Beautiful lies of Sound Design

Today I was listening to ‘The Game Music’ Podcast, an American composer called ‘Disasterpeace’ (Richard Vreeland) discussed his music and how he entered into the gaming world. Disasterpeace started off by experimenting with different sounds and loops, and that got me thinking that the sound world is all about experimenting and discovering. For example, Disasterpeace looped pieces from popular songs and created something of his own. He also experimented with different Garage Band and Logic Pro loops and instruments by changing the pitch, tempo, timbre etc until he reached something new.

There are a lot of ways to manipulate sounds. Nowadays technology allows you to record a simple sound and turn it to something completely different. In one of my Postgraduate lecture’s, myself and my coursemates were shown a video where ‘Tasos Fratzolas’ (owner and CEO of ‘Soundsnap.com’) described how he needed a submarine sound and he created it by recording someone jump into a pool. They manipulated the sound by time-stretching and pitch shifting the original sound file and eventually it sounded like a submarine.

Below is a very interesting video to watch especially for people who don’t know anything about film or game audio because it shows what’s actually happening behind the making of sound effects.

As strange as it seems, a sound designer’s job is to make the audience unaware of the sounds going on in the background and make the sounds as natural and realistic as possible, that’s how you know a sound designer has done their job well. Whilst it seems like an easy job, the amount of hard work and detail that goes into one specific sound can be so precise and this process is repeated over and over again.

The video above is another great example of how sound is designed for films, it really is surprising what goes on behind closed doors.

In my next blog, I will talk about my own experiences with sound design and the Postgraduate assignments that have helped me understand what sound design really is.

TEDX TALKS (2016) The Beautiful Lies of Sound Design | Tasos Fratzolas | TEDxAthens {online video} accessible by https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDy5j0c6TrU (accessed on 30th November 2019)

Sources: GREAT BIG STORY (2017) The Magic of Making Sound {online video} accessible by: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UO3N_PRIgX0 (accessed on 30th November)