for Melksham & District Group of Advanced Motorists About Sound Design ~ What’s involved / some examples ~ By Archer Endrich for Melksham & District Group of Advanced Motorists Thursday 20 January 2011

Foley A whole branch of sound design Recreates real-life sounds in studio conditions To get a clean recording able to be placed on the soundtrack independently Highly skilled and demanding great ingenuity

Foley-illusion Enhancing existing Foley – e.g., a fateful walk on different surfaces and in different ambiences Made by something else that is ‘more real than real’ – e.g., footsteps in Arctic snow Sounds for something that isn’t real (but is meant to appear so)

Composite Sounds Mixing together more than one sound source To get the right dramatic feel to a scene (e.g., water doors closing on the Titanic) Other tricks involving special combinations of more than one sound, such as cross-synthesis Cat purr tractor engine purring engine

Playing with the voice Here is a vocal sound: Here are a bunch of subtle transformations of that voice, played one after another – what emotional feel does each one have? This gives some idea of how many ways there are to transform sounds to get it ‘just right’ for context

Imaginary Landscapes Tremendous stylistic innovation in the 20th century in all spheres of music Working directly with sound is one of the main new areas: electronic music, musique concrète, electroacoustic music, acousmatic music – largely depending on the source Thousands of new compositions that create imaginary landscapes out of sound

Building a Sound The starting point is ‘Pluck’ algorithm to add fuzz Chord from layered source + gliss High Pass Filter to lighten source Texture cluster of these Make the texture gliss downwards Final mix of all components

Some strange sounds This is like the sound we recorded earlier: Let’s lower it down 3 octaves We tighten gaps duplicate ‘grains’ x5 harmonise it (rising chords) and stretch that 4 times The sound-maker ponders to what environment, to what context such a sound might belong … Sound-making interacts with our (real) world and our (real) lives …

Hands-on Select a sound, such as the voice, or our button-cap recording, or a donkey or a tractor Select a transformation from the list provided Make the change Describe the result More complex results require multiple steps Sound design: films, animations, ads, sound-bytes in songs, music of imaginary landscapes