Music of Sound

(Please note the date on this post – I won’t take on another virtual sound design intern until mid 2010, but if you are interested have a read of this post & the follow up posts at the end)

Empathy is a character trait I value. Highly. I heard a psychologist interviewed on the radio a year or so ago & her core theory (based on research) was that a large proportion of people in prison never learned empathy as children. Every now & again I meet someone with an obvious lack of empathy & think hmmmm… they just have no appreciation for their effect on other people & I think about those people in prison, who commit crimes with similarly no thought for the often devastating impact on their victims…

So why am I talking about empathy? Well I so appreciate the support a number of generous people gave me early in my career & while its difficult to repay their kindness I feel that it is probably more appropriate to repay in kind ie offer similar support to young people now… And to me this is an act of empathy, as I dearly remember how hard getting that start is, and how much a small gesture of support can mean at critical stages… Accordingly I’ve managed to do this a number of times over the years by taking on someone with no real post experience as an assistant/trainee and it is satisfying to see them develop & forge their careers… Finding the right person can be problematic, not through any lack of willing participants but more so in terms of clarifying the crucial formative characteristics. But having successfully been through the process four times now I have a reasonable idea….

Anyway, enough philosophy for now – this post is really just to say I would like to offer a virtual internship by acting as mentor to a young sound editor who is early in their career.

So what is a mentor exactly? The dictionary defines it as “a wise and trusted guide and advisor” while Wikipedia refers to “a trusted friend, counselor or teacher, usually a more experienced person” which sounds a bit more like it.

When I started my own company I had a business mentor for a while, and I found it invaluable to have someone far more experienced to ask advice from. Often they played devils advocate & answered my questions with questions, so I thought through my own conclusions and I definitely subscribe to this approach. If someone I am supervising is stuck on a problem it is rare that I would simply come up with an answer for them, because that doesn’t help them develop the skills to solve that same problem when it arises again in the future.

So what are the characteristics I am looking for? Well the first thing I can say is you do not need to be local. I already have a good team of people who I work with & accordingly I simply don’t have a trainee job to offer, per se. So I am happy to mentor via email, ichat, skype, ftp etc…

You need to be able to illustrate that you are already committed to film sound post as a career. It is an investment of time on my part so I need to be convinced this isn’t just a whim. That doesn’t mean you need to have credits on films, but already having some experience of contributing to short films or TV drama etc is a definite bonus.

Technical skill is important – don’t apply if you don’t already have a basic knowledge of ProTools. I’m not interested in what your favourite software is, it is a simple fact that ProTools dominates in film sound post & we need to be able to exchange Protools sessions as work in progress. I did plenty of films early on using nothing more than ProTools LE, so that at least is a prerequisite.

Owning (or having access to) a field recording kit is also important. I dont really believe in using library sounds other than in specific situations so I want to know what you will be using to collect sounds for your work.

Lastly & in my opinion most important is personality & attitude. I am going to have to research some questions for this bit – not about your personal life but definitely about your attitudes, ethics & approach. This will also require a character reference or two who I can contact.

So its kind of like a job interview, except there isn’t a job. The virtual internship will run for a maximum of 12 months, at which point I will take on a new intern. And bear in mind I despise sycophants. I do not want to hear what you think I want to hear, I want to hear what you think. Still interested? if you want to apply, please email me using the form below & in a week or so I will send you an application form.

> Registration is now closed!

- Update 1

- Update 2

- Update 3

- Update 4

- Update 5

This video is the latest from the Mix Magazine film sound series of profiles & discusses Francis Ford Coppola’s film “Tetro” with re-recording mixer Pete Horner. Check out the video series on the Mix channel on vimeo.

Heres the trailer for Tetro:

Project management is a term that makes me shudder – I imagine ‘suits’ (or ‘salarymen’ as they are known in Japan) sweating & then feeling like they have done their days work after juggling a few assignments & shouting at a few people in the process of delegating. Even’ delegating’ is a term that makes me uneasy – it evokes feelings of handing off menial work that is unimportant. But with soundtracks we all know EVERY element is important & will get its chance to contribute…

All of this is the dichotomy of large scale film projects. The sheer amount of work involved means it must be spread amongst a number of people & that process is far from arbitrary, simply because assigning it to the wrong person will mean the supervisor will end up spending as much time checking, advising & then fixing work than if they had done it themselves…

Accordingly independent film is closer to my heart, where necessity means that one is involved in every aspect of the soundtrack. And having recently finished a large scale project it has been refreshing to get back to a comparatively independent project. And the most present joy thus far has been getting to record & cut ambiences.

And so I scheduled myself to spend a few days revisiting locations from the film, recording & experiencing the ambiences of the scenes I had been working on. And I got to thinking how important this process is. It goes beyond the necessities of a technically functional soundtrack – it is about a sense of place.

I cant speak for anyone but myself, but from my point of view New Zealand is a place where the environment overpowers the humans. While I believe this to be an intrinsic part of being a New Zealander, when I travel this sense remains with me and I do not think it is solely a kiwi trait. Take one of my literary heroes, Aldous Huxley: “My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of church going”

So when it comes to building & layering the sonic elements that comprise the ambiences for a film, where do we turn for our inspiration? Our sound library? Other peoples libraries? Well I know the only answer that means I don’t lie awake at night, worrying about the authenticity of the sonic environment in which the films I work on exist: we revisit those locations, preferably at a similar time of year as the shoot, and capture an extensive library of material…. as both source elements & as reference.

See one of the locations in the film made me stop & think: what does it sound like in there? ‘there’ being a series of tunnels linking gun emplacements in the now laughable quest of protecting our borders from foreign invasion… Dripping water? Scary draft winds? But the tunnels are surrounded by ocean, so how does that filer into our senses? And how does it vary relative to where you (and/or the scene) are located?
The two answers are (1) we can try to ‘fake’ or recreate it or (2) we go do our homework, in person, to both listen/experience & record…. I sure know which I prefer and some sounds when taken out of context may well have none of features required to evoke the reality of being there, and so the memory of how it felt is every bit as important as any recordings…. And thats why I believe it essential to visit the locations, to establish a personal reference that will be relied on when editing, premixing the ambiences & final mixing the film….

The same often applies to specific sound effects. As a good example I will always remember recording Burt Munros Indian motorbike for World’s Fastest Indian. I had read of how it was loud, due to the exhaust acting as a trumpet…. but when I heard wildtrack recordings from the shoot I had no personal point of reference. But whoah when I stood in front of it! 15 seconds and I knew EXACTLY how physically loud it was!! Ditto for the feeling a doppler pass created….. ditto for the way it sounded from the distance…. Those memories were a very important part of being able to hold an opinion as to how the mix was sounding, months later….. and DITTO for every location I visited recording ambiences….

ps: if you are planning a visit to North Head in Auckland, this PDF map will be helpful….

“MEXICO CITY (AP) – Scientists were fascinated by the ghostly find: a human skeleton buried in an Aztec temple with a clay, skull-shaped whistle in each bony hand. But no one blew into the noisemakers for nearly 15 years. When someone finally did, the shrill, windy screech made the spine tingle. If death had a sound, this was it.

Roberto Velazquez believes the Aztecs played this mournful wail from the so-called Whistles of Death before they were sacrificed to the gods. The 66-year-old mechanical engineer has devoted his career to recreating the sounds of his pre-Columbian ancestors, producing hundreds of replicas of whistles, flutes and wind instruments unearthed in Mexico’s ruins.
For years, many archaeologists who uncovered ancient noisemakers dismissed them as toys. Museums relegated them to warehouses. But while most studies and exhibits of ancient cultures focus on how they looked, Velazquez said the noisemakers provide a rare glimpse into how they sounded.
“We’ve been looking at our ancient culture as if they were deaf and mute,” he said. “But I think all of this is tied closely to what they did, how they thought.”

read more here

And some low rez samples (some of them sound scary as hell!)

More about Roberto Velazquez in this video:

FWIW I just ordered an Aztec Death Whistle from here

I’ve never had any trouble tuning instruments, but by instruments I really mean guitar or bass… An electric guitar was my very first instrument & I busted a few strings learning how to tune it… then followed a number of bass guitars (including a $500 Rickenbacker in an auction) until my pride & joy, a Maton fretless bass. Being fretless meant I had to learn how to tune it using harmonics, which once your relative pitch detecting ear is up to speed is no problem…
Occasionally editing sound effects I end up having to tune any sounds with defined pitch to whatever music is in the same scene, apart from any sound designy tones obvious examples include bells, sustained metal, ship horns & even the occasional phone ring….
My basic method for tuning sound effects to music is to use the ProTools AudioSuite PITCH plugin and first select a piece of the music with clearly defined pitch (ie a sustained note/decay) and it is a LOT easier if it is the tonic note of the progression. Open Pitch Audiosuite plug and enable Reference pitch. Click preview and you should hear the piece of music looping, then slowly raise the Reference pitch LEVEL until you can hear the Reference tone over the music. Now move the Reference pitch NOTE value until the tone is in tune with the music… You shouldnt need to use the DETUNE slider with music unless it has been through some kind of speed change or incorrect sample rate conversion…

Now disable preview and go select the sound effect that needs tuning, enable preview & change the COARSE (& then FINE) pitch control up top until the sound effect is in tune with the Reference pitch. Once you’re happy process the pitch of the sound effect, preferably without TIME CORRECTION unless sync is an issue!
Easy huh?

Now tuning guitars, basses & most sound effects is easy, and its not something you have to worry too much about in the world of sample librarys and softsynths – they’ve all been painstakingly tuned by someone else… But a year ago or so I picked up an antique zither via an auction and believe me, it is a P.I.T.A. to tune! It holds its tune ok but the problem is there are too many strings! This zither has 4 sets of four strings which are tuned to chords, then theres a C Major scale of notes. So instead of 4 or 6 notes to tune theres 32 strings! And thats after I took off the unison strings of the high octave. A bit mroe recently I picked up a gu zheng which has 16 strings & I’m not even sure what scale to how to tune it to!?! So I’ve been keeping an eye out for an affordable solution and today I came across one: STROBOSOFT! And more so than your average software developer, The Peterson Company have a history in what they do that precedes any computer you or I will have used! In fact they made their first strobe tuner back in 1967.
Most people have used normal old guitar tuners, that have a meter much like VU level meters, but the strobe tuner offers a more accurate display of pitch; 30 times more accurate according to wikipedia!
So the Peterson company make both hardware and software based strobe tuners; the hardware versions being fairly expensive & I braced myself when checking the price of their software version but the StroboSoft only costs US$79.99! And it works a treat – my zither sounds sweet!!!

So how do you use it? The Strobosoft is a freestanding application that uses whatever hardware your Mac or PC has, from built in mic or line level through to accessing ProTools HD hardware via core audio. In my case I plugged a mic into my Apogee Mini-Me preamp, plugged it digitally into PT HD spdif input, setup core audio so Input 1 was digital and booted up Strobosoft. Once I told it to access the PT hardware input 1 I got a signal. I set Strobosoft to Chromatic tune (you can also select any number of instrument presets, so its knows what note/s to look for if you are tuning cello, guitar etc) and the strobe display started spinning as it tried to tune the ambient sound in my studio. I plucked a note and it latched on to the closest, with the strobe display moving to indicate how far off I was… Its easy to understand once you have it running in front of you but I’ll try & explain:

Think of the blocky blue & grey display to the right of the note display E, as four vertical dials. When your note is flat or sharp all four dials will spin (ie the blocks move) up/down. As you get closer in pitch the first dial will stop moving, followed by the second one and the third until you are very very close to being perfectly in tune. By this time the Cents display will be down to +/- a few cents… Depending on how good your tuning pegs are its then just a matter of very subtle tweaks to get the fourth dial stationery, and then its on to the next string. Its so easy to use and best of all very, very accurate! Check it out

And yes it would be damn handy as a plugin: VST and RTAS! I am not sure if they have any plans to ever port it but I sure wish they would!!!! I’ve emailed the company to enquire so will report back here….

Ahar! Based on comments in their user forume a VST version will be soon released & an RTAS version is likely, but not likely any time soon…. but can always use a VST wrapper to make it accessible in ProTools!

And just got a helpful email from the company directly; “StroboSoft 2.0 will be released within a few weeks and one of the biggest new features is VST/AU support. Protools users will require a wrapper. Here is a full feature set and hi-res photo of 2.0