In the post below I link to an interview I did with the fantastic Nathan Lively for the Sound Design Live podcast.
I thought long and hard about the title Nathan gave this piece, but went with it. However, I’m not sure I’ve ever dropped out of anything. I’ve always worked hard and been a committed collaborator…but you know the title is kind of catchy.
So why did I leave school at such a young age? There were indeed two main reasons, the first was undetected dyslexia, which was common at the time, the other, quite simply, was that my school was intended to do no more than churn out cheap labour for the local factories. There was no way I was going to fall into that trap…ever. My school didn’t have a 6th form, so continuing my education beyond that age was never an option which was open to me. I sussed them out before they had chance to deliver me into a world of, what I would have considered, futile and un-fulfilling employment.
So with little or no support, or any real care, from those responsible for my education the only option was to go it alone and hope for the best. I was lucky. (The harder I worked the luckier I got etc. etc.)
What I didn’t get time to speak about was the hours I spent building amplifiers which sometimes worked, learning how to mix and scratch vinyl long before it became a known or accepted art form and a great bunch of friends who kind of just accepted me for trying to be a footballer, rock musician, sound engineer. I worked hard at learning everything I could.
I didn’t fit in to the overall plan the education authorities had for me and I knew that there was a better life for me somehow and somewhere.
I’ve always believed that in some cases qualifications are not a measure of intelligence, but an award for being able to remember enough information to pass an exam. I also know that I’ve had a better education than money could ever buy from a wonderful group of experienced mentors who have supported and taught me so much (many of them, even today, continue to do so).
The OISTAT Sound Design Working Group is once again planning to contribute to World Listening Day.
Below is some general information and guidelines for participating in this year’s OISTAT World Listening Day 2012. All submissions will be via DropBox. For further details and an invitation to the SDWG DropBox please contact wlddetails@gmail.com
Concept For This Year:
“Macro-lens for the ear: sounds that are missed or not heard in the din of everyday life. Like a magnifying glass reveals the geometric complexity of a fly’s eye or the structural coloration of a butterfly’s scales, we’re asking for entries that reveal the small details sounds we take for granted as well as those that are hidden from most ears..”
Submission Guidelines:
-Each piece should be 3-5 minutes in duration.
-.wav file submissions are preferred.
-When you submit your file, please list your first and last name, followed by an underscore and a description of your piece. Follow the example below.
When you have completed your file, simply drop the bounced stereo .wav file into the “FINAL WLD SUBMISSIONS” folder and I will take care of the rest. wlddetails@gmail.com
A WLD Webinar -we wil be sharing and discusing our files on-line, further details to follow
Back in 2005 I designed a show called Harvey, the original stage version of the 1950 film which starred James Stewart. As you may remember the actual star of this story is a 6 foot something invisible rabbit…which I had to design. Creating Harvey was the first time I used a piece of software called Audiomulch, which has remained the basis of all of my computer based studio systems since. Sure, Adobe Audition, Reaper, ProTools, Reason and occassionally Cubase all get a look in, but for the real complex things I find that I turn to Audiomulch every time. I even released an album a couple of years ago created entirely using this software (available for free here!).
This item of extremely versatile and cost effective software has been a real workhorse for me and has had amazingly few updates over the years. It just works and works well.
Now some of you may have read, or been part of conversations, I’ve had about some of my frustrations with the currently available items of Show Control/Playback software. Although brilliant at what they do, for me they lack a certain amount of creativity and flexibility, I’ve never felt that they’re design tools but more suited to simply playing back your finished work. As someone who works in theatre I’ve always felt that the auditorium and rehearsal room should be the place to create your designs, not the isolation of the recording studio before taking your finished work into the theatre. A luxury, I have to say, I’m not always afforded.
However….
It it looks as if the answer to all my issues (and I stress that they’re my issues not those of the overall theatre sound design community, who seem perfectly happy … most of the time) has been staring at me every time I’ve turned on my laptop. Audiomulch.
Now most basic media players (Windows Media Player, iTunes, WinAmp) have basic EQ, most Show Control/Playback software doesn’t (yet?), none (yet…again) can host VST effects, or have any on-board FX and as yet none enable you to use simple midi controllers when creating or playing back your shows. Audiomulch has all of these and more. The first problem for me, which I believe I’ve now addressed, in a show situation is that Audiomulch doesn’t have a decent front end, an easy simple looking graphical interface which lists your sound cues etc.
So my plan is this…and I’ll take you on my journey which will either end in success or failure…I’m going to design a show to be created and played back on Audiomulch hopefully soon but more likely later this year. The graphical interface problem is easily solved I’ll just send midi commands from, either one of the existing pieces of Show Control/Playback software or dig out an old version of Mat Mckenzies excellent G-Type. The look and control will therefore be taken care of but most importantly the tools at my (and the operators) disposal greatly enhanced.
Did I mention that Audiomulch runs on both Mac O/S and Windows (similar to Ableton which has also been suggested as an alternative)? Has some great effects included all the items which you control are wonderfully called contraptions! The excellent meta surface is the killer app for me right now and I can see that being a truly creative tool whilst sitting in the auditorium building shows.
I’m prepared to fail but I’m going to give this a go, because for me if I succeed it will be putting the creativity back into my design work on the shop floor and not in the studio…and with a decent XY midi controller the operator should also be able to carry out some complicated routines in real time during the performance….wish me (and them) luck!
Back on the 19th February 2008 I (rather badly) wrote this on my Sharawadji blog …
Searching for imperfection.
Some thoughts from my train journey today… Are we losing our individualism in a search for perfection?
Computers have, in no small way, contributed to this as, as an example, they offer us all the same fonts and spell-checker facilities. Anyone in the world could write these sentences in Arial 12pt. Apart from my choice of words and the order I decided to place them in, what singles out this piece of writing from anyone else’s, where is my individual stamp? How do you even know that I’ve written this? My handwriting is a left handed dyslexic scrawl, often difficult to read, so Arial 12pt at least gives me some hope of being understood. But it’s exactly this, my scrawl, that separates me and identifies me, along with the crossed out, wrongly spelt words and doodles in the margin. Who is to blame? William Caxton? Henry Mill? Gates and Jobs? How can you be an individual when your writing looks like everyone else’s? Handwritten songs and music from Lennon to Bach sell for thousands of pounds at auctions, but what now? If a lyric or piece of music is written using a word processor where is the interest and soul in that? The mistakes and rewrites are deleted the spelling is usually correct and it’ll be cut, copied and pasted to perfection, the anguish, struggles and mistakes, which any great artist goes through when creating are lost and with it also, possibly our understanding of the work itself.
As I’m writing this my (poor) grammar is being highlighted, how dare this software offer an opinion in such a way. Is your choice of font about as much of a symbol of your individuality as it now gets?
I use computers everyday, I compose and create, I write, I edit my photographs, but how am I really able to keep the processes I go through which, in years to come, will validate the decisions I make/made.
Have we become just too obsessed with this neatness and common form? What can we do to maintain any individualism (red underlined check spelling) when creating on our computers?
I think I’m searching for a way to highlight the many imperfections which single me out and make me, me.
I suppose it’s quite natural for us all to want the finished ‘product’ to be as good as it can be, but I also think we should not shy away from sharing the mistakes which we all make achieving this. This is where I fell asleep, somewhere around Three Bridges…no doubt to be continued…
What I find interesting about re-reading these thoughts is how much these concerns can be translated to certain other aspects of my life, not only with respect to my sound design, but also with regards to how my designs are realised by the sound operator.
In Praise of the Sound Operator!
In my early days whilst operating shows for the cream of British sound designers there was nothing more satisfying than a ‘clean’ show, a faultless performance. In those days (which actually wasn’t so long ago) the operator was responsible for firing any number of playback machines, fading up, fading down, cross fading, routing both sound effects and music (sometimes live, sometimes recorded) to any one or combination of loudspeakers, resetting EQ and auxiliaries, changing reverb settings etc. etc, all whilst keeping one eye firmly on the stage and the other firmly on a cue light. Complex and often very quick sequences of events where practised and rehearsed until they were right, if a mistake was made you had to have a plan up your sleeve to get things back on track with little, or no, disruption to the performance you were in no small way contributing to. It was often nerve wracking, flying by the seat of your pants experience, and not really a job for the feint-hearted. It was often a wonderful adrenalin fuelled rush. It was your live real-time contribution to a live real-time performance.
However things change, [good] sound operators are expensive, producers often want to cut costs and increase profits and computers have become an important part of our design process. I used to play the drums (insert drummer joke of your choice here) and I was also around when drum machines first became usable and, of course, everyone bought one in the hope that they too would become Depeche Mode. For a few years every hit record had a drum machine of one sort or another strictly keeping the tempo (interestingly so many of the good sound designers I know were also drummers). Soon it became obvious to music producers and audiences that (certainly in live situations) something was missing, performances were becoming just too automated and lacking any real soul…drummers started getting work again and music returned to sounding like music…once more it began to reflect our human emotions in the way songwriters and musicians intended us to appreciate and respond to their compositions. Sure, drum machines are still around, but are used far more sparingly and appropriately than when they first became prominent. For your information barely a week passes when I don’t spend at least a little time programming one myself for some project or another.
The point I’m trying to make is that the music industry rightly embraced an item of technology before returning to what is actually more beneficial to the art of music making, and in doing so giving a particular skill and responsibility back to the specialist. The question I’m asking is this, as sound designers isn’t this something we should also consider? Have we become so obsessed with our designs that human interaction (and along with that the risk of the operator making mistakes) has become something we’re no longer willing to accept?
Sure sound systems have become more complex but along with that we’re losing the human interaction in what will always be a live performance situation. Some of the things we now require are often impossible to do unless we breed a regiment of multi-armed operators, but other things haven’t changed and we’ve taken the responsibility of also doing these away from a person. In doing so are we losing the connection between the operator, performer and audience member?
Every aspect of my design work has been in some way influenced by the vast array of sound design talent I was lucky enough to work with as an operator, I understood exactly what they were trying to achieve, I had to in order to realise those requests on a nightly basis, now when an operator presses GO or NEXT is there any real understanding about the sequence of often complex events they are setting in motion and will this lack of knowledge affect the sound designs of the future?
Shouldn’t we just be more trusting, more often? Shouldn’t we insist that our work is realised and looked after by a fully trained, briefed, rehearsed and trusted human being? Isn’t what we do after all, ‘live’ performance? Isn’t live performance, whether that is music, dance, or drama, a group of human beings sharing the same space to present and experience something together, an interaction? Shouldn’t we be giving at least some of our sound design contribution back to a person to ‘perform’ on our behalf eight times a week? Have we lost confidence and trust in people to such an extent that we’re taking the responsibility for our work away from them and perhaps by doing so actually compromising our contribution to live performance? A live event. The benefits of show control are undoubtedly enormous but my feeling is that it is dangerous to completely lose all of the human element from our work.
So many questions!
Much like a composer watching an accomplished musician playing their music nothing gives me greater joy than watching a good operator play my sound and interacting not only with my design but also, and most importantly, with the performers whose work they’re supporting by doing so.
My feeling is that we need to at least start the conversation about how we create human interfaces which still allow us to program complex sequences into our preferred show control/playback software but which also allow more human interaction with how these actions can be realised in a real-time, live, situation.
I have nothing but praise for good sound operators and long may they continue (despite the economic pressures often imposed on us) to flourish. The benefits, not only for a production, but also the future of our art, is firmly in their hands.
I’m loving listening to the album Metals by Feist at the moment. I’ve been commuting everyday for the past few weeks between Brighton and London, a break in my day (something which I need enforced) … a wonderful couple of hours sat on a train, time to lose myself within a book, or inside some good music…
I’ve been so fortunate to be locked away (not literally, of course) in a rehearsal room with the fantastically vibrant, good humoured and talented cast of Moon on a Rainbow Shawl, the director Michael Buffong is skilled at creating an environment which enables people to excel and allows everyone to contribute to the production he is (most definitely) leading, in doing so he always gets the very best from those lucky enough to be on the creative journey with him. As we’re drawing close to our destination (the Press Night) I’m sure that we’d all like this whole process to continue rather than to end. The feeling is similar to that of playing in a band, where you all grow together and share in each others failures and enjoy your mutual successes.
Moon on a Rainbow Shawl is a wonderful play and well worth going to see if you find yourself in London, the intimacy of the Cottesloe Theatre lends its self perfectly to the production designed by Soutra Gilmour, beautifully lit by Jo Town and with some great music by Felix Cross . It’s a play which I believe most people who see it will be able to connect with in some way.
When I recently compiled a list of the plays that I’ve got most out of (both intellectually and personally) as a sound designer and which have deeply affected me as a person it was pointed out to me that all the playwrights were of African, or Caribbean descent, undoubtedly Errol John now joins that list. The writing of Lorraine Hansberry, August Wilson and now Errol John have spoken to me in greater depth than many of their European contemporaries. They seem to write honestly and from real personal experience, it’s more than purely an observation of an issue, situation, or character but something so much deeper, far more real. Although there is some great humour in Moon it doesn’t rely on this to get it’s message across. Pure, honest and unpretentious writing about situations and feelings which affect us all.
Look. I’m no great writer, critic or literary academic but all I can say is that it’s worth well worth the effort to go a take a look, to read and to think about the issues that Moon on a Rainbow Shawl raises.
Towards the end of the forthcoming week I start work on Miss Julie, August Strindberg, Sweden … and a whole different thought process.
My work, the process of what I try to achieve is purely conceptual and emotional and I’ve been getting a little wrapped recently up with issues about the tools I use in order to realise my ideas, I’ll write much more of this at another time. However, I’ve now realised that when issues about 1′s 0′s and inanimate objects drain my energy I need to re-focus and concentrate on how I’m going to tell and/or support a story I’ve been given the challenge of working on rather than let my thinking become derailed by all this nonsense. Thankfully I’ve now got back on track and I’ll leave those concerns to those who care about them a little more than I do. All I’ll say now (by way of a trailer) is that, for me, ’live’ performance is an art and not a science and the automation of events which are dictated by actual (real time) on-stage human actions is something which needs to be given much more consideration than I feel it currently is. When it takes more time to program an event into some computer software than it actually takes for a human to do the same (that is, physical actions which produce the same result) using the manual controls in front of them, then in my eyes that isn’t real progress. Maybe training and encouraging our show operators to interact with the live performers is a better way to spend what little money we have at our disposal? Automation isn’t the final solution, or in some case even a viable alternative, maybe it should just be considered as another effective option to add to our armoury. Just a question I’m thinking about.
On that note…I’m going to record the performance of a concert pianist, using midi, and offer that as a solution to the problems of presenting a live concert which may sometimes contain the occasional fluffed note…which , of course, is just a joke to end with, I promise you…
Finally this band is also worth checking out … g’night…
The theatre industry (certainly in the UK) is currently doing an enormous amount to address and correct the impact which our work and processes has on the environment, this is something which needs to be supported and we also all need to ensure that all of the fantastic work currently being done with respect to this issue continues. A conversation I had over the weekend led me to consider the impact my work may sometimes have in other areas of the world we all share and the impact it possibly has on the lives of others, this is an enormous and complex subject, below are few personal thoughts about all of this and a little more…I have no real answers but just plenty of questions…
I love my computers, they’ve opened my world and allow me to do so many creative things which I could only have dreamt about just a few years ago. The world, in all it’s horror and glory, is at my fingertips and I can explore our planet and beyond until my heart is content. I can create and easily share sounds which previously only existed in my head, I can also share my thoughts and ideas almost instantaneously, whilst I can provoke and support my friends with no more than a few keystrokes. My world is undoubtedly a better place because of computers, but like anything all of this comes with a cost and in common with all transactions, the financial and moral outlay all of this demands needs to be considered.
I’ll be honest and say that I’m suspicious about the benefits hardware and software manufacturers are getting from me/us/the user and possibly I should just ignore all of this doubt for my own sanity, but for my own peace of mind, I need to consider that what benefits me personally is not at the detriment of someone else’s (just as important) life.
When buying a computer am I buying a tool, or buying into a lifestyle? Why is the choice of tools/lifestyles available to me in computing terms relatively limited? I can be Mr Shiny and Popular Mac (who’s currently impersonating a Lion…grrrrrrrr), Mr Boring (always on the verge of a breakdown) PC, or the guy who stands alone in the corner at parties (blushing when a girl looks his way) Mr Linux. Those of you who know me will no doubt already have chosen what Operating System best describes the Steven Brown you think you know, maybe that’s where one of the problems exists as I might be considered all three. Anyway…
My thoughts. Firstly, PC. I like the fact I have a choice, a choice of graphics cards, a choice of processors, a choice sound cards, I can configure the hardware of a PC in any way I want, to suit the use I intend for it and importantly, to suit my budget. I own PC machines which have cost just a few hundred pounds to build and others which have cost a great deal more. But the downfall is using a Windows O/S, although this has greatly improved since Windows 7 it always seems to run programs and services which just aren’t needed for the uses I generally require from any computer, and in doing so slowing down processes, using up RAM and processor power. Although all of this can be relatively easily addressed however adding a new program or piece of software can severely compromise the reliability and stability of something that was seemingly working fine just an hour before. This generally causes a little swearing and no small amount of frustration…As close to open-source hardware as we have but I’ve got better things to be doing.
MAC, plain and simply, I want to decide the configuration of my machine, thanks for the advice but…I’ve just bought a new Mac Mini, it has a fantastic specification for something so small, second to none, but it doesn’t come with a CD/DVD player/writer, the Mac website helpfully TELLS me and I quote directly “Exactly what you need. And nothing you don’t. Mac mini is designed without an optical disc drive. Because these days, you don’t need one.” Hold on a minute how do you know I don’t need one? Actually I do. The arrogance of such statements really puts me off Apple as a company. I hate that over confident ‘I’m your friend’ kind of corporate attitude. Apple seem far more inclined to tell us all what it is we actually need rather than offering us choices to suit and what actually we might really want. Maybe a small thing for some, but sorry, not for me. The days of people telling me what I want, what I don’t want and how I should live my life ended a long time ago, the summer I waved goodbye to good ol’ Ma and Pa, I’m a grown up now and strange as it may seem I’m more than perfectly able to make my own decisions about all kinds of things, my life, my bank account, my employers, where I live and also, somewhat surprisingly, what I want from my computer.
Linux is something I like a lot, something which appeals to the maverick side of my personality. What concerns me is that it always seems to feel as if it’s still in development, something I know all O/S’s and software actually are, but I don’t always want to feel that slight insecurity when I’m entrusting it to host my work. Open-source is definitely the way for me, this is being written on OpenOffice which is my only office set of tools, I only use SeaMonkey as an email client, they’re stable and free and I have no wish to bolster Microsofts profits any more than I already have done. Which brings me too…
How do computer manufacturers contribute to the world which we all inhabit and are all responsible for?
Addressing the misuse and exploitation of labour is something which is dear to my heart. It’s always motivated by greed and the need to ensure that investors get the maximum return for their outlay. The worker is seen as a replaceable and unimportant part of the chain, the only real requirement from the product is maximum profit and all too often this is achieved with total disregard, or respect, for the lives which are negatively affected in achieving this goal. This for me is the real problem I face. I’m first and foremost a worker and always will be and have no grand designs above making a living and contributing, in some way (hopefully positively), to the world we live in.
I’m also in no doubt that there are numerous small software developers, for all platforms, which contribute vastly to the fields they create for. I can pay a few pounds for a piece of software, no problem, but the real beneficiary is those profiting from creating the O/S and/or hardware to host this small investment of mine and that’s where the exploitation begins. The host often costs more than the software it’s actually hosting and something, within my limited intellect and small brain, tells me this might actually be the wrong way round. If I, for example, wanted to buy a standalone reverb unit I wouldn’t then want to pay goodness knows how much more to someone else (who has nothing to do with the manufacture of said unit) in order for it to work. That I’m afraid is a fact as far as I’m concerned. You might want to create something which allows a person some creativity, or the ability to solve a problem, but you can only do this if you work within the parameters set and dictated by someone sitting in their ivory Silicon Valley tower (or less sexily in an open-plan office just off the M4 near Basingstoke) thus adding to their coffers as well as to the persons who’s grafted and worked hard to develop a piece of software. This all seems wrong to me, however that is me looking at things selfishly…
Lets look towards supporting those less well off than me (or possibly you) who are manufacturing our devices. There has been much written about this recently and all has been done far more eloquently than I’m able to. Maybe a quick look around the internet will offer a little more information about all of this, or perhaps maybe it won’t.
Now my real problem is how I deal with my conscience and the responsibilities I have to deliver what I’m paid to professionally create, do I just ignore what I believe to be wrong? Or do I try and address the situation and raise awareness? How do I live with the guilt I often feel? (Write a blog?)
I have no wish to buy into a ‘lifestyle’ I have one which I’ve created myself and which has nothing whatsoever to do with the things I own but it has everything, to do with what I think and what I believe to be right (and have, on occasion, also been proved to be wrong). I’m not the latest Blackberry, iPad or version of Windows, I’m a human being whose basic responsibility is to respect and if possible help those who perhaps don’t enjoy the perceived freedom I have, this is far more important [to me] than ‘needing’ to own the latest must-have gadget, or piece of software. Although I’ll be the first to admit that I to am so often seduced by what is being marketed to me by Microsoft, Sony, Apple, Nokia and the rest, all of whom are constantly tempting me, flattering me and prodding my conscience in order to access my bank balance. You flirts.
So for me Mac isn’t any better, or any worse than a PC because in essence (and ignoring the temptations they offer us) they’re both as bad as each other. The choices I make are based firstly on my real needs and never on what I’m told will enhance my life, or by what happens to be in-fashion this season. I now question everything when it comes to giving money to the mega-corporations who are increasingly dictating to us that certain products will enhance, or simplify our lives whilst often fulfilling needs we didn’t know we even had…but now they come to mention it…
