We’ve covered a lot of material about sound design in this book. We’ve learned a variety of listening practices and have begun to train our ears. Begun, you ask? Yes, just begun! After two decades, I still feel as if I’ve only just begun. The deeper I dig into sound design, the more layers I uncover. For each chapter in this book, I’ve really only scratched the surface of what is possible. I encourage you to seek out additional resources and dig deeper yourself, and to keep practicing.
We started out by learning how to listen. This is a lifelong practice that gets easier over time. As I mentioned, though, it comes with a particular affliction: once we’ve learned to turn our ears on, it’s very hard to turn them off, and we have to learn to live life with a sensitivity to sound in a very noisy world.
We learned about the acoustic properties of sound, how to describe and edit these properties, and how sound-processing effects can mimic some of these properties. We also learned the basics of recording and mixing, but there’s an awful lot we didn’t cover when it comes to different types of recording, and various practices from field recording, studio, film, games, Foley, and music recording. You’ll develop your own preferences and practices over time, but I encourage you to record as much as you can, listen to those recordings with fresh ears the following day, and always continue to take notes in your journal.
We began to explore the creative uses of sound, and this, too, is something that you will develop further over time and through practice. Every project has its own needs and you may find yourself spending days or even weeks just looking for that perfect sound for a character. You’ll also find you may pick up another habit, one that others find particularly annoying—banging, squeezing, and touching everything you encounter to hear its properties. I used to carry chopsticks or a pen around with me so I could tap various surfaces and listen to the sounds they made. I no longer do this, but I do pick up, shake, tap, and touch just about everything that is new to me and make a mental note of these objects. New spaces offer some really exciting experiences, and many places on the planet are worth exploring for their acoustic properties alone.
We didn’t cover a lot of material about the context of sound design, other than with storytelling. I mentioned that most sound design books are about sound for image, and certainly that’s one important context. You’ll find that when you put sound design to image, some of the aspects of sound are perceptually altered, and what worked great on its own no longer works with image. There are many books out there about sound and image, and most sound designers work to image, so it’s important to also develop that skill. Even before we get to image, the overall sound composition, or soundscape, changes the context of sounds, as you’ve probably witnessed in some of your compositions. As Walter Murch put it, “The chemistry of soundscapes is mysterious and not easy to predict in advance” (quoted in Ondaatje 2002, 245).
The soundscape is of less concern to product sound designers, although complex products require careful consideration, as does how the product will mix with existing environmental sounds: we have a vibrate function on our cell phones, for instance, because sometimes a ringtone is inappropriate. Some products are built to mask other sounds—white noise generators, for instance, are often used by people sensitive to environmental sounds when they sleep, or to mask conversations in a busy office. Other sounds (a smoke alarm, for instance) we need to hear over all existing environmental sounds. In other words, the selected sounds all affect and are affected by their context, and sound designers must make selections in terms of the acoustic effects of the sounds (to cut above masking, to avoid certain frequency ranges, and so on), but also in terms of the mix—what is emphasized, and what is removed.
Other contexts also must be taken into consideration. The location of listening and the playback technologies also influence design choices. A movie played in a full surround-sound theater will sound very different from one viewed on an iPad with headphones (or, worse, using the iPad speakers). With podcasts and radio dramas, we can assume that many listeners will be listening on portable devices and potentially competing with many external noises—the train the listener is on, the buzz of other people on machines at the gym, the hum of the car’s wheels, and so on.
There are also the wider contexts of genre, style, and brand. Increasingly, branding affects the sound design for products of all kinds. Sound designers must understand the semiotics of the sounds that they create, which is to say, what the sound is communicating in terms of the brand. Mercedes, for instance, introduced the visual Mercedes Benz logo, created by Gottlieb Daimler, in 1909, but it was not until 2007 that they introduced their sonic logo. As part of a larger brand redesign, the acoustic trademark, according to Dr. Olaf Göttgens, Vice President of Brand Communications for Mercedes-Benz Cars, is “going to make the Mercedes-Benz brand not only visually, but also acoustically distinctive, and thus more quickly recognizable. This acoustic trademark is a perfect fit for Mercedes-Benz—it is emotional, elegant, and unmistakably associated with our brand” (Mercedes 2007).
We also didn’t cover the process of developing sound design as part of a team. Whether we’re doing a radio play or podcast, a theater production, a film, a game, or a product design, we’re likely going to have to work with others on the project. Communication is a key skill that plays an important role in design. There will be times when we have to advocate for sound, because others won’t immediately see its value. At other times we’ll have to understand that the music may need to take precedence in the mix, and we must cede control of key sounds that we’ve spent a lot of time creating. There may be times when we are given complete autonomy, but more likely others will bring their own visions to the table and they may conflict with our own. We may have to work on projects that don’t seem immediately interesting for sound, and we may have to find our own way into the material to create that interest. We may spend all our time creating a masterful mix of beautiful sonic wonder, only to find it has to be compressed down to a small size and sounds (to our trained ears) terrible in the final product.
These are just a few parameters of sound design that we didn’t cover in this book—or just touched on. You’ll find more as you progress in your journey.
Exercise 10.1 Extra Credit 1: Sound Design on a Time Budget
You have forty-eight hours. You have to design the sound for a nonfiction radio program about Three Mile Island. You haven’t been given any other direction, script, or recordings to support the design. Gather the sounds and music you might need, and create some ambiences.
Exercise 10.2 Extra Credit 2: Sound Design Pitch
You have twenty-four hours to prepare to pitch a sound design for a historical dramatization about the American civil war. Bring together everything you’ve learned to describe how you would approach the project. Remember to describe it in a way that really sells your ideas about the project.
The journey into understanding and using sound in design practice is not something that can be taught effectively in a few months. By keeping a journal, though, and reflecting back on how far you’ve come, you will realize how much you’ve learned. You can repeat many of these exercises multiple times as you train your ears, and compare them to earlier versions you created. I encourage you to continue writing in your journal and keep a notepad handy for reflecting on your practice. Not only will you see how far you’ve come, you’ll think of things to share and ways to help teach the next generation of sound designers.
Exercise 10.3 Reflection
Reread your journal from start to finish. What have you learned since you began? Make a list of all of the things you learned. How has your position as a listener changed through repeated listening practice? Repeat some of the earlier exercises now that you’ve trained your ears. What are the differences you hear now in your progress?
Exercise 10.4 Kill Your Darlings
The writer William Faulkner once gave the advice to “kill your darlings.” The advice refers to the overuse of something that becomes your cherished darling. It might be an effect that you think makes your sound stand out from others. It might be a particular approach you’ve taken and repeated multiple times in the exercises. You may not have been able to get the distance you need to reflect on what your darlings are, so you may need to seek out the advice of someone else in sound design. Go back through what you’ve done and kill off a darling or two, and then repeat the exercise without those crutches.
Exercise 10.5 Simplify, Simplify
A common mistake in all design practice when someone starts out is to get too complex, to show off the skills you’ve learned. How many times have we heard someone say of a seemingly simple design, “I could have done that”? When we don’t understand that sometimes the simplest designs can take the longest, it’s easy to dismiss a design as “easy.” I can remember thinking that of Ducati motorcycles’ logo change in 2008: it became a simple circle with a line through it. Who couldn’t design that in five minutes with a computer? It’s deceptively simple, but the more you think about it, the more complex you realize it is in its simplicity. Take one of your sound designs and make it deceptively simple. How long does it take to get the same idea across with less? Probably a lot longer than you thought! Simplification is a sign of mastery.
Fortunately, many wonderful resources are available today for learning about how others approach their sound design practice. As a final project, why not start a resource yourself? Create a podcast about sound design, or teach others to use the tools you’ve learned now.