Sound design

Everyone here has good thoughts and advice. Thank you. What do you think about the fashion for certain sounds? Why do some sounds become classics while others are forgotten? Is it just a great performance by famous musicians or is it a secret in the sound itself?

If it makes enough producers say ‘that sounds awesome, I’m going to recreate/use it’ then it will be used again and again. But if a unique sound gets used so much in a short space of time it will probably become boring or passé pretty quickly. But if (and it’s a big if) it has just the right mix of not drawing too much attention to itself while also sounding awesome in lots of contexts it will probably survive for many years to come.

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In general, everything is correct. But here’s what to do with violins, pianos, rhodes … These sounds have been used for many years. I cannot say that this is outdated. Do you think this is just a problem of the lack of alternatives and then a habit of musicians and listeners? Or do these instruments simply have certain vibrations and that is what makes them an ageless classic? I am interested in your opinion

Just let your inspiration be your guide. Also look at some other musicians who are into your style and see what kind of tools they use.

For me it’s more of a hybrid approach to sound design. So recording sound fx in the field, building sound installations and layering synthetic sounds to get the idea.

For most sound designers it’s more like a ‘serious hobby’ instead of ‘pro’ because they also do other related work.

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this is such a interesting thing to think about, and i’m sure there are very profound things written by people in philosophy (aesthetics) or sociology (cultural evolution, sounds as “memes” fighting for cultural dominance). i like to think that musical sounds can form a kind of “vocabulary”, and the cliched/corny sounds are very appealing to me because they seem to be a part of everybody’s sound vocabulary. its incredibly hard to say WHY these particular sounds become a part of our collective vocabulary, but i definitely think things stick around because a shared vocabulary is appealing for listeners. maybe it all corresponds strongly with some sort of materialist view of history, idk - i hope some kind of marxist academic has written about the history of synthesized sounds, would love to read something like that.

i love those instantly recognizable sounds pretty much everybody knows (although many people might not know they know!), e.g., the 808 cowbell, fairlight orchestra hit, rhodes piano, dx7 epiano, etc. I really really love when somebody uses these cliched sounds playfully/saracastically or incorporates them in a way that straddles the edge of “cool” and “very not cool”. i think to have a dialogue with the listener, you need to use sounds that are in their vocabularly while carefully introducing new ones as well. sound design is so cool because it feels like you a interacting with history and an imagined future at the same time. i think this is why i love the albums of Oneohtrix Point Never so much.

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I love how the Amen Break is a sub-language all its own. There’s now dialects of Amen as people sample others’ edits and resamples.

(I’ve dropped out of that game, so I can’t point at examples)

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I think it’s impossible to fully remove sounds and music from the cultures they’re embedded in. Each time you use a sound, you’re both referencing the earlier culture in your music, and (hopefully) creating a mutation of it.

I suppose that if a sound gets used enough, in enough contexts, then its old contexts merge and become less important (violins, flutes, drums).

Some sounds are very sticky tho’. It’s really hard to use bagpipes without giving the impression of hills and archaic formal dress.

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@Octagonist “dialects of Amen” :rofl: YES, i know what you mean

i think its interesting how certain “sticky” sounds become palatable and unpalatable again. for example, at one time i imagine the harpsichord and clavier only invoked the image of baroque cathedrals and fancy european wigs, and as it was being parodied to death in the novelty records of the 50s and 60s, you started to hear some serious funk players throw it into the mix. now you hear clav and think equal parts mozart and stevie wonder! lets see if bagpipes get a similar treatment

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It’s coming…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RbVuDuCYMY

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Oh sweet lord

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Thanks! I still haven’t worked out how to post links properly!

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All other things aside, that space looks like an acoustic hell… (for mic’ing a band at least)

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Thought I was ready, wasn’t ready. Nonetheless, fire

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Is the composition more important than all the elements included in it? Or is each element the most important thing in the composition? We have studied the patterns in writing music well. The patterns in sound creation are a very closed topic. Perhaps some elements are open, but I have not met the knowledge collected in one place. Can any of you advise on current published research on perceptions, preferences, affecting feelings, etc.? Thank you

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Check out psychoacoustics and hearing science, these fields are interested in the scientific modeling and analysis of sound perception by humans. I’ve only read Signals, Sounds, and Perceptions but I found to be a really interesting and an accessible introduction to psychoacoustics and as well as more technical things like signal processing (good intro to the Fourier transform and the frequency domain). A lot of this research has already been implemented in sound engineering through concepts like masking

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Thank you

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Super energetic

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Bandstands (and I assume bowls) are weird spaces.

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I find in the literature descriptions of incredibly powerful emotions, for example, when listening to a violin, people cry. I have never experienced such emotions. I love violin but … Have you experienced strong emotions (to tears) while listening to music? What do you think is just your context? Execution? Frequency? Something else?