Sound Design Inspiration #25
PODCAST
Loving the new Conversations with Sound Designers Podcast hosted by the excellent Peter Rice. This first set of conversations are with UK based Sound Designers who specialise in different areas of Plays and Musicals at differing levels of their careers. It’s incredibly enlightening and interesting to hear the different routes into the industry and how careers shift and change over time. Check it out!
https://uk-podcasts.co.uk/podcast/conversations-with-sound-designers
SOUND EFFECTS
I recently subscribed to ‘Free to Use Sounds’ youtube channel. The name is not really the full picture here. The channel is made by two travellers who specialise in recording sounds in the different locations they visit across the world. Most recently in Kyoto, Japan. They also showcase all sorts of portable audio recording equipment, from affordable ranges to high end gear, so if you’re looking for new equipment, its useful to hear the recordings here beforehand!
SOUND EFFECTS & PODCAST
I recently came across Alice Boyd’s found sounds feature for Ffern’s ‘As the Season Turns’ podcast. Alice has some very useful thoughts about deep listening and it makes me think about taking the time to activley listen, it’s such a great way to engage with the present and, when listening back, remember the feeling you had when visting a new place to record.
Sound Design Inspiration #24
Interview
Great interview with Dubbing Mixer, ADR Recordist, Sound Editor, Emma Butt, diving into some of the nuances of working in the film/tv sound industry, some of the differences in genres, and diversity in sound departments.
https://sound.krotosaudio.com/emma-butt-sound-interview/
Composer Insights
For those interested in the inside scoop of the Film composition world, I recently found Anne-Katherin Dern’s youtube channel, with lots of super interesting behind the scenes chats around her working process and the industry, check her out and subscribe!
http://www.annedern-filmcomposer.com/youtube/
Theatre
New Diorama Theatre have announced an intervention. There will be no shows this season in order to pause the continuous nature of having to programme new shows. This means they’re able to offer space, time, resources and money to creators with ideas which would otherwise not get a chance to be properly experimented with and developed. This includes ideas from anyone, not just writers and directors.
Coming out of the pandemic, trying to get shows up and running again, whilst planning and preparing what comes after that and the constant push to produce in shorter periods with less resources is a struggle which resonates across a lot of the creatives I know and work with in the industry. Since then there has been constant chatter about changing the way we create to allow for a process which is less conducive of burnout, and certain companies and theatres have made great leaps towards that, but it is certainly not industry wide. The decision by the New Diorama Theatre to not run any shows this season, is a chance for theatre creatives to re-consider the way theatre is created and hopefully come back with a much better sense of what needs to change to make it a healthier environment, and a more creatively fulfilling one.
Sound Design Inspiration #23
I just wanted to point people in the direction of Essa Hansen’s Twitter profile. Essa shares snippets of her process in different roles within working on Sound for film projects and its always super interesting!
https://twitter.com/EssaHansen/status/1410001093912711168?s=20
FILM
I was lucky enough to see/hear Dune in an imax in New York a few weeks ago and the Sound Design was superb.
Here’s a detailed looked at some of the ideas, concepts and experiments the team got into with the direction of Denis Villeneuve. I’ve often wondered if Directors should be part of these Soundworks Collection conversations. They have such a huge influence when collaborating in how sounds can be found and used that it’s really inspiring to see Dennis join the chat and talk about the feel and ideas behind some of the design and music decisions and the realisation, for him, of working with sound throughout the whole process being an important aspect of his process, much like any other part of it.
ANIMATION SOUND DESIGN
Heres a short, but very inspiring article about the Sound in the animation titles Luca, Vivo and Raya. Again noting how important it is for Sound to start working in the overall process early on. Something that Randy Thom has mentioned a lot in the interviews about Sound in Animation.
Sound Design Inspiriration #22
FILM
‘SISTERS WITH TRANSISTORS is the remarkable untold story of electronic music’s female pioneers, composers who embraced machines and their liberating technologies to utterly transform how we produce and listen to music today’
Really looking forward to watching this!
COMPOSITION
I can’t say I’ve kept up with all the interesting content being produced by the Composer Magazine, but I did manage to catch this great talk through the progression of creating a cue for the final episode of The Queen’s Gambit, by Carlos Rafael Rivera. Looking at the thematic material he’d produced, how he tied it together in this sequence and a look into his orchestration process.
GEAR
This may have been around for a while but looks like a good way of integrating Bluetooth into a Dante Network. The AUDINATE Dante AVIO Bluetooth® I/O Adapter
SOUND EFFECTS
Hiss and Roar have been busy with a few new libraries.
Whenever I’ve played with Hydrophones, it’s been a bit hit and miss whether you get something useful. This set of Mud Pool recordings sound promising, lots of movement and ‘underwatery’ worlds to play with.
Hiss and Roar have also begun selling IR samples, starting with this Glass Object Impulse Response library. An interesitng way to place your sounds into another world.
Sound Design Inspiration #21
PODCASTS
This Classical Life
I'm always wondering how best to find 'Classical' music which resonates with me, there is so much out there and it can be hard to sit and concentrate on everything you listen to. Jess Gillam is not only a wonderful Sax player, but presents This Classical life with intrigue towards tracks bought to her attention by guests and offers tracks equally as exciting, each podcast is so open to the possibilities that music brings, and almost always gives me a few new artists to check out. Try it out!
The Sound of Tenet
Super interesting interview from Soundworks Collection with Supervising Sound Editor and Sound Designer Richard King and Re-recording Mixer Gary Rizzo on working with Christopher Nolan on Tenet. Great explanation of the intricacies of breaking down the parts of a gunshot sound and the time it takes, then flipping it, trying to make it clearly inverted. Love it!
SOFTWARE
Decent Sampler
David Hilowitz created Decent Sampler, a free Sampler for which half of the Pianobook sample catalogue has now been converted to be used with. If you don't have Kontakt or Logic, this is the place to go for some free, unique and inspiring instruments...https://www.pianobook.co.uk/latest/
EnRage
EnRage A new plug-in set from the unrelentingly awesome Boom Library, I'm sure it'l make for some interesting sonic manipulation, look forward to testing this one out.
Sound Design Inspiration #20
PODCASTS & VIDEO INTERVIEWS
As we all descended into isolation part of my daily routine starts with a walk and so podcasts inevitably have become invaluable! So I just wanted to share a few I’ve found interesting/inspiring/useful
Firstly the Soundworks Collection podcasts for anyone who hasn’t come across them before, not only do they create Podcasts with insights into industry practices, specific sound/music challenges and processes of films, tv shows, games and advertisements, but also create incredible video interviews with some of the leading pros in the industry. Here’s a couple of podcasts worth diving into:
Next is Score: The Podcast, which has just begun its 3rd season interviewing Danny Elfman. Robert Kraft and Kenny Holmes host interviews with some of the top film/tv Composers and come across some fantastic routes into the industry, processes of working on all sorts of types of projects and more. Definitely worth having a listen, here’s a couple I’ve had a play through:
Pinar Toprak
Sound Design Inspiration #19
MUSIC
The Wonderful folks at ThickSkin (an amazing Theatre company based in Manchester who I have lots of love for) have been busy curating this awesome monthly playlist and included my track Inelec. Check out the playlist, and subscribe for updates and lots more inspiring tracks.
FILM
I spotted this trailer for ‘Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound’ it’s a film all about Cinematic Sound production, design, mixing etc, what’s not to love about that! It also seems it’s available online as a digitial download or DVD/BluRay. Will be checking it out soon!
INTERVIEW
Always love Daniel Pemberton’s scores and here he speaks about his work on ‘Bird of Prey’
https://www.awardscircuit.com/interview-birds-of-prey-composer-daniel-pemberton-talks-harley-quinn-and-more/
RISE
My next track Rise si now available on spotify, itunes and other streaming services.
These tracks were all written about 18 months ago and I’m finally getting around to polishing and releasing them, it’s inspiring to go back apply the mixing techniuques I’ve picked up over the last 18 months!
This one is mastered by the particularly awesome Joël Dollié
Listen to Rise on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4K6OF5V6BbBJd1ZHyUNKUa?si=55LEoTX7RDackD4MDYPvag
Sound Design Inspiration #18
MUSIC
VOCES8 have worked on 3 of Olafur Arnald’s latest pieces and this is his track ‘Momentary’ as a choir version, just as amazing as the original and with a whole new feel.
YOUTUBE
Nahre Sol here with some super interesting info on the art of improvisation from a viewpoint of a Classical Musician and how it became less prevalent in that world over time….
PLUGIN
Boom Library recently released ‘DEBIRD’, I wasn’t sure if this was a joke or not, so looking forward to testing it out! Debird promises to "‘Remove bird noises with a single click’!
https://www.boomlibrary.com/sound-effects/debird/
DOCUMENTARY
Noticed that BBC Iplayer has ‘Score, a film music documentary’ online for the next month. Just started watching it and loving it, so many insights from the industry here
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0002pf6
Sound Design Inspiration #17
MUSIC
Found this beautifully intimate session from Jacob Collier and friends at Paste Studio in NY.
Jacob Collier - Vocals, Acoustic guitar, Harpejji | Michael Mayo - Percussion, Uke | Becca Stevens - Charango | Malika Tirolien - Keys | Julia Easterlin - Bass | Christian Euman - Drums
Audio: Bob Mallory - - Video: Brad Wagner
MUSIC
Awesome set from I’m with Her on Tiny Desk, another band so well suited to this intimate style of performance, beautiful songs and harmonies!
PODCAST
I found this awesome podcast all about creative processes, aptly called ‘Creative processing with Joseph Gordon-Levitt’. He’s just finished ten episodes with a range of artists chatting on the show, one per show. Simply put, they’re answering questions posed by the community around the topic of creative processes, and get into all sorts of avenues in their conversation. It’s in such a great conversational style, and ends up like the auditory equivilent of a mind map on each question. Check it out…
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/creative-processing-with-joseph-gordon-levitt/id1472587591
Sound Design Inspiration #16
INTERVIEW
I’ve not got around to watching Chernobyl yet, but the soundtrack has had such a huge amount of praise, I cant wait to hear/see it. Here’s an interview I came across with the wonderful Hildur Guðnadóttir talking about her work on the score.
TOOLS
Brian Eno re-tweeted this online ‘Ambient Sound and background noise generator’ called Zen Cast. It’s a really simple way of showing how to create a soundscape using layers of raw material. It’s actually very similar to the way I would set Ableton up for multiple tracks of atmos, then play with the faders depending on what I wanted to tell.
http://www.zen-cast.com/
MASTERING
I’ve been researching into Mastering for online streaming platforms recently whilst working on my side project which will see me releasing a bunch of tracks over the next 6 months to Itunes, Spotify etc, and this article was pretty useful in understanding what Spotify does to a track that has been mastered over a certain LUFS level, essentially promoting the use of dynamics in music rather than just making everything as loud as possible.
https://artists.spotify.com/faq/mastering-and-loudness#my-track-doesn't-sound-as-loud-as-other-tracks-on-spotify-why
PLUGIN
Along the Mastering theme, I came across this metering plugin called LEVELS by ‘Mastering the mix’ which seems like an excellent way to ensure your LUFS readings aren’t too loud.
https://www.masteringthemix.com/products/levels
iLok TIP
My iLok 2 decided to flash it’s blue light when I plugged it in a few nights ago. Turns out that’s it dying on you. I do pay for Zero Downtime which effectivley should mean I’d be without my licences for no time at all, but a handy tip i found online was to put the iLok in the freezer for 5 minutes and try again… I was skeptial… but seriously it worked! At least for long enough to get a new iLok and swap the licences over. Happy days.
Orchestral composition | Side project | Fate Approaching
A couple of years ago I decided to teach myself as much as I could about MIDI orchestration and dive into Composition a little more. After years of trying to understand more about it I went through the Evenant trailer music course which actually simplified a lot of things for me and mostly taught me to concentrate on specific elements at different moments in the Compositional process. Eventually I had a few tracks published through Chroma Music specifically tailored towards Trailer Music, namley the track ‘Wonder’:
Since then I started writing some tracks for EOS, some of which ended up moving away from the very Trailer heavy style and into a more melodic, listenable set of tracks which we decided would be better out of the trailer world and so I’m slowly releasing them into the wild over the next 6 months as a challege in mixing for myself and producing my own work. The first of which is this track, Fate Approaching, available on Itunes, Apple Music, Spotify and Bandcamp.
Pianobook - Octave Cascades
My favourite type of sampled instrument for theatre work lately has turned towards textures of organic instruments. Specifically the likes of Evo Grid work from Spitfire Audio which allows evolving textures all sorts of orchestral instruments to combine and make beautiful or dissonant evolving textures, something that can be very quick and simple to build in the heat of tech rehearsals!
I wanted to find a way of achieving a similar thing with the piano, inspired through the likes of Olafur Arnalds and his latest album ‘Remember’, having seen his multi felt piano set up live and loving the quality it gave.
So I had a moment in Kristiansand a few months back to record a second piano, I recorded this upright as a bit of an experiment, sampled the piano and mezzo piano layers and then went on to record a varying set of octaves randomly played, not to time, for each note I’d already sampled. I’d also tried a few other experimental things like hitting the key hard to use as a note off sample, this of course was an awful idea, so I scrapped that and kept with the octave idea. This is the kind of thing I mean….
Then I followed the normal process of editing each note and noise reducing, for both sets of samples. And decided to go the Kontakt route to package the layers into a single instrument.
Here’s the final GUI which is fairly simple in terms of what it does. The aim is to give you the ability to mix the octaves with the original single notes and switch either layer on and off. I also added a reverse function into the mix, I always love a bit of reverse piano and have struggled to find ways to usefully program that into a playable instrument, in this case I think it works quite well on the higher notes because there’s less of a decay for you to wait for until you hear the initial reversed samples, less good in the low end unless you’re holding it for a while. I might update that with less time to wait at some point… hmmm. What I like though is that reverse setting is only a reverse of the octave note textures, so again gives it a bit of a random feel to the whole texture.
The Piano book community have been amazingly putting together some brilliant demo’s I find them so inspirational to hear what different composers do with the instrument, and here they are…
Heres the link to the Piano book web page where you can download the Kontakt Instrument for free, plus a whole bunch of other free piano instruments. https://www.pianobook.co.uk/library/kristiansand-octave-cascade
The next step is to develop the idea using other instruments, hopefully allowing them to create textures in the same way. I quickly recorded an electric guitar for a show in Amsterdam and sampled it in a similar way, recording the initial notes and octaves, so I want to see if creating a new instrument is as simple as slotting in the new samples in place of the piano to create a new ‘Octave Cascade’ instrument.
More to come soon.
Sound Design Inspiration #15
SOUND DESIGN
https://www.asoundeffect.com/randy-thom-screenwriting-for-sound/
I really enjoyed this article from Randy Thom about the use of Sound as a Storytelling tool, especially his thoughts on early collaboration and inspiration for Sound or Visuals coming from one or the other. In Theatre the time scale of creating a show and it’s Sound Design is quite different to film, but we also occasionally come across the same points he raises here, scripts that define sounds very specifically can sometimes be less ‘Sound friendly’ than initially thought. The more evocative stage directions, and especially those that suggest we need to relate the emotion of a certain character to the audience, often prove to be more inspiring.
It brings up a couple of thoughts around devised work and working in rehearsals. I’ve done a lot of designing in rehearsal rooms as I love get inspired in there and throw ideas in. Devising lends itself to that style of process, there are opportunities to experiment and explore ideas with an essence of freedom, we’re creating a piece together from the story level up and from a Sound perspective, we are relatively quick at changing content and trying ideas on the spot, in comparison to say trying to immediately change part of the Set Design. In any process it depends on how a Director would like to use Sound in their rehearsal, but I do think that scripted work can still have this level of exploration, even without specifically scripted sound ideas.
In terms of pre-production phases in Theatre I think it’s perhaps in short workshops where we get the opportunity to offer what Sound Design can be used for to a Writer and Director, sometimes just through conversations, but to be able to try an idea on the fly in front of them, can effect what comes out of the writing too. One example I think of is a show called The White Bike Written by Tamara Von Werthern, Directed by Lily McLeish. I absolutely loved the script before we had begun and Sound would be needed throughout, but after a week long workshop Tamara took the script away and began using sound as an inspiration of what she could allow an audience to feel through the main character, so we came back to it much more on the same page as one another, more descriptive thoughts about how a sound might be affecting the character from her perspective.
BBC PROMS: THE SOUND OF SPACE
BBC Proms are always inspiring but this in particular was awesome to get to hear. I couldn’t get to the live performance, but this is still up for 10 days so wrap your ears around this:
BBC Proms, 2019: The Sound of Space: www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0007f52 via @bbciplayer
MUSIC | AVA - WAVES
I had the pleasure to briefly meet Aisling Brouwer and Anna Phoebe of AVA at the latest Spitfire Audio event recently which led me to their beautiful album Waves. An incredibly powerful mix of Piano, Violin, Percussion, Electronic elements and Soundscapes making such a rich instrumental world in each track.
MUSIC | BON IVER - i,i
The latest in Bon Iver was out this month and it’s been on repeat for a little while now…
Sound Design Inspiration #14
TUTORTIAL
I’ve been starting to catch up on Rick Beato’s Youtube channel recently and came across this gem. I have no real desire to create a songwriter demo, but there is so much useful info ripe to pick from this video, just like all his other videos
RADIO
A friend recently put me on to BBC sounds late junction from BBC Radio 3, which is absolutely bursting with interesting music from far and wide. I’m finding it’s expanding my listening into completely different places. I’ll be honest, theres the occasional stinker I can’t stand, but even then, hearing the music of so many cultures and artists is always interesting.
BLOG
I’ve been a Randy Thom fan for a while now and he’s started to blog about his thoughts on ‘Ways to Give Sound a Chance’ which he is able to explain in such a seemingly simple and precise way, that also seem to give me inspiration for the theatre too, taking the idea of a close up and concentrating focus on one particular part of the stage, whilst sound can lead the story of what is outside of that focus point for example. Check it out here…
https://randythomblog.wordpress.com/
Pianobook - Kristiansand Concert Steinway
For those who may not know about Pianobook, here’s a copy of the ‘about’ page from the website
‘Curated by one of the founders of SPITFIRE AUDIO [Christian Henson] pianobook is a collective sample project that aims to bring together a community of likeminded music makers to talk about their stories through the pianos they use, admire and are inspired by.’
Last month I was in Norway and had Saturday off and took the opportunity to record the theatre’s Steinway. After rolling it out of the cupboard it lives in, I realised the concert hall was empty, so I made a sharp turn right and rolled it onto the stage and quickly set my laptop and mics up downstage centre.
I tried a couple of stereo sets of mics and ended up with 2x AKG C414 mics,. After a little experimenting, I moved them a little further back than may be a usual close recording setup, to get a little more of the room sound, else what’s the point in taking over the whole concert hall!!
I used Christian’s logic template [which can be found here with an explanation on how it’s setup] and started recording, knowing that the battery on my laptop was limited. Luckily after only a few interruptions from visitors checking out the hall, I got a few takes and packed up ready to edit.
At that point I didn’t have a lot of time so only made an EXS24 version which Christian featured in a recent vlog, you can hear it at the very start and around 2 minutes in….
So It made sense to convert it to a Kontakt version to give non Logic users a chance to play with it too and for me to learn a little about how that conversion might work….
Which is when I encountered some frustrating Kontaktness! Its default reaction to release triggers is not as a piano should react. [A release trigger being a piece of audio played upon releasing the key.'] For some reason the release triggers work as they should without the sustain pedal down, fine thats good, but when you hold the pedal and hit a note, the release trigger audio doesn’t play until you release the pedal, and when you do release the pedal, it plays back all the release triggers for all the keys you pressed whilst the pedal was down, so you get a big splurge… not good!
I came across another piano that did manage to make this work correctly called the Spring piano recorded by Christian himself and converted to Kontakt by Fredrik Fernbrant, I had a look through the script Freddie made and reverse engineered it to a point of understanding enough to make a version for the Kristiansand instrument. It was a good way of learning a little more Kontakt scripting, but I still feel a little out of my depth with it so will continue to learn more as i make new instruments.
If anyone does know how to do get in there and fix this, then that would be amazing, but there’s a button to turn the dry signal on/off in the gui, this is simply because I’m unsure how to get rid of that and have the dry signal permanantly ‘on’ whilst still making Kontakt react to the release triggers correctly at the same time.
Either way, long story short, here is the link to the Kontakt version! Enjoy!
https://bit.ly/2W9iTpj
Sound Design Inspiration #13
PODCAST
Here’s a podcast with Steven Price, Oscar winning Composer talking a about his work on the Our Planet series of films, a little on Gravity and working with Edgar Wright.
SOUND EFFECTS
Some interesting new sounds from Hiss and Roar, continuing to bring new sounds to the table in imaginative ways!
Sound Design Inspiration #12
SOUND DESIGN
I came back across this super informative interview with Olivier Award winner Gareth Owen the other day talking through some of the basic principles behind Sound Design for Musicals. Congratulations go to Gareth again this year winning the Olivier Award for ‘Come From Away’ - Full Article here: https://variety.com/2019/legit/podcasts/broadway-sound-design-gareth-owen-1203160482/
TONBENDERS / SOUNDGIRLS
Soundgirls.org support women across the sound industry from Theatre Sound to Film post Production and beyond. In this Tonebenders podcast talks more about that and how they are making that support available. Followed by a panel discussion moderated by Anne-Marie Slack, and on the panel is Karol Urban, Kate Finan, Onnalee Blank and April Tucker. Talking about how they began in Sound, share stories and advice.
SOUND DESIGN
Ben Burtt talks through some of the famous sound effects from Star Wars in lots of detail…
SOUND EFFECTS
Hiss and Roar have put together this amazing sounding library of Thunder Sheets. Check it out here.
Sound Design Inspiration #11
COMPOSER
Sherri Chung is a Composer based in LA, Soundiron have done a pretty in depth interview with her about the process she goes through on a project and her career trajectory to date.
SOUND DESIGN
The School of Sound is an annual, multi day event with lots of industry leading speakers in the world of Sound Design and Music. Generally focused on Film and TV. They’ve started uploading talks by speakers from the last 11 years worth of events and this is the first 9 speakers. Just starting to listen through them and it’s an incredible resource!
http://www.schoolofsound.co.uk/sos/audio-and-video-archives/
VIRTUAL INSTRUMENTS
I’ve tried to steer clear of buying new samples recently and try and use what I have. I went through a stage of purchasing, but not listening properly to what I’d bought. Having said that this new piano from Native Instruments based around Nils Frahm’s sound, does sound lovely and certainly looks well sampled!
INTERVIEW
I’ve not seen the film yet, but here is a very in depth interview with the sound team behind Alita: Battle Angel.
https://bit.ly/2CJYk8a
Scriptation to QLAB thoughts
Scriptation is an app built for those who go through “Script Change Hell” in the tv and film industry. You make all your notes on your script, only to find out 3 pages have changed, which has altered the numbering system for all your other pages, you loose a page… you loose your notes etc… this handy video explains more…
Jokes aside, I’ve been trying it out for Theatre scripts over the last few years. I’ve found it useful for pre-rehearsals jotting down notes and music thoughts and rehearsals continuing that, it helps not having paper copies of all the scripts we get through in rehearsals, but it’s much slower a process than a good old pen and paper…. so haven’t extensivly used it for tech. I think the next step is to try it out with an ipad & apple Pencil or something similar.
I like to build QLAB files at the start of a process too, (depending on the process). I’ll build a map of empty groups based on obvious script cues (though they will always change), with notes in their name about what they need to be filled with, or where they might get cued, it helps me have a structure to the show that can be moved around as we go.
So the cool thing with Scriptation is that you can make a .pdf out of the notes you’ve made on your script. I’m thinking up a quick way of automating a process of taking notes I’ve made in scriptation to build empty cues in QLAB. It would be useful to hit a button and make the qlab map… will post any findings as I go through the process…
