Unleashing the Power of Sound: Exploring the Intricacies of Sound Design

The Importance of Sound Design

Ever tried watching a movie without sound effects? It actually spoils the experience. Or better yet, try watching a horror movie without the audio sounds it typically comes with. You will find it lacks much of the scare element that suspenseful music adds to it.

Sound designers create audio effects that help viewers and listeners understand the mood of the scene. It’s part of the storytelling experience and sets up the right atmosphere for the story. Consider this: a highly tense moment between characters is accompanied by lively, comical music. Would that improve your watching experience, or ruin it?

Evolution and Applications of Sound Design

Sound editors have been around for about as long as various media forms have. However, the term sound designer was first coined by Francis Coppola for Walter Murch, for his work on Apocalypse Now in 1972. However, the term was not widely adopted much later. For example, sound designer Ben Burtt was originally only credited with Sound Effects for his outstanding work on Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope, in 1977.

From there began the official recognition of creative sound design as a separate art form, rather than as part of the technical skills of the crew. Today, it’s become an independent profession encompassing various industries. Even video games come with their own audio elements complete with musical scores.

Fundamentals of Sound

To understand sound design, we must first understand how sound works. Here’s a little breakdown:

Understanding Sound Waves

When we produce sounds, they create vibrations, pushing air molecules together. These air molecules under pressure push on other molecules, creating high pressure. As this pressure travels, it causes the receptors in our ears to vibrate, producing sound. The waveform you often see that represents audio indicates these high-pressure waves.

The Physics of Sound

The vibration of the voice box, a guitar string, and the speakers on your phone, all create sound. These vibrations produce sound waves that leave our ear drums vibrating- that’s what sound is. Converted into nerve signals, “sound” travels up to our brains, is converted into electricity, and is understood as sound by us.

Perception and Psychoacoustics

The human ability to perceive sound is limited between 20Hz to 20 kHz. Despite this range, all humans perceive sound differently- even if it is playing at the exact same decibel.

Psychoacoustics is the study of the complexities of human sound perception, and it has a great influence on music production. In sound mixing or masking, various techniques allow a different experience of sound to be created.

Your sonic palette is, therefore, a combined mixture of what you hear, and how you perceive it. Most sound designers use this understanding of psychoacoustics in audio production.

Elements of Sound Design

Designing sound can be something of a complicated task- with a number of factors involved. Let’s break down these sound design elements.

Sound Effects

Sound effects (or Sound FX) are part of the sound design process, using an artificially created sound. These serve artistic value in various media forms. The famous Wilhelm Scream or castle thunder are examples of iconic movie sounds, originating from sound libraries from the 1950s.

Types of Sound Effects

There are many types of sound effects, all of which serve different purposes in sound designs. The most common examples include

• Background noise, sound effects that indicate a particular location
• Spot sound effects for a particular moment, like a closing car door
• Foley effects, for action sounds
• Design sound effects, that are artificially made
• Production effects that are recorded during filming.

Creating and Manipulating Sound Effects

Real-life sounds are sourced from nature and don’t really require production. Designed sounds, however, undergo some editing to create original sounds. For example, some sounds, like that of a punch landing, are enhanced, to convey its force.

Synthesized sound effects are created using a synthesizer to produce signals used for artificial sounds. To create sound effects that don’t exist in nature, they are produced by a combination of real-life sounds, synthesizers, and during the post-production process.

The BKP Group sound library features a comprehensive collection of music and sound effects, giving you a great selection of pre-recorded music to choose from!

Foley Artistry

Foley artistry is intended to replicate everyday sounds: footstep sounds, a door opening, a paper bag rustling- you name it. Adding everyday sounds into any media form enhances its realism. However, capturing clear sound during production is difficult. These sounds are later created by foley artists post-production, and synchronized with the video.

Techniques and Tools for Foley Artistry

A foley artist will use some of the most creative sound design techniques- which is what makes it so interesting. A rolled-up phone book, for example, is great for producing punching sounds. Snap a few celery sticks and it sounds like bones breaking.

Music Composition and Soundtracks

Music composition and soundtracks have a particularly important role to play in film sound. Music production itself can include instrumental and vocal productions for a variety of media. Soundtracks on the other hand combine a number of compositions from various artists for a single media product, such as a film.

1. Impact of Music in Sound Design

In a film, TV show, or video game, the sound design indicates the tone and emotions of the scene. These provide auditory cues to the audience on how they should feel: excited, sad, anxious, fearsome, or more.

Techniques for Creating Memorable Soundtracks

What makes a soundtrack memorable? Many sound designers and music editors follow a simple set of rules for creating a soundtrack the audience never forgets.

• Allow the music to follow the frame movement
• Add visual elements that support or juxtapose the audio effects- the Kuleshov effect
• Use expert music composition to tie everything together

A fully equipped music studio is important to bring great compositions to life. The BKP Group offers all the right tools- with help from industry experts to get you started!

Sound Design In Film and Television, Video Games, and Marketing

Sound design features in multiple media forms, and plays a unique role in each to promote it.

Film and Television

Every film or TV show you have ever seen featured some kind of music. Sound design helps this media form convey the mood and emotions of a scene to the audience.

Sound design serves another important function. It is used for automatic dialogue replacement (ADR), which replaces pre-production movie dialogue with recorded audio and voice-over during post-production for better sound quality.

Video Games

Interactive and adaptive sound design among foley sounds seeks to achieve the right balance between sounds and visuals. To provide a better experience, the sound adjusts to the context of the video.

This type of smooth shift of music occurs to support a scene change. It also influences the way players view each situation based on the feedback they receive.

Marketing and Branding

Sonic branding creates memorable sounds that create a better user experience and enhance brand awareness. McDonald’s “I’m lovin’ it” jingle was on the tongue of every kid in the early 2000s.

Such sounds also create an emotional attachment to the brand, pushing audiences to check them out.