So hopefully each of us has a few photos taken from the perspective of our little LEGO folk, and the beginnings of some wee stories that we’ve written and recorded in our sound recording app.
Our task this week, is to go out collecting sounds from around us using the different microphones in the pack, to create soundscapes for the stories we made last week. Also, to think a little more about what your story (or stories) will be about.
To use the microphones, and hopefully be able to hear what you’re doing at the same time, you willneed to use a little splitter adapter which should be with you (or will be shortly). One end goes into the headphone socket on your phone, which should leave you with two headphone sized sockets at the other end of the cable – one for a microphone and one for your headphones. Hopefully you should be able to hear what the microphone is picking up!
Here’s a little video explainer.
This week’s activity…
Step 1. Listen back to the short radio clips you made.
Have a listen to the words you used to describe the picture – were they words like “slippy” or “scratchy” or “rocky”. See if you can find some of these kinds of sounds with the normal microphone on your phone.
Step 2.
One microphone is called a contact mic – it looks like a little clothes peg. Contact mics work by picking up vibrations in solid things. Have a go at clipping your microphone on to different objects and materials and maybe banging the objects or rubbing them to see what kinds of sounds it makes.
A good one to try is clipping it on to a wire on a fence and tapping the wire – you can tell me what you think it sounds like.
The other microphone is called an electromagnetic microphone. It picks up the invisible (inaudible) sounds that come from anything electrical. These sounds have a seriously futuristic feel to them, and will help give our sci-fi stories some weird sonic textures.
Step 3.
As well as collecting these sounds, we can start thinking about the kind of sci-fi story you’d like to make. You might want to take more photos and keep making little stories to go with them, or you might be thinking of making a longer kind of story. So, grab a pen and paper, or maybe a notebook if you have one, and think about the answers to these questions…
Who is your main character? Do they have a name? Do they know their name?
Where are they from, is it a real place or an imagined place?
What happened for them to end up where they are at the start of your story?
Why are they here? Or do they not know?
What do they wantto happen next?
What might actuallyhappen next?
Step 4.
Remember to send over the sounds you collect to us over email at wildtracksEYC@gmail.com
When we meet up next time, we can share our favourite ones with each other. Remember ifyou’ve any questions or ideas for the project, you can email us at any time.
Have fun and be weird. Richy
Wild Tracks 