacity for a while, I had no idea how to actually do that, so I just left them clear. But you can hear them better this way, at least.
When I imagine the rainbow that would accompany my piece of music, I imagine it with a black, galaxy-like background, rather than something here on Earth.
The Process
I originally thought that creating a piece of music on a keyboard would be the best way to go. After playing around for a bit, I realised it would sound incredibly one dimensional. In my mind, a rainbow sounds layered given all the colours that are creating their own individual sounds. My brother has a program called FL Studio, a digital audio workstation that he describes as something of an "unprofessional version of Pro Tools", though one would use FL Studio for producing rather than recording. So we moved on to playing around with this digital keyboard, and decided on an E Flat Major 7th chord (a fittingly harmonious/heavenly sound) in the tone of bells. We then arpeggiated the chord using a tool in FL Studio. Lastly, we decided to play the chord through a vocal choir tone, and used a tool to filter out the high sounds of the vocals to make it more like a drone (to create a white noise-y, peaceful, ethereal effect). This completed sound is what you can hear underneath the voices in the sound file.
Once I had my piece of music it was simply a matter of gathering soundbites from people around me explaining briefly what they believe a rainbow would sound like. I settled on just five, in the end. I dragged them all into Audacity and spread them throughout the one minute piece of music. If I'd had more time to figure out some cool things to do with the vocals I probably would have distorted them (my original idea) to make them sound somewhat far away, like they could be talking from a rainbow. I may have even made the music a bit quieter. But ultimately, I'm happy with the finished product.
Romany
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