Soundscape! A Lazlo Woodbine thriller!

Using a basic digital recorder and library sounds, create a soundscape no longer than 3 minutes that captures some form of story…

For my soundscape project, I wanted to begin with a story and try to communicate its atmosphere. I am a fan of the fiction writer Robert Rankin. Although he is usually to be found in the scifi section of the library, his style can be more accurately described as preposterous-fantasy. I find his writing style to be very visual – I know exactly what his nonsense world looks like – and I wanted to see if I could recreate one of my favourite characters through sound alone.

"Lazlo Woodbine is the undisputed master of the 50's era American detective genre. With him you always get what you pay for, when you pay for the best private eye in the business. He doesn't come cheap but with him you can expect a lot of gratuitous sex and violence, a corpse-strewn alley and a final rooftop showdown. No loose endings, no spin-offs and all strictly in the first person.

Laz only works the four locations: his office, where his clients come to engage his services, a bar where he talks a load of old toot and the dame who does him wrong bops him on the head at the beginning of the case, an alleyway where he gets into sticky situations and a rooftop where he has his final confrontation with the villain. No master of the genre ever needed more."

When Rankin writes the character of Lazlo Woodbine, it is an obvious pastiche of the genre. By creating a soundscape for the office of a 1950’s Private Eye, I suppose I am doing the same. I hope that the ambience conjured up by the sound effects are “visual” enough for the audience to recognise the genre, even if (or probably because) they are such stereotypes. I don’t think for a moment that a listener will pinpoint my soundscape as that of Lazlo Woodbine, as in actual fact he is a fairly unknown character to most people. But I think the point is to leave no doubt in the ear of the audience as to the genre of the scene and where possible to give further clues to its location, period, time of day and general mood of the scene. The main theme I wanted to get across was that this was a lone charecter, thoughful, possibly weary. I am not entirely sure, with the phone ringing in the background, whether this is the beginning or the end of a story (or case).

My sound effects were: clinking glasses and the glugging of whiskey being poured from the bottle, rain, ticking clock, blinds closing, footsteps, the lighting and first drag of a cigarette, telephone ringing. Apart from the old-style telephone ringing (which I got from Steve Carter's huge collection of sound effects) I recorded all of the sounds myself. Special thanks to my housemate Susan who kindly lit-up for the sake of my homework.

I had in my mind the idea of using music to add to the atmosphere. My plan was to have saxophone but as I listened to various jazz cds from the Media Centre’s collection, I found a piano piece that seems to fit the pace rather perfectly. Mind you, I had to listen to a lot of inferior jazz before I came across something that worked!

I also had a last minute panic about the timing. I spent some time with Ben showing him how to use Audition and how to find additional sound effects and music from the ones he'd recorded. Having played my project to him, it suddenly seemed far too fast and I wanted to go back and re-edit. In the end I think I only added about a second between the phone and the glass, but it was very difficult to let it go; I could have continued editing for many more hours.

Hmmm…. I think I like sound…

I hope to upload my soundscape here, once I’ve worked out how…