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Frathaus Album

ablissful | 2025 Oct 28 Updated 2025 Dec 01

How do you distill the sounds of a frat house into a looping soundscape? Honestly, I don't know, but I gave it a shot. Off of freesound, I pulled some sound effects that reminded me of my first time at a frat party. Then starting with a short looping piece of music, I layered these sounds on top to create the soundscapes for the Frathaus Bitsy game.

Backside

Backside track.

Before I entered the frat, I was immediately greeted by two people pissing in the backyard. Turns out, the frat boys wanted no one to go upstairs where the bathroom is, so male attendees had to make do with outside. I'm not sure what the ladies had to do. It was kind of surreal standing out there, just this muddy backyard with the sounds of nature and technology intermixed into the setting. You kind of felt distant, like you weren't really there.

On freesound, I found this track of ambient nature that I really liked. It matched the serenity of a cool night in a suburban area. Paired with the muffled music, you got the sense of feeling left out of something. I had to include the sound of a dude pissing, like the acceptance of "this is happening." In tandem, I added the TV broadcast as a last minute decision because I thought about the people in the houses around us. All grounded in their living rooms, while the frat was making every room lively.

Credits

Mudroom

Mudroom track.

After paying the bouncer five bucks, I walked into a fairly small room. This is where I transitioned from feeling distant, to feeling out of place. I knew, as a dork, that I had no business here, but I had paid my dues and they let me in. So now what?

As the club music gets louder and less muffled, I wanted to emphasize the uncomfortable feeling I had with the repetitive music. Sometimes I was able to hear half of a conversation, so I wanted to include the vocal gestures people spill out when they're not listening. Of course, beer cans made their presence known ever so often.

Credits

Corner

Corner track.

I met a familiar face in the room over. I didn't intend it, but I was at the frat house of one of co-workers. It was nice to catch-up with him, though there wasn't much to say. All he revealed was that he started work somewhere else as they paid a dollar extra. Otherwise from this chance encounter, I never saw him again.

Occasionally I heard laughter from the other guys in the party. It drew my sense of paranoia, so I included some in the track with delay and reverb modifiers. Even though the frat I went to didn't have any glass bottles, I liked the shock the sound gave. When ever I heard it in the track, it woke me up and it was already four in the morning while I was working on this.

Credits

Danceroom

Danceroom track.

It was kind of a sorry sight. Granted, I'm looking back at this experience with hindsight and cynicism, so forgive me for painting a pessimistic picture. In reality, it was just a collage of drunk college students, jumping up and down like smear frames in old animated cartoons. But in my opinion, I hadn't the faintest clue how anyone would find a groove in the unfinished basement of a frat house.

I wanted the soundscape to reflect the approach to the dance floor, the magnum opus of this cabal. The dance music is left unmuffled in this track, and comes off as a little louder than the others. People are constantly talking over each other even though none of it is discernible, and a beer can occasionally jumps in to give its opinion. I started to wonder if the people coughing might put me to bed.

Credits

Frontside

Frontside track.

Eventually we left. I was with my roommate and his girlfriend, and she had taken a hit from a nasty vape. I felt really awful for her because she really seemed out of it, but I would be lying if I didn't say I was happy we had a reason to leave. I called and paid in total for the Lyft because I was so happy. When we stepped out in the front, there a rotund man who was furious at us because some random had parked their car in his wife's driveway. We had nothing to do with it, but that didn't satiate him. My roommate was carrying his girlfriend and I was far from a charitable mood to give this country meatball a hand, especially after accusing us of doing the deed. We just got in the cab and paid no mind.

There was this bittersweetness to the air, and most of it came from hearing the music muffled again. We weren't part of "the scene" anymore, and frankly we never were. To reflect this introspection, I reintroduced the odd laugh and just a snippet of the TV broadcast. Mostly as just a reminder, and the TV Broadcast as irony, because we had left. I imagine people stay there much longer, but we were the lucky ones.

Credits

Road

Road track.

We were picked up by a middle-aged couple, the gal was driving while the guy supervised. I couldn't blame them for the arrangement, I wondered how often people got attacked in ride-share situations. They were a bit odd, or maybe I was just out of it, but they kept trying to make small talk. My roommate was busy tending to his girlfriend, and she was basically out cold. So I did most of the talking, which luckily stayed small talk. In the end, they offered me their business card and told me to call them instead through the Lyft app. I appreciated the gesture, but threw the card out when I got back to my room.

Changing the station and occasionally hearing something clear was a good allegory for how I felt at the time. On one hand, I was happy that I experienced something quintessentially American. On the other hand, it wasn't any better than the clubs I went to in England. Intermixed with my feelings was the sound of the car softly rolling and clicking. It brought me back down to earth, and made me grateful to be in one piece. The soft murmur of the car almost felt like a lullaby.

Credits