This is a guest contribution by Karen Collins. Karen is the Canada Research Chair in Interactive Audio at the Games Institute, University of Waterloo, Canada, and the director of Beep: A Documentary History of Game Sound. She’s been researching game audio for the past fifteen years, and in the process, published four books and nearly 100 research papers on sound. As Albert … [Read more...]
Top 5 Tips for Learning to Listen
Guest Contribution by Karen Collins Listening is the most important skill a sound designer has, and yet, it’s probably the one that’s the most ephemeral and difficult to nail down. What is listening? Are we born with this skill, or is it something that we can learn? Listening is the process that takes the information that we hear and makes meaning from that sound. To listen … [Read more...]
Review: Game Audio Culture by Rob Bridgett
Review by Karen Collins “Game Audio Culture” isn’t a book, so much as a manifesto. Dragging sound design (perhaps somewhat reluctantly) from out of the darkened underground studios and out into the open, Bridgett proposes that it’s time that sound designers started to be more collaborative with the rest of the game team. Bridgett boldly states that we’re in a “post-sound … [Read more...]
Auditory Perspective: Putting The Audience In The Scene
By Karen Collins Adapted from a forthcoming article in Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal An often overlooked aspect of sound design is the use of sound to create a sense of identification for the audience. Just as with using point-of-view with camera angles, sound can be used to create an auditory position for the listener/audience, putting … [Read more...]
Please Thank our March Contributors
March was kind of a banner month for us wasn't it?! There was a lot of enthusiasm about exploring the intersection of sound design and music. So please check out all of the excellent contributions from the community, and leave a comment to thank those people who donated their time to the subject. Karen Collins - who kicked the month off by taking us straight into the gray … [Read more...]
Sonic Centaurs: An Exploration of the Common Grounds Between Music and Sound Design
Guest Contribution by Carlos Alberto Manrique Clavijo "The vocation of the sound film is to redeem us from the chaos of shapeless noise by accepting it as expression, as significance, as meaning. . . ."[0A] "(…) When does sound become music? Above all, in the supreme states of pleasure and displeasure experienced by the will, as a will which rejoices or a will … [Read more...]
Sound Design and Music: Diluting the Distinctions, Strengthening the Art Form
Guest Contribution by Doron Reizes Traditionally, the concepts of music composition and sound design have been viewed as distinctly separate creative audio disciplines. Karen Collins points out in her article, “The Sound of Music, or the Music of Sound?” that, "What is often referred to as “non-musical sound”, or sound effects (including percussion) wasn’t used in Western … [Read more...]