Craft and Generative Media
Over the course of my senior project, I have enjoyed going through the process of creating sounds the most. I enjoyed mapping what sounds I would need to create in order to produce the effect I am looking for. On the other hand, my least favorite aspect of completing this project has been experiencing unexpected roadblocks when trying to create certain sound effects. The most common instance being a sound not turning out the way I thought it would and I have to come up with a different approach for creating the desired sound. Another example is I sometimes have trouble mixing the master track when I am incorporating many different sound effects. Overall, I feel I am most successful in recording audio and editing it in REAPER to create various effects, and I feel that I am least successful in mixing the master track for the overall film (although I am improving as I progress).
The field I am working in for my senior project is sound design/editing for film. In this field, craft is defined by determining what sounds are appropriate for each scene in a film and mapping out how to record those sounds and how to adjust them in a digital audio workstation to get the results you want. Carefully mixing sounds effects and musical soundtracks into the overall composition of the film is what separates amateur work from professional work, and my project needs to meet this criteria in order to be at an entry level at the least. Also, proper documentation of how the sounds were gathered is essential, and I feel that I have done well in terms of documenting my progress.
One task that I still need to complete to get my project to a professional level is to properly mix the sound effects with a musical soundtrack. While in a collaborative project, there would most likely be someone assigned to specifically handle the musical aspect and another member assigned to purely sound effects, I have to focus on both as I am the only one working on sound for this project. I do not have the creativity nor the time to create a musical soundtrack as well as all of the sound effects for the film. So, I experimented with AI music generator Soundraw.
I have a little experience with AI tools in the past, majorily with ChatGPT. But I would only really use it for help when I am struggling with a concept from a class. I would just ask it to explain the concept in different ways, and I never really used it for more than that. I have heard of music generating AI programs but I never actually used any before, so I was curious to see if it would be helpful.
To see how it worked, I tried to create the music that would play at the beginning of the film. For the music itself, I wanted to have a slow suspenseful string music. So, I entered those parameters for the AI to create a minute long song.
The results were…interesting.
Despite the fact I entered string/orchestra music as the parameter, Soundraw generated songs that were mostly techno/electronic music that was very upbeat considering they are supposed to be suspenseful. Eventually, I found something that sounded somewhat like the mood I was going for.
It still was not an orchestral song, it was an organ playing a chord progression, so it at least conveyed something somewhat sinister. The organ is accompanied by a base and a drum.
While it certainly felt more suspenseful than the other songs it generated, it still didn’t really convey the feeling I was looking for. I re-entered the same parameters multiple times, but the songs that were generated all had the same issue of either being upbeat edm or not tense enough. The song linked below was the best outcome.
While it was interesting to see what this AI tool could do, I don’t think I’ll actually use it for the musical aspect of the project.
Link to generated song: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ge0GZcI7vpl3G3dlSRAgAHGJARfkZV4Z/view?usp=sharing