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.

Death of England @ National Theatre

Last week I was part of an awesome team putting together ‘Death of England’ in the Dorfman Theatre. The piece follows Michael after the death of his dad, he’s powerless and angry. In a state of heartbreak, he confronts the difficult truths about his father’s legacy and the country that shaped him. At the funeral, unannounced and unprepared, Michael decides it is time to speak.

The show will run from now until Sat 7th March staring Rafe Spall giving an incredible performance!

Written by Roy Williams

Director - Clint Dyer

Co-Sound Designer - Pete Malkin

Co-Sound Designer - Benjamin Grant

Set and Costume Designer - Sadeysa Greenaway-Bailey

Set and Costume Desig ULTZ

Lighting Designer - Jackie Shemesh

Movement - Lucy Cullingford

Staff Director - Sian Ejiwunmi-Le Berre

Dialect Coach - Hazel Holder

Production Design Assistant - Shankho Chaudhuri

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.

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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 

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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.

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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

BIOLOGY

I came across this diagram on Twitter a few days ago and I’m getting a little obsessed with where the sound of my voice is coming from, try it out yourself…

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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

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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.

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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 #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/

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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.

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SOUND DESIGN

Ben Burtt talks through some of the famous sound effects from Star Wars in lots of detail…

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SOUND EFFECTS

Hiss and Roar have put together this amazing sounding library of Thunder Sheets. Check it out here.

Sound Design Inspiration #10

PODCAST

This is from a while back. Soundworks at it again with an insightful and inspiring podcast with Composer Ludwig Göransson and supervising sound editor Steve Boeddeker talking about their collaboration of score and sound design on Black Panther. The mix of traditional African rhythms and instrumentation, alongside the futuristic wakanda tech.

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RADIO / VIDEO GAMES

I randomly tuned into BBC radio 6 on Sunday, having not listened in months, to come across ‘A history of video game music episode 2’. It’s super interesting and explains a whole bunch about developing new sounds based on the games emotional storyline and taking inspiration from the visuals of a game too. Some top composers offering some insight into the process.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0002y9q 

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TV SOUND DESIGN

I’ve been watching ‘The Good Place’ recently and am officially in awe of D'Arcy Carden and Janet. Particularly the ‘Jane(s)’ episode where she plays all the other main characters, as Janet, as well as a good place and neutral Janet … which is a ridiuclous feat. Thought I’d share a small piece of Sound Design which took me by suprise!

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The Unreturning Trailer

A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of combining two styles work - Theatre and Trailers - and worked on a short score and Sound Design for Frantic Assembly’s The Unreturning trailer.

The show is Directed by Neil Bettles, Designed by Andrzej Goulding, Lighting Designed by Zoe Spurr and Costume Designed by Lily Arnold, an awesome team! I Sound Designed the show and it’s now on a UK tour having just finished at it’s third venue the Liverpool Everyman picking up some great responses. Next up is the Traverse in Edinburgh. It arrives in London in January as part of the second half of the tour, so catch it there if you can. The show is ace and I can’t recommend it enough!

Here’s the trailer made by Tea Films and a version of the audio seperatly for anyone interested. I used Spitfire Audio’s Chamber Strings, a bit of Omnisphere for the simple synths and percussion and Cinesample’s Tina Guo Acoustic Cello, one of the most playable VST’s I’ve tried!

Sound Design Inspiration #6

INTERVIEW

Mary Anne Hobbs interviewed Ryuichi Sakamoto on BBC Radio 6. Talking about how he began his life in Music and his process. "Spontinety is my faith"...

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APPLE

Apple have released an updated Macbook Pro which is able to house 32gb RAM and up to 4tb SSD drive... it comes at a steep price though!

The more samples I've been using recently, the more RAM I've been needing. I'm hoping that one day it will be the portable version of a nMac Pro I've been waiting for, but for now its a movement in the right direction

https://www.macrumors.com/2018/07/12/apple-launches-2018-macbook-pro-lineup/

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SOUND DESIGN

One of the shows I Sound Designed which transfered over the NY to St Ann's Warehouse is now available to watch online as part of Donmar Warehouse's initiative to get these shows out to a wider audience. This was the third piece in a Trilogy of Shakespeare plays led by an all female cast of women around the concept of a female prison. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0696f99/the-tempest

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INTERVIEW

Jason Graves, the award-winning composer of the Dead Space soundtracks showing his studio and some interesting instruments he's used to create the unique sound of Dead Space...

Sound Design Inspiration #3

PODCAST

Twenty Thousand Hertz released a super interesting podcast a couple of weeks ago featuring the Data Driven DJ. They talk to Brant Guichard, a man who has heard "The Music" during his seizures since he was a young boy. Taking his EEG readings during a seizure and splicing up a mixture of Imogen Heap's ‘Hide and Seek’, philharmonic samples and experimental percussion. The Data Driven DJ (Brian Foo) created this beautiful piece by using the readings representing the seizure to control the dynamics and intensity (That's a huge over simplification) of the layers...

Rhapsody in Grey - Using Brain Wave Data to Convert a Seizure to Song from brian foo on Vimeo.

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INTERVIEW

Native instruments posted an interview with Ben Frost talking about the methods he used for this new album The Centre Cannot Hold.
 

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NOISE

After living in NY for the last two months, I returned home to a strong awakening of how loud it was there. Not just the hustle and bustle of people, but vehicles, sirens, advertising... it reminded me of this article which describes the high dB levels we encounter on the London Underground system... In essence, get yourself noise cancelling headphones or ear protection for the commute!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-42791299

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Sonic Arcade Exhibition NYC Museum of Art and Design

I recently visited the 'Sonic Arcade: Shaping Space with Sound' exhibition at the Museum of Art and Design in New York and it was pretty ear opening. As the name suggests, there was a real focus on the spaces in which the instillations took place and how the audience and exhibits interacted with one another physically.

Naama Tsabar's Propagation (Opus 3), is a guitar like structure on the wall of one room, the wall has a cavity behind it, the guitar strings are amplified through speakers focused into the wall cavity essentially making the room the resonant chamber for the instrument.

Julianne Swartz created blown glass sculptures and found their resonant frequencies using small speakers tucked away inside each piece, they were spread around the room and seemingly randomly resonated. The effect was a beautiful set of sculptures with a physically engaging quality.

In one room you're invited to put on headphones and play on 4 different synthesizers, This part of the exhibition called 'Subject to Gesture' and was curated by Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe. The Museum website has an interesting interview with him talking about his take on sound 'For Lowe, voltage is an unpredictable, malleable and living material whose manipulation is capable of carving the air with sound.'

Audio Media International 2017 Interview

Adam Savage. Editor of Audio Media International Magazine wrote to ask a few questions on my work on The Encounter with Gareth Fry, as well as about the challenges we faced on Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, and asked me to talk a little about the industry as a whole. I felt privileged to be included in the May/June 2017 edition of Audio Media International. Thanks to Adam for getting in touch!

Here's the link to the online version of the interview:

http://www.audiomediainternational.com/interview/interview-pete-malkin/06534

Beware of Pity and The Kid Stays in the Picture

This week I've been working on two Complicité pieces. One is 'Beware of Pity' at the Barbican Theatre, we made the show over a year ago in Berlin at the Schaubühne Theatre with 7 of their ensemble of actors and it's in London this week.

Its been a very swift couple of days to get that up and running whilst rehearsing the next Complicité show, which will open in a few weeks at The Royal Court called 'The Kid Stays in the Picture.'

Beware of Pity will be live streamed on YouTube this Sunday and it'll be available to watch for following two weeks all at the following link:

http://www.complicite.org/live-stream.php

Check it out if you can, it's been a pleasure working with the amazingly talented Schaubühne actors who really are what make the show.

Enjoy!

Beware of Pity

The Kid Stays in the Picture