I used Water Walk by John Cage as direct inspiration for my exquisite corpse soundscape. I wanted to compose a piece made up of a balance of natural and unnatural sounds, distinct separations in the piece, and a sound that I consistently return to that divides the three acts of my piece.
Tremor is sandwiched by natural samples, with ambient birdcalls in the beginning and crickets at the end. This was meant to symbolize a progression from morning to night across the piece, and also as a stark contrast to the inhuman-sounding samples that begin the play at the beginning of the second act.
I wanted to build a soundscape with ambiguous sounds that strayed further and further from recognition; sounds that were so abstract, no two interpretations would be the same. As the piece progresses, the sounds get more distorted and creepy, an alien or inhuman theme builds and is capped off with the one consistent sounds across the piece; the three ringing bells.
To me, the piece sounds a bit like madness Repetitive, gradually overlapping ticking builds up in the first act, building tension. The second and third act delve deeper and deeper into distortion and the unknown, confusing the listener, but also forcing them to creatively interpret the sounds themselves.
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