The UK Music+Sound Awards took place last night in London, recognizing outstanding work in music and sound design across all the visual media industries. The awards include entries from computer games, feature and short films, television and cinema commercials, non-broadcast or viral advertising, branding and title sequence and television programmes. The 2014 UK Music + … [Read more...]
The making of Geosonics by Soniccouture
Chris Watson is probably the world's most famous field recordist. Without a doubt he has more recordings of animal sounds than we could listen to in a lifetime, However, we're straying slightly off of animal recordings and into Watson's collection of natural sounds – and how they ended up as one of the most unique and exciting sampled instruments: Geosonics by Soniccouture. … [Read more...]
Interview: David Hendy, author of “Noise: A Human History”
David Hendy is part media historian, part writer/broadcaster, and completely passionate about sound. Most recently, he created the excellent 30-part radio series on BBC Radio 4 Noise: A Human History, also available as a book under it's slightly longer title Noise: A Human History of Sound and Listening. While most sound designers preoccupy themselves with the quality of the … [Read more...]
Review: Rob Papen’s The 4 Element Synth
Let me just start by making one thing perfectly clear: I have never been a synth head, mostly because I’ve always found that designing with recorded audio is much more immediately satisfying. Rob Papen’s The 4 Element Synth might change that. I have taken courses, read magazines, looked up tutorials online and otherwise tried very hard to wrap my head around synthesizing my … [Read more...]
Nathan Johnson on creating a sound-based score for Looper
I caught up with Looper's composer Nathan Johnson to talk about the dynamics between his sound-based score, the sound design of the film and between himself and director Rian Johnson. What follows is part of the transcription of our Skype conversation. Can you talk about the dynamics between your sound-intensive soundtrack and the sound design of the film? For any movie, I … [Read more...]
Scanner on Sound and Music
Scanner, aka Robin Rimbaud, is a British artist, composer and sound designer whose works include film scores, installation sound, product sound design and of course, electronic music. Just last month he presented the Keynote address at the 49th AES Audio for Games Conference. As thoughtful as he is thought-provoking, I sat down with him in his East London studio to chat about … [Read more...]
All Fun and Game Audio
I've written a new article for PSNEurope that attempts to explain just how big the game audio world really is. I probably could've filled another 2,000 words... Today’s game audio has come a long way from the simple beeps and boops of Pong and other early video games. It wasn’t until 1978 when Taito released Space Invaders that music became more than just an accompaniment to … [Read more...]