Week 3
It’s been a busy week.
I’m enjoying the class discussions. I’m getting used to writing more notes and actually remembering what was discussed, and generally leave each class feeling inspired. I do worry that I talk too much and go off on tangents though..
This week has been a continuation of the psychological concepts discussed in the previous weeks, with some interesting thoughts about engagement and emotion, and how certain devices can be used to enhance both. I was particularly intrigued by the idea of removal of an element for emotional impact, with an example being a machine hum suddenly becoming silenced; the viewer will be more likely to notice its removal than its presence. I actually noticed this last night as I watched No Country For Old Men—several scenes rely on the sound cutting to almost silence for additional impact / tension.
Another interesting concept discussed was the use of perceptual devices, notably how sound designers deal with shifts in perspective. It’s something I think about a lot, especially when watching videos such as those in the “musicless music video” style.
On a similar note, I was reminded of this the other day; it was particularly relevant/hilarious as I was working on AT2.1 at the time:
Perhaps a mid-semester/mid-year break project could be to re-score a pop video clip with ridiculous IDM or something.
The Sound Design specialty is also proving quite relevant to the Audio Vision studios. Not only am I slowly getting used to Pro Tools, but I’m discovering techniques I’d previously not explored, in particular the “palette/canvas” approach of separate recording and editing sessions—record a long session of just messing around on an instrument and then cut little bits out to edit into a layered composition later. I’ve done it twice this week and it’s worked out really well. I’m definitely keen to explore this method more in the future. As I mentioned in my writeup for AT2.1, it has the benefit of also being scalable, so if I’m working with someone who isn’t finished editing yet, or if the project is an interactive one with non-fixed cue points, the audio has room for adjustment. It’s quite different to my previous method of just linearly editing jams into songs.
Speaking of AT2.1, that was a lot more fun than AT1, from an editing perspective. As I wasn’t trying to use Redux to track out micro percussion along to the video, it ended up being a lot more of a “design” process and allowed for more fluid motion in the sound.
The source material mostly came from processing some old unfinished pieces through Emission Control 2, a free granular sound processor based on Curtis Roads’ original OS9 software. I’d found out about it from an interview with Richard Devine on Mr. Bill’s podcast:
Sadly, I think my iMac’s graphics card is on its way out, as it crashed quite spectacularly mid-edit (luckily I’d saved!), with warning signs being some screen glitches before it crashes—something that has happened twice before when streaming. Definitely need to look into that.
Research for the week includes actually reading the Mark Fell article I linked in the previous post, which informed the techniques I used in AT2.1 (and has some parallels with what was discussed in class on Friday). It’s also very relevant to the “gardens” idea from last post—slow-moving, or static, sound that acts as a sonic world rather than a narrative. I’m even more compelled to write a non-moving techno album now.
Another interesting point of research has been looking more into shape-sound correlations in terms of synaesthesia, after realising I’d been instinctually associating certain shapes or textures with sounds in AT2.1. I am definitely interested in exploring this phenomenon (and other synaesthetic relationships) in my future work, even to the point of doing the opposite of what my particular “brand” of synaesthesia tells me.
I’ve been trying to get into the habit of watching more films, because I notoriously haven’t watched many at all (my response to people saying “I can’t believe you haven’t seen *film*!” is always “I can’t believe you haven’t heard *prog concept album*!”). This week, along with the aforementioned No Country For Old Men, I watched the following:
Atomic Blonde – I feel like my impression of this film could have been improved greatly if it had a different title. I wasn’t into it, story-wise, but the cinematography and sound design/music was pretty amazing, and almost arty, considering how mainstream it is. I was surprised to hear a Ministry song used in a scene.. one that wasn’t Jesus Built My Hot Rod, at that.
Sound of Metal – My girlfriend brought this up as it’s apparently a pick to win an Oscar for best sound this year. And rightly so—the sound design is so on-point and is incredibly immersive. Disturbingly, in fact, because as someone who definitely suffered an amount of hearing loss from that one Sunn O))) gig without earplugs in 2007, it made me aware of a horrible reality that awaits if I don’t continue to wear hearing protection at loud gigs. There’s a brief, but interesting article here about the process of designing sound for the film (also note to self: listen to that podcast).