Adding sound to exhibition

After visiting the Birmingham exhibition and seeing all of the environments, I had concluded that in order to make my environment truly immersive I would need some form of sound. Adding sound will also allow my piece to become more engaging from the outside, as people will be drawn to my piece from hearing the sound but being unable to see my piece from a distance.

Based on my environment in the exhibition, I had to look for potential sounds that would be suited in that environment. As my environment is inside of a cave/lair, some sounds would be:

• Ambient sounds 
• Echos
• Wing
• Water droplets
• Monster sounds
• Bats
• Insects

I began looking for audio samples of various sounds I could use for my environment from free audio sample sites such as Soundbible.com. 

Sound samples:

(Sounds for cave)

Wind
Wind2
Scary Ambiance
Water Droplets

(Sounds for creature - sounds must be snake-like with a hiss, or not too much alike a growl as it would not suit the creature.)
Snake Hiss
Monster Growl

However, individual sound samples would not be effective and I would have to place them all together in a repetitive and realistic fashion to create a long soundtrack for the environment. As I thought this would take too long, I decided to look for ready made and free videos of cave ambience (which are often used for players to immerse themselves in games such as Dungeons and Dragons) to see if any could be suitable for my piece.

Cave Sounds

For a cave sound, I decided to choose Dark Cave Ambience | Cave Soundscape | Echo Sounds and Water Drops by Ambient Relaxation. 

I felt that this video had all of the necessary sounds such as the echo, ominous ambience and water droplets which I felt was vital in the soundtrack. As well as this, the sound is not repetitive in a way that it is predictable, making it seem a lot more realistic for a sound. However, the video lacks a monster sound which I felt was important to give the creature a much more menacing appearance and make the sound less calming. 

Because of this, I decided to focus my attention more on creature sounds to make the environment resemble a monster lair rather than a simple cave from outside the exhibition.

I next looked at Monster Lair Sound Effects 10 Hours by Mythicalicalypso. I decided to choose this video as I felt the sounds created from this video could be the most suitable for my creature, compared to other videos which I felt were too much alike a mammals roar. The sounds from the creatures are also relatively spaced out enough so the sound isn't overpowering. 

However, I felt like the cave-like environment would be lost using just this sound alone, as none of the ambience from the other video was present. 

Sound mashups

Because I felt both videos lacked what the other video had, I decided to experiment with mashing together videos in order to create a unique sound which I could use for my piece. 

To do this, I used a website called www.youtubemultiplier.com which allowed me to play multiple videos at once, while being able to make one quieter than the other. Being able to make one sound louder than the other allowed me to drown out some sounds which I felt would be too overpowering, making the sounds blend together easier. 

Mashup 1

The first mashup consisted of the two previous videos blended together, with the monster lair sound slightly lower in volume than the cave ambience. I believe this mashup is effective as it has both the monster sounds which I needed to make my creature appear more menacing, with the dark cave ambience around emphasising the cave environment. I also made the monster sounds quieter to emphasise the echo, making it appear that the creature wasn't the only one in the cave and there was in fact more hidden in the darkness, deeper in the cave. 

However, as these sounds aren't quite snake like, I decided to experiment with snake sounds with the cave ambience to see how they would blend together. 

Mashup 2           Mashup 3

From doing these sounds, I found out that no matter how quiet the snake sounds were, the lack of echo in the sounds made them stand out too much due to a lack of distance being conveyed. Therefore, I believe they would no be effective. As well as this, I felt the snake hisses were not as menacing as the monster lair sounds.
Because of this, I have decided to use the original mashup of the monster lair and dark cave ambience to create my environment.