Sonic Art & Sound Design- P18 pps

QC Preflight Point 1st 3 3 p85 Job no : 76098 Title : The Fundamentals Of Sonic Art Client : AVA Scn : #150 Size : 200w230hmm Co : M3 C0 All To SpotCoagl 1st p85 1st p85 Summary As we ha

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p85 Job no : 76098 Title : The Fundamentals Of Sonic Art Client : AVA

Scn : #150 Size : 200(w)230(h)mm Co : M3 C0 (All To Spot)(Coagl)

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Summary

As we have seen, the technologies and

working practices of the conventional

recording studio can appear, superficially,

to be very close to those of sonic art and

sound design This proximity is, however,

somewhat of an illusion Certainly, some

of the same equipment is used but the

critical difference is how we answer the

question of what informs its use The

recording process as it applies to

conventional music is a well-established

pathway of practices that leads to a

consistent series of outcomes The use of

studio technologies in the creation of

sound art is quite different: Brian Eno has

observed that he finds it perfectly

acceptable to enter the studio with

absolutely no ideas in his head and simply

to let himself be driven to work in

particular ways and with particular

process in response to what he hears This

is perhaps an extreme difference and most

sonic arts studio practice lies somewhere

between the two poles The interesting

difference is the focus upon the qualities

of sounds in their own right without there

being any inevitable reference to their

‘musical’ context We should, however, be careful in making unduly clear-cut distinctions In his book Audible Design, Trevor Wishart refers to what he calls

‘sound composition’ as a practice that partakes of both the experimentalism of sonic art and of the conventions of musical composition and this may form a basis upon which we are able to re-visit the practices of recording as we have known them hitherto

Horn’s 1968 recording of improvised flute playing under the dome of the Taj Mahal Not only does the feedback that Horn receives from the acoustics

of this space impact upon his playing but the personal and cultural significance of the Taj Mahal also colours our response to what we hear.

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STUDIO OR LABORATORY?

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Job no : 76098 Title : The Fundamentals Of Sonic Art Client : AVA

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PROCESS AND PRACTICE

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Introduction

Here we look at some of the many

ways in which we can create sound

but, perhaps more importantly, how we

can use sound as a means for the

communication of ideas This is an

important issue for all areas of sonic

arts practice, although the need to

transmit detailed information is

relatively more common in

radiophonics or film sound design

than in such areas as electroacoustic

composition where process and/or

overall impression are perhaps more

important.

When we use sound to communicate

information or to represent something

descriptively we need to pay particular

attention to the expectations of the

audience: these are, in part,

conditioned by exposure to media and

hence they may have quite specific

expectations They will often have no

direct experience of what something

actually sounds like but nonetheless

have highly developed expectations of

what it should sound like Our problem

is to decide how highly we value

authenticity and to what extent we are

prepared to be pragmatic and give the

‘public’ what it wants.

Analysis and synthesis

It is possible to use a wide variety of sources and processes in the creation

of a composite sound In order to do this effectively, we first need to adopt an analytical approach: to consider what the actual components of our sound are For example, if an old aeroplane has four engines, everything needs to be four layers deep, each at a slightly different timing and pitch The engines make a noise in their own right but much of the noise is made by propellers stirring the air – so

we need to give the sense of air in violent motion – and a general background rumble All this implies quite a number of components to create a composite sound

This is typical of the approach of the sound designer: a willingness to analyse what the components of the sound might

be and then to find ways of acquiring them We can make field recordings of actual environments and particular sounds, we can process and transform them through studio technologies, we can articulate sounds by means of each other and we can create new sounds from scratch by means of synthesis

Increasingly, we can combine any or all

of these methods but these tools are only useful if applied intelligently and

purposefully and this in turn requires the initial analysis and also perhaps a degree

of lateral thought

As we have seen, an important part of any such process is ensuring that the sounds

we create are presented in the right context My imaginary plane could not sensibly exist in a studio, so the basic recordings need to be bedded in a soundscape of noises that suggest the background bustle of an airfield, thus placing the main sound elements in a context that enhances their credibility The question always has to be, ‘if I were really there, what exactly would I be hearing?’ New systems have dramatically improved the art of location recording These can often be connected directly to a computer and the recordings then appear as sound files that can be imported into editing and assembly programmes such as Audacity or Digidesign®ProTools® This is a quick, direct and simple process for acquiring real-world sounds and the all-important background environments that will help to make designed sounds believable

Sometimes, real-world recordings need a little modification to help them fit their

Designing and Creating Sounds

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DESIGNING AND CREATING SOUNDS

Left: Audacity

A useful shareware sound editing programme available for all main operating systems.

Left: Digidesign® ProTools®

The de facto industry standard for multitrack audio recording, editing and processing.

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PROCESS AND PRACTICE

purpose: for example, a close sound can

be rendered more distant by making it slightly muffled and more reverberant In general, such modifications can be accomplished using the basic tools of the recording studio, but sometimes more specialised operations such as time stretching or pitch changing are required and here the computer becomes an invaluable ally The latest software technologies are undeniably hugely powerful but there is also much to be said for a simpler approach and synthesis is a good example of this

Modern synthesisers often exist as software and many of these are excellent

in what they do They are also capable of integration with recording and sequencing software such as Cubase, Logic or Dididesign®ProTools®and this provides a cost-effective one-stop resource for making and modifying sounds There is also a strong case to be made for a more

‘traditional’ approach and here nothing beats an old-fashioned modular analogue synthesiser for sheer flexibility, since most such systems can be used to process existing sounds as well as to create new ones However, there are some areas of

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Above: Part of a large modular

analogue synthesiser

Middlesex University’s Doepfer A-100.

Adopting the voltage control

techniques originally developed by

Robert Moog, such systems give users

direct access and wide-ranging control

over almost all parameters of a sound.

sound at which these older approaches perform poorly and newer digital systems are superior This is particularly the case with percussive sounds and harmonically complex ones such as voices

A number of excellent software synthesisers cope very well with these demands but the most versatile solution is provided by a programming environment such as MAX/MSP or Reaktor

MAX/MSP is hugely powerful but takes what is perhaps a somewhat

sledgehammer approach and suffers from

a rather steep learning curve Reaktor and other software programmes such as Absynth and Reason provide user-friendly approaches and cope well with the majority of such demands Reaktor, in particular, has become a firm favourite amongst film sound designers

There are a number of different approaches to sound Msynthesis and each has its own characteristic (and often identifiable) qualities that can make it more-or-less suitable for particular purposes: there is no overall ‘best’ system

so knowledge of the qualities of each is highly desirable

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89 88 DESIGNING AND CREATING SOUNDS

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Left: Reaktor

A software synthesis and sound creation programme much favoured by sound designers.

There are a number of approaches to the electronic synthesis of sounds The main division is between analogue and digital systems Analogue systems use traditional electronic systems such as oscillators, filters etc to directly generate pitched and unpitched sounds and to process them in a range of ways – modulating frequency, harmonic content and amplitude The most common approach is known as ‘subtractive synthesis’ where parts of a harmonically rich waveform are removed, leaving only the desired components This approach stems from the early work of composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen (who used laboratory test equipment) and the later creation

of the synthesiser, most notably by Robert Moog.

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Tiêu đề	Studio or Laboratory?
Trường học	Standard University
Chuyên ngành	Sonic Art & Sound Design
Thể loại	Bài luận
Thành phố	City Name

Định dạng
Số trang	5
Dung lượng	1,51 MB