Footsteps

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I went on a long walk while visiting my family over reading period. As I walked across the snow, I couldn't help but notice the sound that the snow made with every step I took. It felt peaceful, so I thought it would be fun to focus my soundscape on that. I decided to walk through the snow at different paces, recording each sound that was made. I then walked across concrete, dirt, and rocks to gain various sounds of footsteps that way. Because each recording sounded so peaceful on its own, I thought it would be interesting to layer all of the recordings on top of one another. I started off by having one recording play, then slowly adding each recording, then letting all of them play at the same time, and then slowly fading each sound out to eventually end with the same recording that it started with. To me, it felt like going from a peaceful walk to a much more chaotic scene, almost like I was walking through a busy sidewalk with various people traveling to different places.

When making this, I kept thinking about McLuhan's idea of how sound is in everything we do. He says, "We hear sounds from everywhere, without ever having to focus. Sounds come from "above," from "below," from in "front" of us, from "behind" us, from our "right," from our "left." We can't shut out sound automatically" (p 111). Footsteps are something that we hear everyday and may not pay much attention to, so it was interesting to think about footsteps as almost being a form of music while making this soundscape. 

Comments

  1. CJMFebruary 17, 2026 at 11:19 PM

    It's very visceral, and amazing how much of a scene I can imagine from these sounds alone. Good job!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ryan DraginisFebruary 18, 2026 at 8:56 AM

    I really like how you combined many different footstep noises to create one audio.

    ReplyDelete

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