composer

Sound Design Inspiration #24

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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 Inspiriration #22

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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 #20

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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:

The Sound of Uncut Gems

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 #16

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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.

https://grapevine.is/icelandic-culture/movies-theatre/2019/06/07/sickening-silence-hildur-gudnadottirs-chernobyl-soundscape-brings-radioactivity-to-life/

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.

DSC00513-2.jpg


Sound Design Inspiration #13

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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!

INTERVIEW

Came across this insightful article from the Wall Street Journal, an interview with Qianbaihui Yang, a Sound Editor at Skywalker Sound. Interesting to hear about her journey through the different roles of Film Sound and the exciting world of recordings, creating and editing Sound for film. Check it out here

Photo: Cayce Clifford for The Wall Street Journal

Photo: Cayce Clifford for The Wall Street Journal

Sound Design Inspiration #11

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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

Sound Design Inspiration #6

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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...