Sound Design — Building the World the Audience Doesn't See

Well, welcome to the sound design course. It's great to have you here. And this is the next step on from looking at our sound basic program. Now what we learned in our sound basic course was a little bit about the infrastructure and the hardware of how to put a system together. Now because sound is so complicated, we did touch on a few of the design elements within the sound course because setting up your sound system and setting up your sound infrastructure is so closely interwoven with the overall sound design. And that's often why sound designers are also doubling as head of audio or front of house engineers because the ear of the designer is the crucial part across all of the sound design components.

And by being able to mix those elements themselves and being able to manipulate different elements of the sound, it really makes for a design, wholesome design, which they can then hand off to an operator once it's sorted. So what I want to do in this sound design course is just talk a little bit about the process of a sound design course. We're going to look a little bit at the script analysis sign of view, but we're also going to look a little bit about how to describe sound because I found that in my experience and history of working with sound departments and with sound designers and as being a designer myself and needing to operate sound and operate audio consoles, it's hard to describe what someone can hear.

It's hard to describe what the intent was, but by giving you some vocabulary and by giving you some awareness about what those elements are, I hope that you'll be able to start to explore and develop those ideas, especially as you move through this course and your studies. Now, we're also going to talk a little bit about what it is to be a sound designer if you're studying sound design as a year 12 student. So if you're already passed being a year 12 student, you can skip that lesson and move straight on to the rest of the course, but then we're going to have a little look at the dramaturgy of it all, understanding some analysis of the script, talking about how sound effects work, talking about our dialogue, the importance of that, and then also evaluate some of the terminologies and qualities of sound that we need to consider as a whole as a designer.

I'm going to do a little bit of this now, and we're also going to have another section on board later on through Conrad Hendricks, who's our very good friend of mine and one of my senior sound designers and engineers that I work with on a very regular basis in theatre shows. Conrad was the head of audio and the sound designer for the old Walking with Dinosaurs tour. He has worked in Australia and internationally for over 40 years. He has an immaculate ear and what he can hear in a sound system. I am always blown away by the nuance and the quality of his work, so he's going to do another element and a much deeper look into the sound design course and into programming consoles and looking at all the intricacies of working with digital consoles and analyzing scripts and marking up scripts and preparing them for theatre as well.

So let's stop straight in and have a look at our sound design course.

Well, let's jump straight in and talk a little bit about what is sound design. Well, sound design to me is the manipulation of all of the audio components that make up a production and make up the world and soundscape of a performance. And that can be made up of a number of different elements. It can be made up of the dialogue, the speech, the song, the orchestration and the score, the instrumentation and how the score is instrumentized and how the musical director decides to do that. Added elements of sound effects, soundscapes and ambient noise. And by mixing all of those together, it really enables you to bring a wholesome product to an audience that really transports them from thinking about the fact that they're sitting in a theatre watching a show.

They become totally immersed and totally absorbed. Now, in my opinion, if you are doing your job correctly as a sound designer, you should be able to control the focus of an audience and control the emotion of an audience and ride the wave of the story and the wave of emotion in a script without them even realizing that that's what you've done. And that for me is the most exciting aspect of sound design, that if you can leave a performance humming a tune and feeling really moved and going, wow, that was really powerful or what an ending or how good was that storm scene, I felt like I was in a storm, then that really is an important aspect to me about a successful delivery of a sound design.

But in saying that as well, sound design is such a crucial melting part of all the creative team because you have to work with the lighting department to understand what that storm scene is going to look like. You need to work with the director to understand what his intent is, you need to work with the musical director to understand what his or her intent is because the flow and energy of the music is often such a driving force between the flow and energy of you as a sound designer and how you need to steer that and supplement that. So that is to me in a broad sense what sound design is. There is of course all of the added elements of understanding how different microphones work, how my sound system is going to be set up and how I'm going to execute that.

And I also need to make sure as a sound designer that everybody leaves having experienced the same thing. I want everyone in my audience to feel the same energy, the same presence and the same story no matter where they're sitting. I want the picture of the sound to be sitting right here for the whole show. I don't want them to have to strain for dialogue, I don't want them to have to strain to hear, I don't want them to ever complain about not being able to hear things properly because if you're going to go to the energy and the effort of putting microphones on all your cast and all your orchestra, you want it to be delivered correctly.

So that is a little bit about how I would see sound design as a whole. And I'm happy to hear your thoughts. Jump into the forum if you'd like to talk some more. And also have a look through the interview hub. I have interviewed a lot of industry professionals, all sound designers in their own right and all sound engineers from different aspects of the world whether it's rock and roll or theater or corporate. So I haven't listened to what their points of view are as well because sound is very subjective and our fan is a designer that they'll always be someone in the audience who used to have a band or works in their church or has done school shows before and they'll always think that you're better, that they're better than you, sorry and they could use a bit more bottom end or it could use a bit more detail here or there's always something.

But if you can appease 85% of the audience, then nothing you've done a pretty good job. So that's sound design to me.

So this is more aimed at those students who might be wanting to study sound design in year 12 and especially working in theatre and especially in year 12 you need to consider a couple of different elements of design. If you do decide to study production design or elements of production design you do need to choose two elements and that might be sound and stage, it might be sound and lighting, it might be sound and props, it might be sound and wardrobe depending on what you're after. But one of the things you're going to have to understand is you're going to have to be able to describe your choices and talk about your intent as a sound designer as part of an oral presentation and also back that up with some written work.

So part of the process of being a sound designer and one of the most crucial processes is being able to understand and analyse the script and understand what your dramatic intent is and understand what your dramatic composition is with your audio composition. So there's two slightly different but correlating ideas there. When talking about sound in the broader spectrum of production and production as a whole you need to understand how your composition of sound affects other departments. How it affects the directorial intent, how it enhances or doesn't enhance the characterisation of certain characters and how the balance of sound and dialogue and music all needs to come together to be one balanced picture at the end.

You can't just put some microphones on some people and hit play on a track and call that a sound design. There's a little bit more to it than that. So being able to understand the dramaturgy of your script and having the discussions with your director and with your design team and understanding what the flow of the play or script is, understanding what the intent is, understanding what the scene intention is. Where are you? What time of day is it? What time of year is it? What era is it? Are you in a war zone? Are you post-apocalyptic? What sort of things are happening? Are you in nature? All of these different elements from a directorial overview will play a huge part in how you maybe manipulate the sound effects, the sorts of soundscapes you choose.

The level, the pure volume of the show, is it going to be loud and rough and brash or is it going to be more gentle and subdued because it's set in a park or in a garden or things like that. You really need to take your audience on a journey and so being able to understand that dramatic composition across the board and talk about those different elements is really important. You also need to be able to distinguish and evaluate the qualities between sound and music. The music is one component, it's written in a score, it's got its own intent. The director has his intent or her intent from the script.

So suddenly there's music with an intent, there's a script with an intent and then you as a sound designer need to either add your own intent or manipulate the two of those and fuse them and join them to be a balanced experience. Sound can be one of the tricky places to design because it's so subjective and patrons are so subjective and it can be offensive to people to have different sound effects used or different tones or different drones. You also have the added issue of people not being able to hear. Some people are deaf or hearing impaired. So how do you engage them? How do you engage in multiculturalism?

How do you engage in cross diversity? Do you need to think about people with hearing aids? Do you need to think about people without hearing aids? You might be deaf. Does that mean you need more tactile sounds? You need subs and rumbling and vibration do they need to feel something in their seat? Do you almost need to break that fourth dimension and bring in some other elements there? So that's a really important thing to consider when you're thinking about studying sound designers. You do have to dig that deep. It's not just I chose to play Brahms 5th Symphony because it was a nice song and I felt that the character would suit the characterisation and we're set in a land room in a river era so it was perfect.

That might get you a D but it's not really talking about it. You might need to think more along the lines of the directorial intent of the scene was one of a cold, harsh winter's night. So as such I decided to match the score which was full of shrilling violins and rough percussion elements and add to that a soundscape of wind and lightning and thunder which enhanced and engaged the audience in feeling that they were transported to a storm scene and that they were in the heart of the storm, in the eye of the storm as it were and they were left transfixed by this audio and visual onslaught which transported them to a new world or something like that.

You need to go into quite a bit more detail and talk about different things of that nature. So if you're interested in studying sound design in U12 that's just some tips from me to you. Of course if you have any other questions please jump into the forum and we can talk some more about it there and I look forward to seeing you inside.

Part two of all of this is the orchestration. Is there an orchestra and is there a score involved? Or perhaps it's a score that's pre-recorded. Now, being able to play a pre-recorded orchestration or a score is far easier as a sound designer because you just hit play. You sort out your playback software or your system, whether it's a CD or a laptop or an iPad or whatever it might be. And then you can just turn it up and down and you can gauge the level overall because the mix is already done. But if you have a live orchestra or a live band or perhaps elements of a live band with a pre-recording, it's important to think about A, how you're going to mic up those performers.

B, where they are, are they visible and on stage or are they in a pit or in another room? Because if they're on stage, do you wanna necessarily clutter that up with speakers and all that? Or do you need to think about a more silent, in-ear solution for them to hear? Or do you need to remove the amps and add a different solution from a sound perspective and have no live sound but just have them performing? Or do you need to worry about micing up a full orchestra and finding the balance in that? Each of those components means you're gonna need to have different amounts of equipment and therefore you're gonna have to have different budgets.

Budget isn't something you really think about in a school situation, but it's definitely something you're gonna have to consider in the professional world. And budgets can sometimes be massive constraints on how your design is going to be. So to be able to think about that from the beginning and understand that the bigger you go, the more gear you need to, the more budget you need to spend can be something to consider and can be a good trick to get into in your early days as a sound designer. To think about, right, how can I do this efficiently? Maybe I don't need to mic up every single string section.

I can put one microphone over the whole section and just pick it up acoustically and I'll do it that way and that's a great little bit of isolation. And I'll do the rhythm section in a drum booth or a separate room so I can just mic them up acoustically and bring it into six channels instead of 40 channels in your sound console or whatever those different things are. So it's how you choose to mic up your score or your orchestra or your playback and how you then add that to the vocals and to support that.

So I just want to talk to you now about the little bit about the core principles of sound design in my opinion and I've broken these down into three areas and that is the vocals and the dialogue, the orchestration and the overall balance. Now I wanted to do this because for me they are three independently crucial elements but together as a sound designer you need to be able to blend them completely harmoniously and completely evenly to create that wholesome sound experience and that sound environment for your production. So let's have a look below at those three sections individually.

The first of these is the vocals and the dialogue. The script is what holds the play together and the actors are the most important part and I've said similar things in my lighting design course where if you can't see the actors then you've missed the whole point. Similarly with sound if you can't hear the actors and hear every line of dialogue you've missed the point of being a sound designer. The dialogue is what is the glue that is the underlying purpose and intent of the entire production. You can add as many fluff and bubbles and sound effects and orchestrations and music as you want but if the audience can't understand and hear the dialogue clearly and concise leaf from the matter where they are in the venue then you've got an issue as a sound designer.

The vocals and the dialogue really do play such a crucial role and it's so important to be able to understand that from the beginning. From reading through your script and understanding the characterization and the characters intent to then fusing that with the direct the the directors intent excuse me and then being able to formulate that we need to be able to present those moments to the audience. From there you can start to add your additional elements of orchestration and sound effects and things like that to finally get your balance but the vocals and the dialogue are a crucial component in any sound design.

A really important fact to consider about balancing and mixing your vocals and dialogue was how you're going to mike up your cast. Will you be marking up your cast with radio microphones, bud microphones or just ambient microphones? Is it a play or is it a musical? Do you need to cover a large space or are you a small and intimate show where the vocals need to stand on their own but you need to add supplementary sound just for orchestrations and sound effects and you're going to let the cast do the work acoustically. That's also an important part. You don't necessarily have to mike up everybody. A show can be more powerful sometimes if it's done acoustically and the performers regulate and engage their own sense of projection and discussion and performance and you just enhance that with a little bit of sound.

So you have to think about these elements when you're thinking about choosing how and if you're mike up your vocals and dialogue.

And that brings us to point number three, which is the balance. Now, once you've got these different elements, and you might have a third element which is sound effects and soundscape and ambience, how do you then balance that in? And to be able to think about that as a designer is very important because that balance is what can make or break a performance. If the audience is too distracted by the sound effect or the orchestra to hear the dialogue, you've got a problem. But if the orchestra isn't hearing enough of the orchestra or the song or the mood to be moved by the music, which is part of the direct toil intent, because they're too focused on the dialogue or the dialogue's too overpowering, then you've also got a problem there.

So finding your balance and creating that beautiful symmetry and sound and that symmetry in perspective from the audience's point of view is a crucial, crucial component in thinking about being a designer as a whole. So they're the three elements, the vocals and the dialogue, the orchestration and the soundscape and the balance of that overall. You could also talk a little bit about the focus that you wanted to bring in. You can steer an audience's focus like you can with lighting with sound. Do you have certain speakers that are hidden in pieces of set? Do you want to make sound come from one side, from the back, from the sides?

Sound effects, different sound effects, a helicopter flying around the back, the voice of the phantom and phantom of the opera, echoing around the theatre, how does the focus of your sound physically and metaphorically affect the emotion and the balance of that picture? By bringing a sound from a certain direction or a certain volume, we'll make people look, we'll make them jump, we'll make them start, we'll make them feel safe, we'll make them feel lots of different things. Sound is an incredibly powerful tool to use as an emotive weapon in the theatre. So think about that, think about the focus, where you want them to look, what you want them to hear and where you want the sound to come from while you think about all the other elements as well.

lesson four of our sound design course is going to talk a little bit about script interpretation and analysis but also linking into lesson five which is the script the sound plot and that's more about the script prep as a designer you need to think about every line of dialogue in that script as something you need to consider being able to hear independently at any time I'll just repeat that you need to consider every line of dialogue and every moment in the script as something that you may need to be able to consider and hear independently at any time so what does that mean well let's look at the script analysis part first you get your script you have a look through for you as a sound designer at this point of time you're probably looking at stage direction is there any information in the stage direction about time of day location maybe specific sound effects throughout the script as you go through are there knocks on the door rings of a phone door slamming guns blaring sirens blaring all of these different stage directions will give you a good starting point as to what you need from a sound effects point of view and perhaps a sound infrastructure point of view before you even read the script you may just read stage direction and then maybe listen to the score if it's a musical how does the score make you feel make some notes about how the score makes you feel and the journey it takes you on from a motive point of view are the elements of the score that you want to focus on or include or not include or perhaps enhance in a different way make some notes on that and then maybe read the script because the score for you technically as a sound designer is a script it's another script you get two scripts lucky you so then go and talk with your directorial team about their intent and see how some of your ideas match up with theirs and from there you can start to think about how your design is going to look how the stage is going to be set you have to think a lot about more hypothetical elements of how the sound is going to work and it's a lot of it's in your head there's not much to write down at this point but then you can do the most important part which is marking up the script before you go into theater and that means you assign a radio mic plot to your cast you have individual numbers associated with different lines of dialogue and different cast members and different characters and you work through your script methodically and I'll add another section with Conrad about how to mark up a script later on as part of the sound design course as well so to keep an eye out for that below but being able to analyze your script early on to think about those stage directions think about the mood the character of the emotion and talk about sound effects and where you are in space and time will really help you build your soundscape in the beginning.

The next thing to think about is the sound plot and that's a little bit different to a lighting plot But a sound plot is in essence all of the elements that you need as a designer For when you move into the theater Where do you need your speakers to be what speakers what areas of the theater are those speakers going to cover? How many speakers will you need a little bit about of a system a little bit of a systems layout about how you want the pit laid out What your pit layout is what microphones you want to use on which instrument? Not necessarily how it gets to the console because that you can handball to your head of audio But if you're so inclined you can figure out your channel inputs on the console Maybe you want to start pre-programming some of your own console offline and then bring that into the theater So you're ahead of the game as we're doing a lighting plot doing a sound plot is very much about being prepared to walk into the theater Because your production window is so small Sometimes if you are in an amateur theater or school theater environment You might have two or three or four days before opening night If you have the luxuries of a commercial theater You might have a couple of weeks or a month to get all of your your nuances and intricacies down But you need to walk in to your time in theater with a sound plot that you know is good to go Have your script marked up and have any elements that you need to check or maybe experiment with Clearly identified as part of your bumping schedule and perhaps with a schedule with the band rehearsal So you can really try these different things Perhaps you want to try a different microphone on a guitar and a string section and you want to do an AB test But you need to do that in the room and in person with the orchestra You need to work in that time with the musical director the orchestra manager the stage manager and your sound crew and the theater To make sure you have a quiet time to do those tests So you can tick that off your list if that's something you need to do So the sound plot is a crucial part of being ready to go into theater

So you're about to go into theater and you might need to understand a few things about how the theater process works. As a sound department, you kind of have to fit in around everyone else. It's a bit of a tricky situation when you're doing sound because there's so many elements and there's so many different pockets that you need to work in. You can really do a lot of things around every other department, whereas the set department need to stage and the lighting department need to stage and the front of house areas. It was the sound department really working with some large elements, yes of a PA system and some speakers, but predominantly with much smaller areas, a front of house console, perhaps a patch room, perhaps an orchestra pit, perhaps a under stage area for your radio microphone setup.

So a lot of these different things you can do as you move into theater. And to be able to walk into theater with a clear plan of bumping and what your rehearsal schedule is going to be like is a really important step to have. As a sound designer, it's great to have these elements understood. You don't necessarily have to understand how it's all going to go together because there are plenty of other sound texts and heads of audio and sound geeks out there that love thinking about the nuances of how you're going to split channels and get them patched in and reroute them and get them here and there and everywhere and move it around the venue and you don't necessarily have to understand all of those intricacies as a designer.

Sometimes it's good to be a designer because as a creative, you're much more aware of the bigger picture and you're not really fussed about how channel one in the orchestra pit ends up in channel 15 in the sound console. That's someone else's problem. But if you're so inclined to understand the systems point of view and have a general understanding, then that will help you move into your theater planning stage much more effectively. So you want to have a good idea for bumping about what your plan of attack is, who do you have on your crew, how are you going to get things set up and what access to stage and auditorium do you have.

And you need to be ready by. The sounds department schedule is slightly different because you need to worry about when the orchestra is coming in and often there'll be rehearsals with the cast, with microphones, without any other elements like lighting or sound being ready. They might want to do tech runs with microphones and things like that as well or curry rehearsals with microphones so they can get used to wearing body packs and things like that. So there are different elements you have to think about with your scheduling and that's where you as a designer talk with your stage manager and the stage management team about what that rehearsal process looks like and what the director's expectations are to have ready at certain times.

You also need to talk with your musical director to find out what the orchestra bookings are when you have sound checks booked for them, when you need to be ready by and perhaps what you can pre-record. A lot of digital consoles now and extra software allow you to do what's called a virtual recording. So you can record the orchestra on the Tuesday morning that they're there but because they're not coming back till Friday you then have a recording of all of your individual channels of the orchestra then you can play back again and again and again and keep adjusting your sound system to tune the room and tune your design to get the balance of the orchestra without the orchestra even being there.

It's brilliant because if you just want to focus on the horns or the strings you can turn everyone else off and you're not wasting anyone's time. So to be able to do a virtual sound check is a really handy tool of the designer and something you might want to consider when you're preparing for your time in theatre. After that it's down to rehearsals. And in the rehearsal phase it really is just refining, refining, refining, refining, refining. It's ironing out all the little kinks. It's listening to things now that you have wardrobe and props. Are there earrings rattling against a microphone? Is there a scuffling of a microphone that sits in a wig in the wrong position?

In a kiss scene are there microphones clashing together do we need to change the angle of the head to make sure the microphones don't collide? Are there bits of costumes that ruffle or jingle in the wrong spot that ruin the sound design? It's where you can start to really hone in on those nuances. Are you missing lines of dialogue? Do you need more energy from the orchestra at certain moments? Do you need to hear different things slightly more or slightly less? As a designer your job in rehearsals is just to listen and adjust. By that time you've handed the show over to your front of house operator, your sound operators, your sound effect operators, they're following a script, they're following cues from the stage manager.

You are there as a creative to observe the bigger picture and listen to move around the space, to move around the theatre, to hear different angles, sit in different seats and understand that what you've designed is actually what's been delivered on stage. And that's part of your journey of preparing for theatre and being in theatre in that time.

And the last part about being a sound designer is walking into the theater with the correct attitude. There is nothing worse for sound crews than walking into a theater on a shift and starting a production call and having a grumpy sound designer who's rude and arrogant and demanding and thinking that they're better than everyone else. If you think that you really need to rethink your position about being involved in theater and involved in the arts as a whole. I don't want to lie down the hard rule it's okay to have bad days we will get frustrated and we all have expectations but there's ways to be humble and there's ways to understand that everyone you work with has had different experiences has different opinions and has different thoughts about how things should be done.

Your role as a designer and having the correct attitude is about using your skills and your emotional intelligence to take in all that information, analyze it and decide the best way forward. There may be things you agree with and go oh thanks John that was a really efficient idea let's do that I really like that. Or there may be things like no I know it's a long process to add 16 more speakers but for my view and my design I know this is going to work and that's what it needs and I need you just to all help me out and we're going to do these bits and we're going to do the extra work and we're going to make it worthwhile.

Doing it humbly doing it respectfully and doing it calmly is one of the most important things you can do as a sound designer to really get your energy and motivation across to your crew. A lot of the time you walk into the theater as a sound designer but the sound crew will belong to the theater so they're going to know a lot more about the theater how it works tricks shortcuts all that sort of thing so you may have to be flexible in how your system design or plans are being fulfilled and how you had planned it might be different to how it ends up but that's okay that's the joy of working in theater and working with a crew and working with people that understand. You may need to make some adjustments on the fly about orchestra locations or musical positions or drum boost positions the musical director might walk in and go no this doesn't work I need to flip the orchestra around which has obvious implications for how your sound design is but you need to be flexible and you need to have the correct attitudes for all of that so if you can do that no matter the show big or small if you can have the correct attitude and be a happy person at the same time then that's a great start you can always learn a skill and you'll never stop learning skills but you can't learn an attitude you have to walk in with the right attitude from the start and that would be my biggest tip to you moving forward into sound design so I hope you've enjoyed the course it's been great to have you here as always please jump into the forum and ask any questions if you have any of both myself or other practitioners or other peers in the forum and in the groups and I look forward to seeing you on the next one all the best and bye for now