1. 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

2. 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

3. 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)

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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 …

9. 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