Stevie Sheehan

Echo Chamber

Echo Chamber is a compact psychological thriller, exploring themes of trauma, grief and memory. The player wakes up in a dark and foggy apartment, it feels familiar but unfamiliar at the same time. The player soon discovers that they are 6 years in the past and have to explore the apartment to discover what happened in this space, 6 years ago.

The blend of magical elements within a realistic setting allowed me to experiment with sound design a lot more. I had the chance to record realistic sounds such as footsteps, but also the chance to create more magical sounds through editing and processing such as the memory chimes.

The structure of this game encourages wandering and stillness. As each memory is discovered, the grief in the player grows, which is heard through a blend of heartbeat, breathing and a low hum. As the player is walking around the sound of grief increases in volume, requiring the player to be still for it to subside and to find the next memory and progress. When the player is still, more subtleties in the space can be heard, such as the ticking of clocks, footsteps of upstairs neighbours, and cars driving past.

More information can be found in the youtube description.

Xenos

The soundtrack I composed for Xenos aims to sonically represent the triptych format of this installation, with many moving polyphonic lines that come together for moments of synchronization. Each synthesiser loosely relates to a visual theme, the staccato rhythm that begins at [00:00:50:02] is seen most often when the Xenos 2 is showing x-ray images. This sound is a reference to hospital machines' repetitive beeping and the human heartbeat, exploring the idea of the “bionic evolution” of humans. The high frequency part that enters at [00:02:23:15] pans continuously from left to right, following the sun's movements in Xenos 1; this sound also swells and grows, mirroring again the movement of the sun and the shadows within the tree.

More information can be found in the description on youtube.

Droning

For this project I wanted to create a slow moving and gradually modulating piece of drone music, where changes went almost unnoticed. I wanted the piece to build from beginning to end, starting out calm and slowly becoming more overwhelming and unsettling. I wanted each part of this piece to have its own moment to be heard. By adding gain modulation to each element they fade in and out at different rates. This creates moments of calm, where perhaps only one part can be heard. And moments where every element is audible, interacting with each other to create unique beating patterns and tonal interest.

This piece was entirely coded using C++.

More information can be found in the description on youtube.

Soundscape Synthesiser Demonstration

Soundscape Synthesiser

For this project I wanted to create a synthesiser that could create diverse and unique soundscapes. Inspired by ambient noise study websites, such as “Lofi”, the goal was to build on this concept, providing users with more adjustable parameters, and a wider variety of sounds.
This plugin was designed to be used by artists to create soundscapes fully customisable to their needs, whether it is to use in a film, animation, or a background sound in an installation. However, it can be used in other contexts as well, such as ambient sleep or study noise.

The VST was coded in C++ with all sounds being synthesised, apart from the "Chatter" which used recordings.

More information can be found in the description on youtube.