Is there a good resource for sound design/production

[mr_nabo]

Hi,

I've been told by an agency I'm trying to get work through that I am more a 'traditional composer' rather than 'sound designer/producer'.

When I asked what they meant exactly, they said that my compositions were far more based on conventional music theory using standard instruments rather than using sound design and production techniques to make things more interesting/unusual/stand out.

Obviously my music isn't cutting the cheese very much for these guys, and I want to learn how to blow them away with some interesting work.

I understand that a lot comes from practising and experimenting with the tools you have at hand, but is there a resource (online or offline) that documents how to create common effects heard in films/songs/adverts and incorporate them into a composition?

I need something as a starting point from which I can start to develop my own ideas. Anyone point me to something?

Thanks

[jarok]

Hi

Tweakheadz Lab's guide:

http://www.tweakheadz.com/guide.htm

jarok

[mr_nabo]

Thanks for that Jarok, I'll definitely read through the advice there. I get the impression that it's all about experimenting judgin by this line:

Rule number one. There are no rules. The coolest sounds come from a relentless drive to experiment. Use any device in you studio to create your effects. Go WILD. That's how you come up with great stuff. Newbies, Try this: So what happens when you run your vocal through a guitar distortion pedal then through the audio input of your electribe and tweak the filter? Go try it

[stephentayler]

Obviously my music isn't cutting the cheese very much for these guys, and I want to learn how to blow them away with some interesting work.

Perhaps you mean mustard? Cutting the cheese implies something else!!

kind regards

Stephen

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Hi,

I've been told by an agency I'm trying to get work through that I am more a 'traditional composer' rather than 'sound designer/producer'.

When I asked what they meant exactly, they said that my compositions were far more based on conventional music theory using standard instruments rather than using sound design and production techniques to make things more interesting/unusual/stand out.

Obviously my music isn't cutting the cheese very much for these guys, and I want to learn how to blow them away with some interesting work.

I understand that a lot comes from practising and experimenting with the tools you have at hand, but is there a resource (online or offline) that documents how to create common effects heard in films/songs/adverts and incorporate them into a composition?

I need something as a starting point from which I can start to develop my own ideas. Anyone point me to something?

Thanks

This made me laugh. I get the exact opposite sometimes, with questions like: Are you a composer or a sound designer? And while I do cut the mustard (and the cheese... ) for many clients, there is a contingent that wants a composer to be a composer and a sound designer to be a sound designer.

Suggestions. I wish I had some. Maybe we should trade clients who expect something else from us?

[mr_nabo]

Hi MIDI Life Crisis (great name by the way),

Good to hear you cut cheese as well, only the best of us do. It sounds like it would be a good learning experience to hear some of your work considering you please your clients regularly (not that I don't either, but would like to improve either way). Is there somewhere I can go to hear your music?

I think you're right that a lot of producers/directors/creatives confuse sound design and 'traditional' composition. Musicians often create their music using 'sound design' tools that would normally be thought of as sound effects only.

I remember a song by a guy I think was called Timber-something or other that used only the sounds of a forest to make some music. I wonder what category they'd put him in?

[David Polich]

A helpful thing to do is to check out some websites of well-known sound designers. Two of my favorites are Richard Devine and BT.

http://www.richard-devine.com
http://www.btmusic.com

A great source of inspiration and sounds is Native Instruments Reaktor 5.
If I were to recommend only one "sound design" app to take to a desert island, it would be Reaktor 5. It's loaded with dozens of cool synths, samplers, rhythm machines and effects units. You can use the sounds as starting off points to create your own sonic landscapes.

http://www.native-instruments.com

Finally, some of the best example of soundtracks that combine innovative sound design with electronic music are the CSI shows, especially "CSI" (the original) and "CSI:New York".

I think what you are talking about is music that marries electronica with creative sound design. Strictly speaking, "sound design" for motion pictures and televison is related more to the art of what was originally termed "sound effects" (spaceships, lasers, guns, aircraft, machinery, explosions, doors, objects dropped, footsteps, etc.). Motion picture and television soundtracks now call for a much more expanded role for sound designers, who can be engaged in such esoteric tasks as creating the sounds associated with the compass in "the Golden Compass". The sound designers for that movie actually had to create sounds that were unique to the compass itself and gave it multiple but connected identities. They employed things like samples of Tibetan singing bowls, dropped objects, and pitch-shifting plug-ins, among other things, to create the compass's own "sound". Furthermore, the sound itself had different personalities, such as when it showed the user bright prospects, and when it showed the user a dark forecast.

Another example of creative sound design for motion pictures is the sound of spaceships taking off in "Chronicles of Riddick". The sound designer for that film is also a guitar player and he created the sounds by first tuning the strings on his guitar so low that they hung loosely off the neck - then
he "strummed" and recorded the results, and ran the audio through pitch-shifting and granular synth plug-ins.

To get started in sound design oriented production, an immersion in existing examples of it is a great help. Just like when you want to write a good blues tune, it helps to listen to some blues artists to get into the proper"vibe".

[mr_nabo]

David, some nice advice in that post, thanks.

I'll have a look at some sound designers (David Lynch is great I think, makes you feel amazingly unsettled at times), and I should really start experimenting like you say tha sound designer did with 'Chronicles of Riddick'.

I've been looking into buying the Komplete package as it seems like a good way of getting all the NI instruments that I'm interested in.

Thanks for your advice.

[philbrown]

A great source of inspiration and sounds is Native Instruments Reaktor 5.
If I were to recommend only one "sound design" app to take to a desert island, it would be Reaktor 5. It's loaded with dozens of cool synths, samplers, rhythm machines and effects units. You can use the sounds as starting off points to create your own sonic landscapes.

http://www.native-instruments.com

Couldn't agree more. If you can't get creative and make new noises with Reaktor it ain't gonna happen!
There's a large user base that uploads new ensembles and instruments for it every day so it never stagnates - there are hundreds of them available for download. You don't have to get under the hood and program Reaktor itself (although you can- but it's DEEP). Just take existing instruments and do a little tweaking and you'll be off and running. I say experiment, have fun and stay loose and playful with it.
I love Reaktor!!

I also like to back up and get away from "parts" and "chord changes" and view it more visually like: "I want to make this sound like fireworks with a low submarine rumble underneath". Try using DP's arpeggiators on a plinky synth sound and run that through a ping-pong delay - for a "cascade of sound" where you normally might put a pad or strings, etc.

You can also get out pots and pans and sawblades - whatever - bang on them and record them and mangle with whatever plugs you have available and use as alternatives to standard drum sounds. A lot of it is just thinking experimentally IMO.

Have fun!

Phil

[blink]

Here's a hint or a concept that works well for me. Step away from presets & any software or hardware that limits you to presets. This is what has made Mach 5 great and all the versions of Reaktor. If you can get a device (tape recorder, voice recorder, dat recorder, md recorder, flash recorder etc.) use this to document your life whenever you can. Chop up these recordings and effect them until they are barely recognizable.Sometimes you dont even have to do much to them.
This process takes awhile to master but the knowledge you will gain about the nature of sound will put an edge to your music. You will start to know what makes instruments sound the way they do and how to tweek that. Sometimes the sounds you create will sound more like a real physical instrument sound than a preset because you are creating it the way you hear it. In addition, if you dont want a specific type of instrument sound and you want to blow peoples concepts of music & sound (autechre, richard devine, aphex twin) this is the way to go. Make a library of sounds and put your composing skills into the mix you'll be making the cheese and they'll be cuttin it.
I started with mach 5, Dp4 & Fm7.so, I would say if you have a soft sampler start with that. If you start to feel like you like designing your own sounds & you want to go deeper. The most open ended creative environment for sound design is max/msp by cycling '74 (autechhre& jamie lidel use this) . This has been the standard for almost 20 years & the next upgrade will be with an ableton live style GUI. With max/msp you can create everything from scratch(samplers,sequencers,sounds,vsts, patches, effects, anything). Its a visual programing language similar to reaktor. PD (pure data) is almost the same program made by the same creator of max/msp, plus its free. If you want to get really hardcore there is supercollider which is a programing language, that is crazy difficult, but if you can pick up programing languages pretty easily try it. Supercollider is free as well (an excellent artist named Cylob uses it). I have been wrestling with it for years and i am still baffled but some people love it & make masterpeices with it. I personally find max/msp, mach 5, dp4, motu ultralite, novation remote sL & a rotating cast external recording equipment to be my set up of choice. thats all i know. good luck

[blink]

damn i forgot about 2 other great programs that I use allot, Metasynth & Sound Hack.
Metasyth is barely ever talked about. I think because it is only a standalone soft synth. With it you can take images and translate them into sounds and/or into filters. You get a photoshopish palette of tools to apply to an imported image or you can make your own image with in the program. As well it has a ton of killer effects and filters besides the image based ones. This program is not only fun but it creates the most unique sounds, incredible sounds. It import/exports SDII files and Aiff. You can also import/export .pic files.
Sound Hack ( www.soundhack.com ) is a data bending or spectral processing program. If you don't know what that means think circuit bending then turn the casios into files and wha la I'll explain, import any file (sound file or non) you can think of it will take & turn into sound. For instance import a .pdf & the program will see it as the bianary code that it is & translate it into an .aiff file. This will sound like static (like a modem barfing). You then have all sorts of effects (spectral, pitch, mutations, time stretching) which enable you to pick apart the static at which point the results can range from jarring to beautiful to strange & everything in between. In addition, you can import a sound file if you wish & the program will play it the way you intended it to sound & you can use it to modulate another sound or data file. One think you have to realize is it stores every sound every step of the way so its a good way to fill a HD. This program is free and fun if not addictive. so , try it, but dont kill your hard drive.
also for max/msp: www.cycling74.com & PD: www.puredata.org

[zarmattathustra]

hmm, I think I have a take on this, but I'm sure its not one that's.. well I don't know what value it might be to you, so I hope you can tolerate my strangeness....

My all time favorite sound design guy is Walter Murch: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Murch

He did the sound work on THX1138 (yes, that's where THX 5.1 comes from) American graphite, and apocalypse now. The stuff he did on THX has a lot to do with the sound design for star wars. I recommend renting those movies and checking out the extras.

I don't have much of a traditional theory background, or at least not a conventional theory background. But I am kind of hip to experimentalists whom... are arguably some of the pioneers to sound design... or at least they are in my mind. People like John Cage, Xenokis, umm.. Avant Guard folks. The idea of music concrete..

Playing around with some of these ideas.. I find myself using digital instruments to emulate sound effects, I find myself thinking about ambient space, using field recordings and collage as compositional elements.. searching through a kind of figure ground ambiguity between the experience of "sound" versus the experience of "music" and how I can get you to see music as sound and sound as music, or maybe I should substitute noise for sound in that statement?

Not that any of this really helps... but maybe exploring some of these kinds of ideas might be a good starting place.

Here's a little video with Cage talking about his work: http://youtube.com/watch?v=2aYT1Pwp30M Some people say he's the most important composer since Beethoven. If you see Cage's place in our musical transition as coming, in some sense, out of traditional classical, then you can see how this sorta thing could come out of what you're doing..

Here's an amusing clip with cage: http://youtube.com/watch?v=SSulycqZH-U

Here's a clip of Walter Murch talking about the sound design work he did for THX http://youtube.com/watch?v=_py6jVyOqUY

I don't know where you are in knowledge or skills, but here we are getting into something like "traditional - esk music production, and it's applications for sound design." So I imagine that developing these kinds of skill sets and integrating them into your compositional process, is probably something to look at.

Finally, I agree with the folks recommending Reaktor. Max/MSP ( http://www.cycling74.com/products/maxmsp ) is a good choice to. These are great tools for taking one sound and really FUBAR-ing them into something else again. I think along with this, you might want to start exploring a little sound synthesis..

So where I come at it is.. I think of Cage's stuff as "transfiguration of the the common place" which is a kind of idea in aesthetics surrounding some of the work from that period.. wether we are talking about Cage, Duchamp, Warhol, or others.. its a way, among other things, of showing the common place in a new light.

In a way this speaks to nature / reality as it is: Cage talking about music that doesn't sound like a conversation.. his work often having to do with indeterminacy, meaning that the outcomes were not know.. his compositions being something like a strategy for a result. In my mind all this is sort of one box of toys and ideas.

In another box is something like "composing." Composing having to do with "organizing sounds." In here we might have traditional music theory, or we might just as well think of composition as playing with legos, where we put the lego's together in any way that fits our fancy.... this facilitating more avant guard ideas... but a full spectrum between this and more traditional ideas.

Then there's this other box called "music production" which is like.. skills of a mix engineer, perhaps a recording engineer, perhaps sound synthesis, though I don't know if the latter fits into this box.

So you go to composing, and you just take things out of these different toy chests and apply them together in whatever way strikes your fancy. I guess this is my idea of sound design.

Though sound design is often about creating an atmosphere, or certain kinds of sonic textures... perhaps ones that work a certain way in the context of a film.

There's a whole art form for making sound effects. How do you make the sound of a gun shot? The Sound of Fire? Throw that in there to..

Well that's, more or less, how I come at it anyway. Hope that helps somehow.