2022/03/30

Setting the Scene

Note: This post was written in 2014 but somehow got lost and was never finished or posted. After an enquiry about where we got the sound track from, I’ve dug it out, made sure the links still work, and here you go.

So now, about a week before the first Easter Trail run, we had a control system. Now what, exactly, was it going to show to the audience? To be fair, the sound track CD from Frodsham Churches Together had arrived well before this, so I knew that we had a sound track to play. There were a few questions however to sort out, and the little matter of the lighting.

On the sound front, I made only two changes:

  1. A longer, slower fade in at the start

  2. An extended soundscape and fade out at the end

The longer start was simply a question of looping the existing ambience of the Garden of Gethsemane to provide a subtle start whilst the audience were making their way into the garden and sitting down.

At the end, things were a little more complicated. The original sound track ends with the garden ambience fading into silence, then a cockerel crows three times in the silence, marking dawn and the moment when Peter realises he has denied Jesus, just as Jesus told him he would. This is an important point, but repeating the same recording of a single cockerel crowing three times in silence didn't really convey the point - it felt tacked on and artificial.

The first question was how to convey the passage of time, from the night of the main Gethsemane events to the dawn of the following day. The obvious cue seemed to be the chorus of birdsong that accompanies dawn. This may not be strictly authentic to first century Jerusalem, but is an audio cue that the audience should recognise. Many birdsong recordists are focused on one single bird, actively trying to exclude the wider wash of sound, which is what we are after. After a little searching, the internet turned up GT Weddig’s birdsong recording from Yuba Pass. Recorded in 2013, this is a wonderful soundscape of birdsong which goes on for 12 minutes – only a fraction is used in the final soundtrack. Thanks to Greg for releasing this recording under a Creative Commons license so it can be re-used in projects like this.

Then there was the cockerel. This proved to be easy, thanks to the amazing Freesound project, which hosts a huge amount of freely usable sound recordings. Definitely my first port of call for real sound recordings for any project. In this case I used a cockerel recording by user soundmary. The cockerel obligingly crows twice, waits a little, and crows twice again, just to drive the point home – no editing or duplication needed!

All the editing was done in Audacity, which also allowed me to mark up the key points in the "story" with labels to help me set out the lighting cues, which were done second.

This sound track has been used in the same version for Easter Trails in 2014, 2016, 2018 and now 2022 – it has held up very well, and always makes a big impact on participants.