A Day In The Life Of An Office Drone

Musically represented by Myself, Glen Campbell, & Chris Wood.

Our basic idea was to musically represent the day of an office worker, starting with s/he waking up in the morning, the journey to work, actual time at work, a visit to the pub after work, and finally going home. We achieved this by using samples of everyday things as though they were instruments. The piece consists of a series of short pieces of music which each depict the time and place our office drone is.

In our initial proposal we made a point of using both samples and synthesisers, but as our project evolved we realised it sounded a lot more interesting with straight samples and the use of synths and/or drum machines could have led us astray to what we wanted to achieve, and we were liking the sound of our piece without.

A lot of the samples we used were sourced from the BBC Library, personal sample collections, and samples we recorded ourselves especially for this project. The piece is presented in first person, we wanted to put the listener into our characters’ shoes to experience their day first-hand.

It was suggested we characterise our office worker, so we made him/her a smoker which will be an idiosyncratic moment of our character throughout the piece.

The piece was constructed by building a rhythmic layer first, then extend it by building basic stems for each scenario, followed by the layering of colours and fun little parts on top. We used absolute minimal effects to keep the samples sounding as close to their original form as we could.

Effects and (Pro Tools) plug-ins used:

-Delay on the answering machine to emphasise haziness as the working day progresses

-Speakerphone on answering machine as it was originally plain speech

-Low pass filter on staplers

-Basic EQ on a few tracks

The elements used were all samples based

on appropriate scenarios; Eg: Kettle and toaster at breakfast; Bus horn at the bus stop; Staplers in the office; etc.

Amplified body sounds were used during the Lunch Break piece to give the listener a sense of intimacy and a feeling of uneasiness (almost too close for comfort). We found the TV show Dexter a good inspiration for this idea.

Critically speaking, the group thinks this piece may have benefited for a little more bass energy, as it does have a lot going on in the mid and upper frequencies, and not very much down below. We’re quite happy that little to no manipulation was needed, as the palette of samples was quite extensive, and we loved the “real” sound of them, almost like a child playing drums with the cutlery at dinner table (only Mum wasn’t around to stop us). It would have been interesting to see where this piece could have went if we used a synthesised undertone, but again, it would have taken away our goal of the dinner drum effect.

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A Day In The Life Of An Office Drone is streaming on "Concrete Leesy" now.

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Related Links:
Campbell The Strange on MySpace