Process:

To start, I thought about what kind of track I wanted to create. One of my favorite game sound tracks of all-time is from Umineko When They Cry, and one thing that I really love about the soundtrack in particular is the way it is able to mix the ambiance, in particular the noise of the ocean, rain, and the overall feeling of being on an island, with a very emotional feeling created by the different instruments that were used. A good example is Hope by Dai, which is also displayed below. Even though it doesn’t show the actual ambiance used in the game, it shows the kind of music that will play during these early and peaceful stages of the story. At the end of the track, the sound of the ocean and seagulls play before fading away. This is one of the many songs I love from the soundtrack and I sought out to try and make something like that with my first Audio Collage.

First and foremost, I sought out a nice emotional sounding track to be the basis of my audio collage. After listening to a bunch of tracks on freesounds.org, I found one that I felt would best help me accomplish my goal: https://freesound.org/people/Migfus20/sounds/560457/. This track has a slow and very calm start, before transition into a very triumphant and upbeat feeling, followed by a very upbeat and calm track.

With the first track in place, I decided I wanted the beginning to have rain/thunder to create a more stormy feeling over a calm feeling so I found this track: https://freesound.org/people/rambler52/sounds/332116/, to put at the beginning to start. I also decided to fade in the first track a little later, so that the rain/thunder would be the first sound/feeling that the listener would get, before transitioning into the actual music.

Next, I also wanted to include the sound of the ocean, so I got this track: https://freesound.org/people/craiggroshek/sounds/176617/, and split it into two separate tracks in Reaper, one that plays during the rain, and one that plays after the rain stops. The one during the rain plays at a sound a little bit lower, but at a level where you can just barely hear it, since I wanted it to be somewhat noticeable, but I didn’t want it to overtake the rain/thunder.

Another sound that I knew that I absolutely wanted was the sound of seagulls. I personally love the sound of seagulls, and I found a great track: https://freesound.org/people/Kinoton/sounds/468080/, and implemented it towards the end of my audio collage, after the triumphant part of the main music track, to send off the listener with a bit of a happier and upbeat vibe, signaling that the storm is over and all is good once again.

Finally, I admit I made a mistake by making so much of this audio collage without recording a sound track for myself so it took a long time to figure out what I could record for myself and place in the audio collage. In the end, I decided upon a semi-whistle/semi-blow into my mic and edited it in reaper to make it somewhat sound like wind and placed it in the beginning storm.