scrapbook

Sound Design Inspiration #25

in

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 #23

in

TWITTER

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 Inspiration #21

in

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 #6

in

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"...

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/

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

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 #4

in

MUSIC

Jon Hopkins singularity album out last month has some awesome work on it, check it out on here.

https://open.spotify.com/album/1nvzBC1M3dlCMIxfUCBhlO?si=ZT6mAIsYSdO_TxWrAXlD5Q

THEATRE SOUND

The NY times interviewed the Sound Designers nominated for the newly re-instated Sound Design Tony Award, they all provided some excellent SFX and montages of their shows. I worked as Associate on both Harry Potter and the Cursed Child with Gareth Fry and 1984 with Tom Gibbons, Both are incredibly deserving of the nomination.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/28/theater/tony-awards-sound-design-plays-nominees.html

VST

Spitfire audio have had a change in their Labs Scheme recently. The most recent update sees the beautiful Soft Piano and newly recorded 'Strings' patches with a newly designed user interface. As it's for free, download them here...

https://www.spitfireaudio.com/labs/

Sound Design Inspiration #3

in

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...

INTERVIEW

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

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

Sound Design Inspiration #2

in

SOUND DESIGN

I still haven't managed to see it yet, but came across a cool breakdown of the multiple layers of audio in a scene from Bladerunner 2049

FREE SOFTWARE INSTRUMENT

Strezov Sampling have been giving away this beautiful Duduk vst, I've been trying out in a track or two and it's very easily playable and has slotted in around the rest of my template pretty quickly.

Free Duduk VST

MUSIC

As I put Yo-Yo ma into my 1st scrapbook, I carried on listening to his works and to "The Goat Rodeo Sessions" album and found some awesome live studio performance videos.

FREE APP

I came across this Mini spotify player that sits in your notification centre, pretty neat and just stays open, links to the album art of Spotify and will open spotify when you hit play if it's not already there!

 

Sound Design Inspiration #1

in

MUSIC

Awesome live performance from Homay and Oliver at Spitfire here

The piece 'As Before' was developed from an idea that Homay had conceived a while ago, with her performing on the grand piano and Oliver laying down some live loops using the Spitfire sounds combined with a stereo delay.

I came across this documentary 'The Music of Strangers' led by Yo-Yo Ma which is about the beginnings of the SilkRoad Ensemble a few months back and its very much worth a watch for so many reasons, it delves into a world of musical and cultural collaborations....

FREE PLUGIN

For those familiar with PaulStretch, you might have seen this update to a plugin version of the Extreme time stretching software.

https://www.kvraudio.com/product/paulxstretch-by-xenakios

SILENCE

I supported a Kickstarter campaign for a film called 'In Pursuit of Silence' a few years ago and they recently shared a bunch of 'silence' related articles.. One pointed to a new film called Sancturies of Silence which looks really interesting and it must have been a fun one to be part of.

Also this New Yorker article By Amanda Petrusich, on the world generally getting passively louder...