b a r l o w

Instructions: You will re-tell a very short and simple story — an anecdote really, an everyday slice of life — utilizing sound. It will take the form of a single audio file uploaded to your Soundcloud account. You will construct this track in any manner you choose: with field recordings, music, effects, dialog, or a mix thereof. The story you will be re-telling is this single-page comic strip by Matt Madden:

http://goo.gl/6P7eL

In the process of re-telling the story through sound, you may interpret it in any way you choose. You can do it as straight narrative, or do an abstract rendition, or retell it from another point of view, or contribute a score as if it were a movie, or a record series of foley cues. The choice is yours.

I chose to re-tell the story as a dream the character has after falling asleep at his desk. The first panel is reality - everything that follows is a dream.

Many thanks to my friend Dylan for the creation of this piece. The first thing we did was, using an iPhone, recorded a walk through of the entire comic, beginning with the first panel all the way to the last in one take.
I entered that audio into Ableton, chopped it up, put it on two different tracks, and did some processing.
The next thing I did was, using some granular synthesis, I created a drone pad from a slice of the audio we recorded.
I created a loop of the phrase, “What the hell am I doing here, anyway?”, added a delay & EQ effect which I manipulated in real-time as the rest of the piece played through.
The last touch was adding a simple chord progression to bring everything together and add some color to the story.

More on Matt Madden and his book 99 Ways to Tell a Story at:

http://mattmadden.com/
http://exercisesinstyle.com/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

Disquiet Junto/