Playground Song

            When contemplating what should be the source of my sound for this song project, I ultimately decided on the idea of collecting sound from a playground. As a place where a lot of joy and excitement occurs, I thought this could result in a uplifting song. A playground also has a lot of toys and different objects that produce sound, which would allow for an impactful song. In order to collect the sound, I went to a local playground and recorded various sounds from objects located there.

            After collecting sounds, I decided that I wanted to make my song more of a story about going to the park. Thus, I started the song off in GarageBand with the noise of car keys, car unlocking, door closing and engine starting to give the impression of jumping in the car to head to the playground to the audience. I collected all of these noises from my own car. Following this, I chose one of the preexisting loops on GarageBand to serve as the base to the song.

I chose Eastern Gold Oud because I enjoyed the beat and felt that it would fit well with the sounds that I had collected from the playground. As I wanted to create a gradual build into the base of the song, I used the volume tool in order to create a fade in effect.

           Once I had the base of the song established, I then went to work adding in found sound. I knew that I wanted to include a basketball dribbling noise, as it is one that is common on the blacktop on the playground and would add a good beat to the song, almost sounding like drums. Because I did not own a basketball, I found a basketball sound from Freesounds.org, which hosts creative-commons licensed sound. The clip was short at around five seconds, so I made the dribble into a loop so that it would play throughout the song.

            Following this, I layered in a recording of claps that I had made at the playground, reminiscent of playing various hand clap games when I was a kid at recess. I inserted these claps to match the beat of the song. Ultimately, I also added a sound of chains from swings jingling behind alternating clap noises, as it created an almost echo effect which I found interesting.

           The park that I collected sound at was unique in that its playground included a lot of chime and bell toys. While there, I recorded the sound of a chime being hit. A lot of the noises within my song at this point were lower and louder, so I thought that adding the delicate, higher noise of the chime would provide nice contrast. The song repeated from there. Finally, I again faded out the sound and included the key jingling, car unlocking, door shutting, and engine starting noise at the end in order to signify the end of a day at the playground and the end of the song.