Our approach centered around capturing real, grounded sounds and shaping them through innovative processing techniques, rather than defaulting to synthetic sources right from the start. By doing this, we ensured an organic, tactile quality that synthetic sounds often lack. A key part of our process was experimenting with real-life instruments, such as drums, but played in unconventional ways and recorded using more unusual methods. For example, we recorded massive timpani in a large school gym, capturing not just the thunderous hits but also the rich, reverberating ambiance of the space itself. This created a sense of scale and presence that’s difficult to achieve through synthetic means alone.