The reading I am responding to is “From Epistemology to Creativity: A Personal View” by Barry Truax. What I found most interesting in this reading was his way of breaking down the “soundscape composition” into more than just “an aural landscape.” It related a lot to what we talked about in class with breaking down a sound into keynotes, signals, and soundmarks, but this helped me understand the soundscape as a narrative form as well.
I did think that Truax’s soundscape compositions were more successful when they were able to lean on their own internal narratives rather than being too tied to previous historical or famous circumstances. For instance, I really enjoyed his pieces “Island” and “Basilica” as they were able to immerse me in new worlds self-contained to two to three minutes, whereas his pieces “Prospero’s Voyage” and “Chalice Well” almost felt like a step too far within the theatrical and religious canons, and to me even felt a little tacky. It felt like Truax was trying too hard to create soundmarks for these particular moments in The Tempest and medieval history/Indiana Jones/Monty Python, etc, rather than letting the sounds speak for themselves.
I do think that immersion will be my goal when creating soundscapes just because that’s something I always look for in sound design in films and soundscape-like compositions. I love the idea of using sounds to recreate memories and create a world that feels “real,” and this is something I love including in my screenplays as well.