When we start talking about sound design most people will automatically think about it in relation to action or sci-fi films; maybe horror or animation. Occasionally, you'll find people talking about the use of sound in a drama...frequently in those cases, the idea of employing hyper reality. It's a far more rare occasion to find people talking about the use of sound in … [Read more...]
Synthesis!
As you may have already realized based on yesterday's article post, we've turned over to this month's theme...Synthesis! We have more tools than ever that fall under this heading, and there's been a huge resurgence in modular systems recently. We're not going to focus exclusively on modular, but I chose that image because of how our friend Ivo Ivanov of Glitch Machines has … [Read more...]
A Space
The world we inhabit is ever shifting. People and animals are constantly on the move. Water laps against wood or crashes against a sandy beach. If considered from a somewhat solipsistic approach the buildings, trees and mountains around us even shift in position. With all of those positional changes comes a new sonic interaction. The squirrel's chitter no is no longer to our … [Read more...]
All Ears!
We have two words that are most commonly used to discuss how we interact with sound: hearing, and listening. Hearing is a passive act. Pressure waves move our eardrums, the motion is converted to an electrical signal, and our brain tells us that there is a sonic phenomenon in the space around us...perhaps it even provides us with identifying information. It's what comes … [Read more...]
All those things that get us around…
I held off on the announce post for a few days, because we had a few articles that spilled over from last month's theme. Now that we're caught up, it's time to dive into this month's theme...Vehicles! Do we really need more of an introduction than that? My guess is no. And sure, there's a rail car at a drag race in the image above, but we're not single-minded. There are … [Read more...]
A Moment (Month) of Silence
Anechoic chambers aren't necessarily "silent," but what other image can you actually use to represent the subject. The nature of silence, like nearly every other aspect of sound, is truly a subjective idea, because true Silence...the complete absence of sound...is impossible to experience unless one has a medical condition which induces it. [If you want to get solipsistic, we … [Read more...]
The World in Three Dimensions…
There was a time when people argued that theatrical (even home) sound has long been three dimensional. Maybe there are still some that make that claim. With the rise of binaural audio, Dolby Atmos and Auro 3D, sound actually is entering the third dimension. This is just a small semantic argument. Surround sound, in its traditional 5.1 and 7.1 formats, wasn't technically three … [Read more...]