@The Arts Unit Creative Classes

Inspire me ... city soundscape

Using stimulus material to inspire art and music

Student music and visual arts resource developed by The Arts Unit

Year 3 to Year 6 music and visual arts

What will I learn?

You will:

  • listen to an example of a soundscape

  • create music sounds and sources which reflect the visual stimulus

  • compose your own soundscape

  • record your composition.

Cityscape photo of Sydney

Before you begin

You will need:

  • a large piece of paper

  • coloured pencils or textas

  • a variety of sound sources – anything which makes a sound including sounds you can download from the internet

  • a device to record sound.

  1. Listen

A soundscape is a musical composition of sounds which reflect a particular environment, scene or situation.

Listen to this example of a thunderstorm soundscape.

Describe the sounds of the thunderstorm you could hear.

Thunderstorm – a graphic notation composition

Duration: 01:10

The composer has used graphic notation – shapes and symbols – to visually represent the sounds of the thunderstorm.

In the diagram in the video, the composer uses symbols for each sound.

  • Which symbol represents each sound of the storm?

  • What instruments do you hear?

  • What happens to the size of the symbols used around the clock face as the soundscape gets louder and softer?

2. Create

Imagine you are in a city.

Listen to this soundscape of a busy city street and look carefully at the cityscape images.

Make a note of all the sounds you can hear or sounds you imagine you could hear in these busy city streets.

New York City Ambience Sound Effect

Duration: 00:57

Coming and going

Shah Ahmed – Penrith High SchoolNagoya Art Exchange
Cityscape student print black and white artwork of buildings and streets

Movement

Seokyoung Inn – Henry Kendall High SchoolNagoya Art Exchange
Student photography artwork showing many people walking through a busy city street, showing movement through blurring

Choose 8 of the sounds that you heard.

  • Using a piece of paper, draw or fold the paper so that you have an 8-space grid.

  • In each grid-space, draw a symbol to represent 1 of your sounds. Look at the image below for some examples.

Create a sound for each symbol using your voice, body or objects.

For example:

  • your voice as a car horn

  • walking on gravel

  • tapping your hands on a table

  • rustling paper

  • shaking a jar of rice

  • shaking a bottle of water

  • tapping on a glass (empty or partly full).

3. Compose

Watch the video Graphic notation 3-6 to learn about how to arrange your sounds to form a city soundscape.

Graphic notation 3-6

Duration: 01:47

Arrange the symbols in a way to represent the city sounds by numbering the boxes in any order to create your composition.

You can also add these symbols below in the boxes to indicate that you will make the sound get louder or softer.

Experiment with your soundscape by:

  • repeating the soundscape: quietly the first time and louder the second.

  • changing the order and volume of the sounds.

  • adding more boxes and symbols for more sounds.

Make changes to your soundscape until you are happy with how your composition represents the sounds of the city.

Create a title for your soundscape.

4. Perform

Record your soundscape.

You could use a phone or laptop to record your soundscape.

Share your recording with someone and see if they can understand what scene your soundscape represents.

Fantastic work!

You have completed this @The Arts Unit Creative Class.



Third-party content attributions

  • Student artworks from Nagoya Art exchange program from The Arts Unit media library, reproduced and communicated with permission.