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It’s a good time to be a sound designer.

Impulse responses are recordings of an impulse made in a reverberant (which is really any) space.  The sound engineer/designer uses these responses in convolution reverb software to simulate the sound of the space for the recordings or source material that he or she wishes to present.  Using these impulse responses can result in, say, placing footsteps inside a particular grain silo, church or other strange environment.  For example, Balance Mastering recorded a series of impulse responses inside Berlin’s Teufelsberg, a cold war listening station for the US and its allies to monitor East German radio transmissions (there’s an excellent tour of Teufelsberg hosted by the always irreverent, slightly aggravating but always interesting Vice magazine here).  As is often the case, I found these responses through a post on the excellent blog Create Digital Music.

Of course, one can use impulse responses and convolution reverb in lots of different ways.  I’m an autodidact, so I don’t quite understand all the physics behind how it all works, but you can warp these software tools to create strange and otherworldly effects on audio material, sounds that are organic to begin with but end up being almost beyond imagination.

While I enjoy the nuts and bolts work of making sure that door slam or footsteps take place in precisely the right acoustic environment – in fact, I love it and am slightly obsessive about finding the right reverb, I have to say – I am excited by the potential of using tools in unorthodox ways to come up with something I haven’t even thought of (even as I write this my imagination is piqued, and I am taking notes of ideas for some upcoming plays I’ll be designing this year with director Alan Dilworth).

These constructions of imaginary spaces are very powerful storytelling tools, and I love finding them.  “Finding” here is the correct word – for me, it is a matter of taking the first step on the path, going down the rabbit hole of working in my studio, unearthing and vaguely remembering some ideas or effects chains I wanted to try out, until….there it is.  The sound that will spark, energize and focus the project.

I never know when it might show up, but I welcome it when it does.

i’m working at tarragon theatre these days, sound designing a double bill of amazing plays by hanna mocovitch with john gzowski.  as always in the theatre, i am struck by how the interplay of text and sound can go so right, and also so wrong.

we had a lot of ideas ready to go when we started, and then of course discarded most of them.  this is a good sign — it makes me think we are doing something right, supporting the words instead of restricting them.  the text of these plays is so natural, so perfect.  every “uh” and pause, every change of thought is scripted (and the actors are doing a terrific job of executing them, by the way).  there isn’t one superfluous utterance – every ellipsis in the script has a purpose.  it is quite sublime.

apparently this post has wandered away from sound.  but i betcha i’m going to think about this the next time i make an audio piece.

THANK YOU for staying in touch with me and being part of my online network. Some free music, some of it unreleased! http://ow.ly/h0GjT

that went well.

i’ve had occasion to think about social media and the tools it offers us, going to a talk hosted by bARTer ( http://ow.ly/gTJba ) with marketing types sue edworthy and ricardo mcrae (http://sueedworthy.ca/ and http://wedge15.com ).

what struck me most about the evening is that, for whatever way you want to talk about it, what connects us to each other online is not “branding” or “targeted market” or any of the other terms we might use: it is the fact that we share stories about each other. that each link and word we post is actually about ourselves. and if we keep that in mind then of course we are going to connect, to grow, and to build on what we have, and be greater/better/deeper that what we could be alone.

busy in the studio, sound design for the tarragon theatre (with john gzowski) on 2 beautifully written, chilling plays by hannah moscovitch. working on a remount of when the gods came down to earth, a video installation directed by srinivas krishna. more composition and planning for a new series of audio works.

see you soon. here or everywhere.

i’ve always been of the opinion that to know something, you really need direct experience. not a controversial statement, i admit, but one i seem to invoke nearly daily in this age of ready information. so when i decided i needed to document some of my performance projects i was wary — what does that mean then, to document? how does it work? how can documentation become a part of the creative foundation of the project?

i’ll give it a shot:

http://vimeo.com/49171815