POPPY HUMPHRIES

My first experience in sound was volunteering at my local ameteur theatre (The Barn Theatre, wgc). I started at 14 years old, shadowing sound engineers on shows, and I ended up being head-hunted by directors at the theatre to be head of sound for their productions, being responsible for designing, programming and running the sound.

I studied Edexcel Music Technology at A Level which developed my knowledge of the different areas within the audio industry. With a background in music, I found an appreciation for music production and decided, after a gap year where I had a range of work experience, to study audio production at University. 

On my gap year, over the pandemic, I built www.musictechnologytips.co.uk. It was designed to help new students on Edexcel's A Level Music Technology course, the same one that I had just completed. When studying, I found that there were very few resources specifically for the course, and even fewer that were free. I wanted to change this, and it also served as a way to keep my knowledge refreshed before I started at university.

I started my studies at The University of Chichester in September 2020. The Audio Production and Music Technologies course that I was on expanded my horizons when it came to career options - the course covered both music production and sound for the moving image. At the end of my first year, I volunteered as a boom operator on a student dissertation film. I also ended up assisting on the final sound mix and was responsible for recording the vocals for the musical number at the end of the film.

Following this, I volunteered on a range of student projects; from music composition for short films, to recording voice overs for film and theatre students, producing soundtracks for musical theatre students, doing Foley for short films and boom operating on short documentaries. One particular project that stands out to me was 'One Man Band', a short student documentary that I was dubbing mixer for.

In my final year, I did Foley for a couple of dissertation films, and I also started volunteering as a podcast mixer and jingle composer for The R.Y.S.E, a radical youth group, while also completing my final project and other course modules. 

My final project took the form of a sound art installation. It was designed to encourage audience members to consider their place within the climate crisis. I designed a soundscape depicting 6 different natural environments in sequence, using a combination of sounds I recorded in the field and sourced sounds. I also composed and recorded three choral pieces and recorded spoken word that were heard over the soundscapes. The sound system was in quad and in the centre of the space, there was a red button programmed to change the soundscape and associated visuals to a more 'dystopian' soundscape and visuals. The sound was designed to be quite shocking and in stark contrast to the original 'natural' soundscape. I hope that I will be able to have my work displayed again elsewhere in the near future.