Music of Sound

Directed by Sumo Science for Aardman Animations

In Between The Notes: A Portrait of Pandit Pran Nath (1986)

> Busy week! Started a new film with everything that includes… Lots to do!!

 

> Made me laugh! Someone on twitter said: “Actors dressed as characters from Planet Of The Apes should be the only people to greet the Chilean miners when they’re freed.”

 

> Six keys to being excellent at anything

 

> One month until the Berlinale Talent Campus application deadline – do it!

 

> For any fans of Jonsi, two good links: one with his partner Alex on their recording techniques and the other; a site with lots of live recordings

 

> Theres an unofficial SoundMiners user forum here

 

 

> Could this be the end to the energy crisis? Infinite Power!!!

 

> What 5 iPad apps do u use every day? me: GoodReader, NetNewsWire, Evernote, Elements, Twitterific

 

> An interview with Aldous Huxley from ’58 – video & transcription

 

> Worth a listen: a dubstep chronology mixtape

 

> Worries about your burial options are over: AndVinyl will mix your ashes into vinyl & make 30 records!

 

> A flamethrower trombone? But of course! Could a flamethrower brassband be next?

 

> Ande Schurr recently did an interview with me about sound design, being freelance etc and its been published on The Big Idea website

 

This post is dedicated to Benoit, who asked me to comment on a post he made expressing a feeling of discontent and frustration – amongst other things he had returned from holiday with no interesting new sounds… I began writing a reply and it started to turn into a novel, so I am here writing it as a more generalised response…

As a starting point I think it is worth watching this video:

Its a funny video but he also makes some very important points; about being objective, about what you are lucky enough to already have, and how quickly you take that for granted. There is a saying I like to repeat: Familiarity breeds contempt. Sometimes the same-ness of experience can lead people to think the experience has no worthwhile meaning. Contempt is a strong word but the essence of its meaning is about judgement

With regards to recording sounds, I suspect the issue may be a case of being too judgemental BEFORE you record. I truly believe having an open mind is very important when recording. Its easy to say ‘I am open minded’ about some topic or concept but having an open mind in terms of real time experience is different again. It requires delaying the judgement of whether a sound is immediately interesting. This is related to the idea of delayed gratification – when we were little kids we tend to run around doing things that immediately make us happy. As you get older you realise some things are not fun at first, and require struggle and hard work, but because more effort is required over a longer time, the reward is even bigger. But you do not receive the reward until you finish it. Which means perseverance becomes a very important skill to develop.

On some creative projects I go through short periods where I think the project has become worthless – it’s all bad! Why am I even trying to finish this? I guess it is a form of doubt. But I’ve learned that it is important to just delay those feelings. I tell myself: stop being judgemental and keep going! Do the next step, and the next one, and once the project is a little further developed, then stop have & see how you feel about it. And funnily enough this tactic usually works. Whatever made me feel bad was momentary, a passing mood shift or something external & short lived. Most projects of any depth take time and there will be stages that feel frustrating, but you just have to keep going and push through those feelings.

So back to recording sounds. There is a Japanese term ‘wabi sabi’ which I can only give my own interpretation of, but to me it means finding beauty in the imperfect. Sounds which at first might seem broken or not useful can turn out to be very, very valuable and inspiring. I recently did an interview for local radio, and the interviewer asked me to take her location FX recording. I thought hmmmm where can we go easily and get an interesting sound? On the day we went to a local playground – I thought maybe the swings might make an interesting creak… Try the first one: no, second one: no, try the seesaw – its a little bit interesting – it has a big spring and the impact when it hits the rubber tyre is nice. We record some, then go over to the hurly gurly (a rotating toy that four kids can sit on and spin around) I give it a spin and WOW!!! Its a bit rusty and sounds very, very heavy. It sounds nothing like what you imagine. I instantly think about what it will sound like when I slow it down an octave!! We record it. Here it is, first real speed, then 2 octaves down, then convolved through an IR (play it loud! It has gorgeous low frequencies!)

Playground FX 01 by timprebble

Then we go over to a climbing wall with small chains on it. It’s not a super-amazing sound, but I know how useful chains can be – especially exterior ones, so I rattle them and record them.

So in ten minutes, two things happened: the first two sounds I failed to record anything interesting, but I found one amazing sound & two useful sounds. Which will I remember? The first two or the last three? Here is the seesaw hit, first real speed, then 2 octaves down, then backwards, then through two different IRs:

Playground FX 02 by timprebble

But what if I hadn’t persevered and tried the last three? I would have nothing. What if I waited until all the kids left the playground and I could get super clean recordings like I ideally want? I would have nothing. I did actually record all five, because sometimes boring, normal sounds are what you want too! And appreciating the true nature of what may appear as a boring sound is an important aspect of this too!

Another example to illustrate the point: when you edit ambiences for a film, inevitably you need the sound of a fridge for any scenes set in a kitchen. So I went through a phase years ago, where everywhere I went, I recorded the fridge. Fascinating right? Not very… The rock & roll life of a sound designer? While on holiday, staying in a motel, at night I would record the fridge for 5 minutes. Put it in the library and forget about it, it is a boring sound right? But I use those fridges, and they are MY fridges! I was there & I recorded them. They have context – I remember where I recorded them, and guess what? Every one of those fridges sounds different. They all have different character. And sometimes they are more than just ambiences. A film I did in 2003 called Perfect Strangers was about a guy who kidnaps a girl and takes her to a deserted island. She eventually ends up killing him and putting him in the freezer. At first I put in a normal sounding freezer sound but the director and I came up with the idea of making the freezer more interesting. The girl starts to go a bit nuts and talks to the freezer, so we started using the fridge motor starts and stops to punctuate the one sided conversation she was otherwise having. It worked very well, but guess what? I couldn’t have made the idea work without all my library of fridge sounds. Fridges are boring right? Not. At. All!

The moral of this is that reality is FULL of interesting sounds, it is up to you (and your attitude) to find them and make them interesting!

Benoit also expressed a feeling of being overwhelmed with the constant flood of information: twitter feeds, endless web site updates & blog posts, new equipment reviews and software releases. I think that feeling is shared by many, and while the obvious answer is to just disengage, the people who will actually be the best at managing it will probably be the ‘digital natives’ – the kids who are growing up now, who have no experience of life before the internet. But identifying the problem is part of solving it. Consider it this way: you ARE in control of your attention. A simple example: I do not watch television, live, ever (or very, very rarely). Apart from the dire scarcity of any good quality meaningful television I also cannot stand the constant interuption of advertising. At one stage I thought getting pay TV would solve the problem, but they just replace general advertising with their own advertising. I believe television to be an insult to my intelligence. But no one makes you watch television, and we are all sentient, so the choice is yours.

When I was young I was more of a gear addict but now I don’t care so much – I have the tools I need. If another version of ProTools was never released ever again, I could still make film soundtracks with what I have. My recorder & mics work well, I do not NEED more gear. And while the people who are constantly trying to sell you more gear will attempt to make you believe, having more gear will not advance you creatively necessarily. And defintiely not as reliably as working on your own attitude & experiences will. So I stop reading reviews and it is only when something very specifically interests me, that I read about it..

Learning to filter the crap out of your life so it doesn’t waste your attention is VERY IMPORTANT! Plenty of people have written blog posts about this topic, so it is worth doing some searches to find specific means of efficiently accessing ONLY the info you want. For me, using an RSS reader has become fundamental to how I deal with the flood of information. I use Googles RSS Reader, as I can access it from anywhere (home, work, laptop, ipad) and while I have 374 RSS streams feeding into it, there are probably only a dozen I actually check each morning. And even then I only read the new posts that interest me. But all those other feeds sit there, accumulating information that I can refer to when I feel like it. The point? it is up to you to develop strategies of managing it.

The same goes with twitter – looking at a constant stream of twitter posts is like insanity: hearing 1,000 voices inside your head. The way I deal with it, is again via RSS feeds. I follow over 1800 people on twitter, and if they mention or message me I get it, but the core people I follow, I subscribe to an RSS feed of their tweets (go to their twitter profile page – there is an RSS button) So in Google Reader I have a folder of twitter feeds which cuts the constant flood of 1,800 peoples tweets down to an archive of 20 peoples, which accumulate until I read or delete them. Twitter lists work a similar way.

The last aspect I take from Benoits post, is really him questioning his motivation and direction – a loss of desire. I suspect this happens for most people at some stage in their life. For some it takes the form of a mid-life crisis, but here is another way of thinking about it. Maybe it is something you should actually think about every day? A film maker I worked with years ago died this week, she was only 49. She doesn’t have any days left now. So maybe every morning it is worth thinking about how your day should be best spent? If you do not feel inspired to compose or record, don’t do it. Putting yourself under pressure may be self defeating. But sometimes it is the act of doing that generates inspiration and not vice versa.

If it is a comparative issue ie I used to enjoy X but now I don’t, then its worth thinking about the context & situation when you were doing X happily. What has changed? The only constant is change, so there WILL have been change, but how has it created a different feeling in your behaviour and appreciation for what you used to enjoy? As I eluded to before, is it just familiarity? It is no longer a new experience…

If the issue is motivation, then maybe the problem is defining the actual goal. Getting started is directly related to finishing, so what it is you are starting, so as to finish? What is IT? I hassled a friend about this once, as he was in a rut with a project and went on and on about the various ways the project was going to fail. So I asked him what success was? What is a realistic successful outcome of the project? Clearly defining that may help motivate you to start, develop and finish it. But without it, it may never be started.

(Oops I actually mean 2001!)

While discussing recording crowds (and the issue of avoiding ambient music) over at the new forum, I was reminded of a great crowd track I recorded while on holiday in Beijing, 2001. My sister was living over there for three years so I planned a big trip, first to LA and New York, then to my other sister in London and then to Beijing…. But things didn’t go as planned, my tickets to USA were for September 14th 2001 – yes! Three days after September 11! I remember waking up that fateful morning and spending the next few hours watching the horrific footage cycling over and over on TV in total disbelief… Later that day I went & visited my travel agent and asker her advice; she suggested I still leave on time but go straight to London, so I ended up having an extra few weeks in London…

Back then I travelled with my trusty old DAT machine – a Tascam DAP1… and I took a pair of Octavia Mk012 mics as I didn’t have room for a rycote…. I bought a pair of those little fluffies they use on video cameras so I had some wind protection, but it’s interesting to hear the results now, and to think how much technology has changed in ten years…. So here are a few sounds from my travels back in 2001; first recording? An airport room tone from a brief Singapore stop over…. Recorded at 4am so I’m surprised there’s no snoring!

I love that dislocated feeling when you are between time zones, William Gibson described it perfectly in Pattern Recognition: “her mortal soul is leagues behind her, being reeled in on some ghostly umbilical down the vanished wake of the plane that brought her here, hundreds of thousands of feet above the Atlantic. Souls can’t move that quickly, and are left behind, and must be awaited, upon arrival, like lost luggage.”

Singapore Airport 4am by timprebble

And of course sooner or later after arriving in London I went & recorded the Tube/subway:

London Tube by timprebble

From London I did a few side trips including Amsterdam & Barcelona – here’s an interior ambience from Gaudis chapel in Barcelona – I love how diffuse the sound is!

Gaudi Chapel Interior by timprebble

And here is the restaurant I mentioned in Beijing. I think my sister took me there as she knew what it sounded like – it was basically a very large old noodle restaurant. But the interesting sonic character was the waiters – there must have been ten of them running around and every time a group of people arrived at the door they would all shout! My sister and I sat quietly slurping noodles while I recorded for ten minutes. Afterwards I asked what were they actually shouting, my sister thought it was the number of people in the newly arrived group, so the other waiters could shout back if they had a free table that could seat them.

Beijing Noodle House by timprebble

Like any city the sound of traffic in Beijing is unique and I recorded half a dozen different tracks, surprisingly I didn’t record any accidents – the photos below show a few typical busy intersections, with literally traffic going in every direction at once!

Beijing Traffic by timprebble

Whenever I go travelling I do lots of research for interesting sound locations to visit and one that instantly appealed was a bell museum. This first bell is a 46 ton 600 year old bell that was just amazing to be near when it was struck, and by near I mean put your head inside! It resonated for maybe five or ten minutes, so this recording really doesn’t do it justice:

40 ton 600 year old bell by timprebble

Another bell that was very intriguing was actually a bowl of water, with side handles which when you rubbed them fast enough created a resonating tone, but the weird thing was that as the bowl resonated the water bubbled almost like it was boiling:

Water Bell by timprebble

Some sounds I heard in Beijing I simply could not record, I have a very distinct memory of being about six stories up a tower looking over the suburbs and noticing a flock of pigeons flying around. The pigeons had whistles attached to them and the sound was beautifully evocative.

But one sound I came across in a park I just could not begin to think what was creating it!! I first heard it in the distance and followed the direction of the sound until I came across an old guy using what looked like a double ended spinning top, suspended & spinning on some string between two drum sticks!

Spinner by timprebble

My sister helped me buy one of these devices from him and at various times ever since I have practiced making these sounds, the problem being that once you get it going to an audible level it is spinning very fast and if you make a mistake it tends to break the string and the top goes flying off… Its a little dangerous but that old guy in the temple was a master at it! I’ll update this post with a photo of it – mine is at my studio… Anyone know what they are called? I’ll update this post with a photo of mine in an hour or so….

Update:

To give an idea of scale, the drumstick with the string on is the size of a normal drumstick…

> WOW!!!! The new iPad 2 just announced looks great!

 

> Daily Show Extremist Makeover: Homeland Edition – very funny!

 

> The sound of data…. being sorted…. thanks for tip Anton!

 

> Echoes of the past: the sites and sounds of prehistory

 

> Silence is golden…..

 

> Corn starch & sound (I wonder what sound?) thanks for tip Tom!

 

> Strangely beautiful images of post apocalyptic Tokyo

 

> DUC the movie (Life in the Digi User Conference!)

> thanks for tip Tom!

 

Attached to the HISSandaROAR site is a new forum – check it out HERE

I’ve set it up for two reasons;

1. I figure it is a better long term means of discussing crowd source sound library projects such as THE DOORS and THE DOGS… and the others I have planned. I will still use this blog to announce projects and provide updates, but discussions here tend to get lost into the archives, whereas a forum means each discussion can stay live throughout the entire lifetime of each project…

2. For sound designers & sound editors who own HISSandaROAR libraries its also a means of providing feedback and ideas on current and future libraries…

So if you fall into either category please register & collaborate!

So no doubt if you use ProTools you will have read of their recent developments i.e. new interfaces and a mixing plugin to make it all more analogue (?) sounding… To support all these new interfaces AVID have released ProTools 8.1 which hopefully also addresses some of the bugs in PT8, especially Quicktime playback issues that I know caused a few people to retrograde their ProTools systems….

I guess time will tell, but after reading a fair amount of speculation before the announcement of ProTools HD Native and ProTools 9 I kept thinking to myself; it seems a bit premature for ProTools 9.0. I’ve been using ProTools literally since version 1.0 and while I had never actually number crunched the development cycle, I instinctively knew it doesn’t happen often, and for good reason. Jumping a whole version number usually means major changes and new features, which of course also brings the potential for new bugs.. And such things take time…

But then I got to thinking: I am an investor in ProTools, not financially but in terms of time & creativity invested in the platform. Sure I could move to another app and translate my techniques, but when I add up the cumulative hours spent in ProTools over a 20 year period it is more than significant. So as an investor I decided I should know what the development cycle is for the program I rely on every day!

So thanks to google I made a spreadsheet with the dates of each major ProTools release since v1.0 and here is a PDF of it – it’s three pages long to keep the monthly timeline linear, but here is the last few years of releases, and speculation about the next release: ProTools 9.0 (Note the number beside the release is the number of months since the previous release)

You’ll notice I did the same process for Photoshop and Ableton LIVE. I included Photoshop as I remember the same time i finished film school and started working with ProTools 1.0 (ProDeck and ProEdit as it was back then) I also did a night course in Photoshop and I distinctly remember it being Photoshop 1.0, so partly for nostalgia but also for the interest of comparing a mature application from another field I included it. Ableton LIVE is interesting as I staretd using it from v1.0 as well but noticed their development cycle was shorter than ProTools – new major versions were released almost once a year…

So what does all this prove? Nothing! It is just speculation on my part & shouldn’t be taken with a grain of salt. Of course there are any number of variables in the development cycle of an application. One of the most obvious is a major OS change eg Mac OS9 to OSX, and I seem to remember talk of Digidesign changing development platforms for ProTools at one stage, which must have added months of work just to stand still.

But within the margins of error history does tend to repeat itself, so if I do average the development cycle from v1.0 of each app up to their current major release we can at least get a ballpark feel for when to expect the next major release…

ProTools – average development cycle: 26.25 months
ProTools 9.0 release approximately February 2011

Photoshop – average development cycle: 20.17 months
Photoshop 13.0 release approximately December 2011

Ableton LIVE – average development cycle: 11.25months
Ableton LIVE 9.0 release approximately April 2010
4 months ago!? Where is it?

Update: @pulsetrain just reminded me Ableton formally announced they were holding back on new releases so they can squash all bugs in the current release – see this CDM post – an incredibly admirable stance to take!

Escape clause: Please note I am not a statistician, I am a sound designer

Update 2: Also not coincidentally, I have stayed on ProTools 7.4 on my work HD2 system as it is rock solid. And when you look at the release history of ProTools updates you can see why, just look at all the bug squishing thats gone on to get to 7.4 from 7.0

11/03/05 7.0
12/05/05 7.1 (for PCIe and Expansion|HD)
12/15/05 7.1cs1 (66846, 69250, 70503, 70505, 70988, 71038, 70435)
12/13/05 7.1cs2 (70503, 70505, 70393, 71223, 71110, 66846, 71297)
12/15/05 6.9.3r2 (XMON firmware update)
01/14/06 7.1cs3 (68289, 71130, 71131, 71296, 71408, 71697)
02/04/06 7.1cs4 (71869, 72143, 71701, 68784, 72493)
03/06/06 7.1cs5 (65203, 70901, 71998, 72085, 72725, 73149, 73160)
03/30/06 7.1cs6 (71235, 72531, 72677, 74487, 74761)
03/31/06 6.9.3cs4 (74487, 66747)
05/09/06 7.1cs7 (72604, 75784, 76525)
06/12/06 7.1cs8 (63172, 71269, 75405, 75888, 76222, 76766, 77280)
07/26/06 7.1cs9 (73176, 73463, 75844, 76555, 77061, 77164, 78032, 78034, 78042, 78430, 78524, 79230)
08/02/06 7.2 (Mixing, Video, Field Recorder, Dubber enhancements)
09/18/06 7.2.1 (Mac Pro compat)
09/26/06 7.2cs1 (80417, 81138, 80818, 81941, 81257, 82082)
10/18/06 7.1cs10 (80417, 81138, 71254)
10/26/06 7.2.1cs1 (76606, 82271, 81997, 82896, 82926
11/16/06 7.2.1cs2 (81478, 83338, 83900, 76606, 82271, 81997, 82896, 82926)
11/16/06 7.2cs2 (76606, 82397, 82271, 81997, 82926, 81478, 83338, 83900)
12/05/06 7.3
12/07/06 7.3cs1 (84814)
01/11/07 7.3.1 (85058, 85462, 85755, 85906, 84814, 83316)
02/12/07 7.3.1cs1 (86186, 85536, 85058, 85462, 85755, 85906, 84814, 85250, 83316)
03/09/07 7.3.1cs2 (87627, 87717, 86186, 85250, 85536, 85058, 85462, 85755, 85906, 84814, 83316)
06/01/07 7.3.1cs3 (85976, 90570, 90726, 85674, 92185, 93283, 93289, 90821, 91345)
07/25/07 7.3.1cs4 (90820, 92013, 93481, 94441, 94510)
10/02/07 7.3.1cs5 (82932, 88757, 94425, 97236, 97716)
11/07/07 7.4
11/30/07 7.4cs1 (99342, 99442)
12/20/07 7.4cs2 (94474, 99342, 99442, 99545, 99562, 99605, 100013, 100028, 100142, 100299, 100378, 100420, 100423)
01/28/08 7.3.1cs6 (87718, 99442, 99562, 85802)
02/15/08 7.4.1 (Leopard compatibility for 8-core Mac Pro computers, for those featuring “Harpertown” processors)
03/01/08 7.4cs3 (85802, 100847, 100795, 100794, 100661, 101047, 100657)
04/24/08 7.4cs4 (100604, 100502, 76712, 100497)
05/29/08 7.4.2pr (Pre-release added Leopard Compatibility)
06/04/08 7.4cs5 (Added: Expand to New Tracks by Time Code Only)
06/20/08 7.4.2 (Full release added Panther Compatibility)
07/01/08 7.3.1cs7 (100794, 100847, 100795)
08/20/08 7.4.2cs1 (102582, 100604, 100723, 100913, 100502, 76712, 100497, 100802)
08/29/08 7.4cs7 (100723, 100913, 104551, 100802, 101226)
11/12/08 7.4cs8 (106627, 100595, 105968)
11/12/08 7.4.2cs2 (104551, 106627, 105968)

I’m looking forward to ProTools 8.4 more than 9.0!

First re THE DOORS I’m sending out an email today with August 31st as the final upload deadline for the library. I want to get this library finished and out to all the contributors. So on September 1st I’ll share a private google docs spreadsheet with all the contributors and you can each tag it with your preferred delivery medium i.e. download or physical media. Currently we have 638 doors contributed totaling 88.3GB. If you want to have a look, there is a public google docs spreadsheet with all the current doors contributions here – bear in mind it is just a list of the folders, sorted alphabetically & is not the final order, layout or anything else…. You can see I have a bit of work to do with renaming… I’ll make a list of the door types that we could do with more of (for variety) below – please add comments if you have a look at the google docs spreadsheet. If you have time & access to any please feel free to contribute an extra couple – I’m aiming to do the same. If you’ve already uploaded your ten doors then just upload a folder with “NAME Additional” and for anyone who has uploaded less than ten doors please DO record & add the enough to get to ten, these first few are accessible to anyone!

- Cupboards & Drawers in Kitchen & Bathroom (easy)
- Oven, Fridge & Freezer Doors (easy)
- Office Doors
- Electric Doors eg airport or office building
- Shed Doors
- Gates eg Farm wood or metal gates

re THE DOGS it is great to see all the enthusiasm for this project. Some valuable homework to do before we start is read this article at Designing Sound by Rob Nokes about his experiences recording dogs, download and read the PDF of this article by Malcolm Gladwell on dog behaviour and have a look at this infographic: 7 Facts about Canine Communication. Also check out a few of the kinda funny dog vox videos below. Funnily enough I was trying to record some doors at my studio the other night and a dog staretd barking & I felt like shouting out: WAIT YOUR TURN!!! One library at a time!! I’ll get to you in a few weeks time!!

Lastly re the future as I mentioned in a previous comment I am in the final stages of setting up a forum for the contributors to these projects; a forum is a more efficient means of ongoing discussion between a lot of people. It should be live in the next few days and I’ll send an invite out to you via email, so I figure we use it to discuss THE DOGS project, but I’d also like to propose four more crowdsource libraries some of which will have far longer time frames.

AMBIENCES – URBAN
AMBIENCES – RURAL
AMBIENCES – ROOM TONES
AMBIENCES – CROWDS

We’ll need to discuss each of these seperately in detail (hence the forum) and for example I imagine the rural ambience library requiring a time frame of 12 months minimum, so as to capture all four seasons. If you are registered as a potential contributor you’ll receive an invite to the new forum in the next couple of days. If you aren’t and would like an invite please add a comment below…