Dream Stepping-  A place between thought and feeling….just listen.

Dream Stepping is a sonic story, an audible invitation to enter the world of a dreamer and experience a short journey through sound. Using found sounds and recorded samples, an imaginary world is built and witnessed, with texture and a unique aural fabric. Footsteps are the binding theme through this track and were gathered and altered as a base for the momentum of the story. 

Inspiration for this track has been the ongoing nature of life and humanity, feeling like we all have experiences of dreams in sleep or meditation, and we awaken and continue our journey through the world, encountering different scenes and vibes in an endless rhythm and pattern that is life.  

I am intrigued with sculpting found sounds and building a soundscape like a puzzle, using MOTIV audio, Pro Tools and  various plugins such as Structure Free and Waves Cr8, and OVox, and altering vocal samples.  I hope this sound voyage takes listeners to a new place and gives a sense of a magical alternative space, where they can experience my dream soundscape.

 My Digital Audio Workstation of choice is Pro Tools and below you will see some of the plugins used on this track.

This track contains a variety of ‘found sounds’, primarily made up of sound I personally recorded.  I did end up using two or three samples from my sound bank that were acquired in previous sound design courses.  There are multiple instances of footsteps, to carry the theme throughout and I recorded those in various locations, at school inside and outside and at my home inside and outside, on gravel, dirt, concrete and tile.  The clock is an actual clock and the water is actual water.recorded with an underwater phone pouch.  The organ-like sound was created layering a house fan sample with a high vocal ooooh sample and using plugins to alter the pitch and tone.  The machine and vehicle sounds are samples of random noises collected and altered. One new plugin I tried that was really fun and I could not resist using on my vocal tracks is Ovox by Waves, there are a lot of plugins that can alter vocals and they have gotten very sophisticated and affordable. Most of the bird and outdoor sounds were collected personally and I actually went into Barnes and Noble to sample the sound of the inside of a bookstore. That was an interesting thought process.

 

As I built this track, I laid out a structure, using 30 second sections and defining the sections to give me a path.  I considered the vibe and signals I wanted to include in each section and made lists of potential sounds to include.  I played around with the organish sound and wrote a basic structure track, just stream of consciousness thinking about the various ‘places’ and what that might sound like as a background.  I was not necessarily planning on using it, but I ended up really liking what I came up with and only changing a few notes here and there.  Then I started with the dreamy beginning and began adding sounds, footsteps and atmospheres, building the track up piece by piece and adding more where it felt like it needed it.   I fleshed it out with some additional ideas and sounds and decided that I don’t feel like it needs a video to enhance it, although it would be fun to create something that doesn’t take away from the story but lets the sound track be the focus.

Thank you for tuning in and listening, I hope you walk away with something new to dream about!

Mishy