sound effects

Sound Design Inspiration #21

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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 #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.

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Sound Design Inspiration #12

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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/

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.

SOUND DESIGN

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

SOUND EFFECTS

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

London Marathon 2016 Recording

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Last weekend was the London Marathon 2016. My girlfriend's brother ran and managed a time of 3:25:13. Awesome achievement. 

In the moments when we weren't wandering around London trying to catch him, I managed to get a few short recordings.

I took the oppurtunity to take out my little portable stealth kit to see how well it performed. It consists of a Sound Devices 702 in a camera bag with two DPA4061's with mini rycote windshields strapped to either side of the bag. 

Drums fuel of the atmosphere around Canary Wharf, I spent some time underneath a bridge where 2 taiko players were living.

After clambering up a railing I got a recording from slightly above the action, people with plastic hand clappers,  horns in the distance, and the ever present drummers.

I think the setup performerd pretty well all told, there are some big pros and cons of it for sure.

Pro: It doesn't attract attention. Which leads to a more natural performance and causes less interruptions from interested passers by. 

Con: positioning, It's difficult to be consistent with the mic positions, as there is a bag in the 30cm gap between the two mics, it's also not very natural sounding stereo image. 

Next time around I might test out a different method of strapping the mics to the bag with a bit more precision and maybe some sort of stereo spacing bar involved in the bag to help.