Critical reflection focusing on technical execution of sonic ideas.

I think sonically my piece could have benefitted from centering a specific voice more rather than being a busy selection of sounds. I perhaps could have focused more on composition, creating musical motifs rather than a soundscape. I also could have used more extreme techniques learnt in Ableton over this unit to warp sounds in more experimental ways.

I think the successes of my piece were the complex techniques which I used to create a complex soundscape. For example, I used analog techniques when working with a Eurorack modular synth rack and a Korg Minilogue synth to create music, drones and background textures. I think I also used my instincts as a sound designer in an effective way to decide what sounds I could use to build the soundscape and to respond to the themes of my project

I think if I did it again I would create sounds which evolve over a longer period of time, rather than a collection of short sounds happening only in the moment. In terms of planning, I would maybe choose a direction for the project before I started – like using mainly analogue synths and making this more prominent, or using mainly hydrophone recordings.

However, I think given that the brief was to use a piece of spoken word, the sonic environment I built lended itself well to this project. As I needed to use spoken word, I think it worked well that I focused more on the words and used voice and speech to create the sound design rather than creating more of a musical or natural composition.

Overall, I think the sound design was successful for the unit brief and responded well to the assignment brief, but given how many avenues I could have gone down – there are other pieces I could have made which might have been more successful.

My sound study was an experiment to see whether I could make art or something beautiful out of something considered ugly. Namely: ‘feminine noise’; ‘transfeminine noise’ & the trans voice; and the glitch. It was about how trans voices might be seen by others as unwanted and how they might then attempt to ‘silence’ the trans voice by trying to establish power with their voice. In my critical reflection I want to examine where this aim was successful and where it wasn’t.

Firstly, I think this question is partly a valid one but is too vast and required more thought and research. My inquiry into this topic is limited. Perhaps, given the brief and timescale that I had – I could have gone with a simpler idea, and researched, explained and justified it more thoroughly. Instead, I gave a lot of attention to exploring my research question and not enough attention to critically reflecting, developing and analysing my work and specifically critical use of audio and sound design techniques through my blog posts. I also have not explored theoretically my research question to a full enough extent in my blog posts, making only a few brief references to my overall project. Had I created a more integrated body of work, creating blog posts which more thoroughly critiqued my sound study, the project may have been more successful.

However, I think the project is good as a sort of thesis statement for the research question. I think my work was successful in its sonic exploration of queer communications. I think the most effective parts of the sound study were the overlapping voices and the explicit reference to a range of queer and trans artists that I made. This was a good way to incorporate a multitude of trans ‘voices’ into a piece largely about the trans voice.

However, my main takeaway and lesson is that I think my idea of the trans voice is actually very broad and many trans people will feel completely differently about their voice. So, I think I hesitate to comment on ‘the trans voice’ through art. I think a better line of inquiry going forward might be ‘how do I feel about my voice as a trans artist?’ for my own personal expression and also moving beyond dysphoria, as we have far too many stories about trans pain and dysphoria. It’s not that I was trying to make a sound study about dysphoria, but I don’t think that the idea that trans voices would largely be seen as unwanted, although well-meaning, is a wholly valid one. Many trans people will have no hang-ups or dysphoria about their voice, while others will have many.

I’m not that proud of this finished piece. I’m glad I took risks and experimented and the process was really interesting – I think it was a good start to answering the research questions I was interested in. However, I wouldn’t showcase this as an example of who I am as a sound artist.

References:

Greenberg, S. (2023) ‘Accenting the Trans Voice, Echoing Audio-Dysphoria’, in P. Rangan et al. (eds) Thinking with an Accent: Toward a New Object, Method, and Practice. California: University of California Press. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1525/luminos.148.m.

In class, we practiced editing field recordings using Ableton. You can hear my edited field recordings using found sounds of hydrophone recordings in the audio player above.

I used gentle low and high pass filters to create different frequency ranges within the recordings. This way I could have a low frequency naturally-droning sound layered with a high frequency, detailed bubbling sound – to create texture and depth.

Using EQ and filtering as sound-shaping is a really useful tool. Of course, while it is used primarily for taking out certain unwanted frequencies – it can also be used in experimental ways. For example, you could find a harsh or dissonant sound and boost it rather than dip it.

I think EQ, particularly ‘EQ Eight’ in Ableton, is a really powerful tool for creating detailed and complex sound designs. With simple processing a low-pass could, for example, make a drone sound darker and bring out bass frequencies; while a band-pass in a particular frequency range could highlight a particular bird call in a field recording.

Attaching EQ to cues in QLab when designing for theatre is also really helpful, as this allows me to edit certain frequencies quickly in the rehearsal room or theatre. If we want a piece of music to sound more distant or feel like it’s getting drowned out, we can use a low-pass filter to achieve this effect. Or, for example, if you went into a theatre space where the bass frequencies in your sound design were rattling a metal structure within the theatre, you can EQ this out in tech rehearsals.

I think EQ (along with layering and pitching) is especially useful for soundscape composition, when you want to use everyday sounds to compose a soundscape that sounds more well-pitched, even tonal. I have done this lots before by layering a quiet drone underneath pitched and EQ’d field recordings and naturalistic sounds, to create a more lifted soundscape that underscores, as well as sets, a scene and creates ambience.

Le Tigre’s 1999 self titled album (Le Tigre, 1999) used a mix of analog technology: samplers, keyboards, drum machines – as well as MPC and Reason. The ‘glitches’ caused by this technology are in the sound of the record, often characterised as ‘post-Riot Grrrl’ or ‘Electroclash’. 

In glitch feminism, a glitch is seen as a rupture or an opportunity for change – rather than a mistake to be edited out in a patriarchal studio setting.

Le Tigre said in an interview in ‘Pink Noises’ (Rodgers, T. 2013):

Johanna Fateman: It really struck us that, when men make mistakes, it’s fetishized as a glitch 
Kathleen Hanna: Something beautiful.
Johanna: And when women do it, it’s like . . .
Kathleen: . . . a hideous mistake.
Johanna: Right, it’s not considered an artistic innovation or a statement or an intentional thing.

People with resources, typically white men from the global north, making music with glitches is a way in which the glitch is fetishised – and how the glitch occurs when making something with inexpensive equipment because of the economic context one is making sound in; using “8-bit samples” or second-hand equipment like drum machines for example.

The band also wanted to take matters into their own hands more, by learning ProTools so that they didn’t have to work with an engineer (who was probably a man) who wanted things to be smooth. Kathleen Hanna said that she was interested in “going even more into the glitch theory in the future”. Her “whole first record” as The Julie Ruin was “about the glitch and the mistake and the hiccup, and turning that into art.”

They were also not heavily featured in electronic music magazines of the time (around 2013). Fateman said in the Pinknoises interview that “If there’s glitches in your music, and that’s what it’s about, then that’s what it’s about. Glitches in your music, and political lyrics – it’s almost like the fact that there’s this content in our music, and the primary content isn’t that it’s electronic music. It’s almost like that’s why it gets ignored.”

References:

Rodgers, T. (2010) Pink Noises: Women on Sound and Electronic Music. Durham, London: Duke University Press.

Le Tigre. Le Tigre. Mr. Lady Records MRLR 07, 1999. 

Russell, L. (2018). #GLITCHFEMINISM – Legacy Russell. [online] Legacyrussell.com. Available at: https://www.legacyrussell.com/GLITCHFEMINISM. [Accessed: 16 October 2025]

My starting point for my project was thinking about women’s forms of communications. I was interested in Marie Thompson’s idea of ‘feminine noise’ (2013, pg 301), and the ways in which it is heard as unwanted or extraneous.

I started by taking a field recording from the Unicorn Theatre in Southwark, where a group of trans artists I was part of made noises together. I took moments of communication from this, between the various trans noises which were happening, and structuring them to create a composition around the theme of the communication (between voices and objects in the space/recording).

During a UAL Intersectional Feminist Society Social, in which we visited the Feminist Library in Peckham, there was a free-writing session after we had explored the extensive archive of zines, books and activist memorabilia. I wrote about the intersections of feminine noise with trans voices. Responding to Marie Thompsons piece, I reflected on how trans voices are also seen as unwanted noise. I plan to write more about this in a future blog post, but will not explore it further here as there is not the space.

I was also inspired by the Her Noise exhibition, originally at the South London Gallery in 2005. A collection of all woman sound artists, it was pioneering for its time.

All of my sites of interest were deliberately chosen throughout South London and specifically Southwark. The South London Gallery is on the same road as where I live, and the Her Noise archive is in the LCC Archives and Special Collections Centre in Elephant & Castle. Similarly, the Unicorn Theatre is also in Southwark and the Feminist Library is in Peckham.

As I worked with sound first, rather than the other way around, I was also writing to fit the sound. This was an interesting way to work, as it moulded the words to take a certain shape and the sound of the words and how they fit into the composition became really important, just as important as their semantics.

A lot of the sounds which you hear in the piece are glitches, for example the looping of the word ‘girl’ in one audio track was a mistake due to a buffer mismatch with my DAW and my zoom interface – however I decided to leave it in. This decision alludes to the idea of the glitch as a cyber-feminism.

Le Tigre:
“Johanna Fateman: It really struck us that, when men make mistakes, it’s fetishized as a glitch 
Kathleen Hanna: Something beautiful.
Johanna: And when women do it, it’s like . . .
Kathleen: . . . a hideous mistake.
Johanna: Right, it’s not considered an artistic innovation or a statement or an intentional thing.”
(Rodgers, 2010)

bounce v1:

References:

Thompson, M (2013) “Gossips, Sirens, Hi-Fi Wives: Feminizing the Threat of Noise” in Resonances: Noise and Contemporary Music. New York: Bloomsbury.

Rodgers, T. (2010) Pink Noises: Women on Sound and Electronic Music. Durham, London: Duke University Press.