My radio play begins with an unnamed man walking down a path, boots crunching through the heavy snow yet to be cleared near his home in town. A narrator is heard reciting William Shakespeare's Macbeth Act 5, Scene 5, Page 2 (the "Tomorrow" soliloquy). Perhaps this text represents the character's inner thoughts while trekking this evening. As he reaches front door the man is audibly exhausted, not just from transversing the snow, but also due to the long hard day. While walking inside the apartment he hears something off in the distance. Tepidly getting closer to the window he realizes it is the sounds of celebration and merriment as the citizens ring in the new year. Seeing a bottle of champagne on the table his wife must have left out, he uncorks it and pours two glasses. Because she is already fast asleep upstairs, he decides to clink this unattended glass before swiftly downing it (along with his own). As he walks upstairs the ruckus from downtown begins to fade out of range, replaced by singing coming from a TV left on in the bedroom. Upon reaching the top of the stairs he nearly trips, not realizing how quickly the alcohol has effected him. The TV channel, now clearly recognizable, is a low quality broadcast of a choir performing "Auld Lang Syne". The man falls asleep in the squeeky bed almost as soon as he hits the sheets. The song on TV fades out as his snoring become audible in the texture.
In juxtaposing the somber, contemplative, and weighty soliloquy with the usually joyous atmosphere of ringing in the new year I sought to pose an unanswered question. Who is this unnamed character? Why don't we get to hear his reactions to the festivities and goings-on outside? His exasperations provide some insight, however, his actions leave the result highly ambiguous. So many possible contexts could be rightly construed. Perhaps he is an Ebenezer Scrooge-like character, whose cold heart is shown in the beginning snow monologue, but is transformed with the nostalgic sounds of revelry. On the darker side, he could be a lone alcoholic drinking to self-medicate the depression brought on during the holiday season. In the end, I enjoyed applying an open-interpretation to the contruction of this radio play.
For sound effects, time-warping, and transposition I utilized the Effect menu in Audacity. Various passages were amplified and, to avoid audible track starts and stops, faded-in/faded-out. A few sections were repeated with the copied version then altered. For example, every time the footsteps come back I change the tempo (slowing down or speeding up without effecting the pitch). I also added reverb to the footsteps, both on wood and up the stairs, to provide a greater sense of the physical space. For localization I used ChucK to pan the unnamed character's movements (transversing through the snow from right to left, walking around his apartment, and so on). On a practical note, due to the number of audio samples I had starting the radio play (over 16 channels), I mixed these in Audacity down to 4 mono channels before localizing in ChucK.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing
All sounds in this radio play were derived from the following FreeSound.org clips--