Sound is the most powerful device to tell a story: It is holistic, impactful, and intuitive. In some cases, it is even more impressive than visuals. I was inspired by Rick Burkhardt’s piece Great Hymn of Thanksgiving, which depicts a thanksgiving scene to the audience using daily objects and human voices. Specifically, the Great Hymn of Thanksgiving aimed to imitate the sounds from a thanksgiving celebration/dinner through objects such as plates, knives, cups, etc. Through these daily objects, musicians can convey a motional scene to the audience, people enjoying dinner, conversing with each other, and even background noises from the television. Burkhardt’s work Provided me with a basic understanding of ways to use sound to depict scenes and motivated me to bring this a step further: to convey a whole plotted story through sounds. The plot would be simple: to convey the story of a rainy day.

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The sound of the rain is one of the most calming sounds of nature. It is regarded as an omen of peacefulness and ease. In dramas and movies, rain is also widely used as a symbol of pause and reflection. Personally, rainy days are also my favourite weather. Thus, I am inspired to create a sound-oriented drama play about the process of rainfall. To do so, I choose my most confident instrument – percussion. I will be using a series of world music percussion instruments, to reconstruct the sound of nature.

- Nov. 2022