11

Approaches and Techniques

There’s no textbook way to prepare a design or composition for a production. It’s not as easy as saying, “Take a storm, add some underscoring and scene change music, and you’ll have a wonderful sound design for The Tempest.” Every production of a play is different, and each production presents a different set of possibilities for the composer and/or designer. At one end of the spectrum, there are straightforward productions containing a handful of realistic effects taken directly from sound libraries. At the other end, there are productions that call for numerous unrealistic effects, each one needing to be created from scratch. This range of needs and diverse approaches is not limited to sound effects. Compositions can call for something as uncomplicated as a solo piano or as involved as an ensemble of experimental instruments. A sound reinforcement job could be as simple as providing one microphone for a mime to covering the needs of a Broadway musical.

Because of the varying nature of the designs you may be asked to create, you have to learn many different techniques in order to manufacture the cues. Such techniques include:

Deciding on your design approach is as important as perfecting your techniques. For example, if you were designing The Night of the Iguana, one of the sounds you’d need to create would be the iguana trying to free itself from its confinement under the veranda. Assuming that you wanted to record something that sounds like the clawing and scratching of an iguana, you would use a portable recorder to gather those sounds, then edit them into a specific idea and have them play through a loudspeaker concealed on the set under the veranda. There are, however, other approaches. One option would be to get an iguana, put it in a box with some leaves, and record it trying to get free. Or you could decide what the iguana would be clawing through, collect those items, and record someone moving and scratching through them, her hand imitating the sporadic movements of an iguana. Or you could not record at all, but do the effect live, with someone under the stage making those sounds. Any of these choices can work well if the designer knows how to execute it.

Let’s say you want to record someone’s hand imitating the sound of the rustling iguana. There are still many choices to make. What would the reptile move through, and why? What will the human hand move through, and how? The script indicates that the iguana is tied up below the veranda near the “cactus clumps.” Cactus doesn’t make much noise when moved—and the iguana isn’t likely to rub against it—but there’s certainly other vegetation around, since the play takes place in a Mexican rain forest. The set design may also offer clues about the terrain on which the iguana moves. You’ve decided, then, that the iguana is moving through dry, dead leaves, old beer cans or bottles (depending on whether cans or bottles are being used in the production), and wooden crates—items that could conceivably be found under the veranda. The iguana would be trying to claw its way free from its constraints.

With this knowledge, you can collect the items you need to create the “iguana hand.” Gather some dry leaves and a plastic shopping bag, both of which sound like dry vegetation when moved. A few empty soup cans should simulate period beer cans, which were constructed of heavier metal than those in current use. Some bottles and a small wooden box should fulfill your needs. Place these items in a mini-landscape simulating the layout underneath the veranda. Once the recording equipment is set up, you’re ready to make the iguana sounds. Imagine that your hand is the iguana—move around, struggling to get yourself free. A flick of a finger might bang two cans together while you run your hand through the dead leaves onto a plastic bag. This should provide an interesting variety of sounds. Don’t forget to experiment with different microphone placements. You might not get exactly the right sound you want if your setup has been miked too closely or too distantly.

The following discussion of design techniques can help you create cues, and offers various approaches to your work as a sound designer.

CREATING STYLIZED EFFECTS

What is the sound of death? You can’t pull that cue off of a sound effects CD. This sound can only come from your imagination. Many stylized effects can be found and produced by manipulating already existing sounds. Radically changing the speed and/or pitch at which a sound is heard, for example, can give it a completely different character.

Effects made up of very low frequencies are felt more than they are heard. A chilling presence can be added to a scene by using rumbles with frequencies from 80 Hz and below. Adding a low-frequency boom into an explosion completes the effect. Imagine the impact on an audience of children if the footsteps of the giant from Jack and the Beanstalk actually caused the room to vibrate. (They would wet their pants!) Placing loudspeakers on the floor and/or against walls can accentuate lower frequencies, but to reproduce frequencies such as these, you usually have to use a substantial, high-power subwoofer.

You can lower the pitch of a sound by using a sampler, pitch shifter, or software. If you assign a sample throughout the entire keyboard, you can “audition” the sound at different pitches very easily. You can also play more than one key at a time and hear how combinations of pitches mixed together will sound. Blending sounds together on a sampler can be an effective design tool (pun intended). Note that pitching a sound up on a sampler will make it play back faster than the original, and pitching it down will make it play slower. If that presents a timing problem, you might consider using a pitch shifter, which changes the pitch of a sound but not its speed. Pitch shifting, a feature found on some digital effects units, can yield great results—some units can move a sound’s pitch as much as two octaves, which should be enough to transform any sound. Pitchshifting software allows you to raise or lower the pitch of a sound over a wide range. You are given the option of preserving the length of the sound. Trying to maintain the length of a sound that is being radically pitched may create what is referred to as artifacts. Artifacts, or glitches, are generated when the pitch shifter or pitch-shifting software is asked to work outside the limits of its musical range. Pitching a sound down may cause an effect called aliasing. Aliasing sounds like a high-frequency sizzle has been added to the sound. It can be attenuated from the sound by filtering out the high frequencies of the sound. Just as a weed can be defined as any plant (even a rose) growing where it is not desired, these artifacts and imperfections may show up unexpectedly and can transform a sound in a way that you can use to your advantage. A good designer stays receptive to new sounds, even if they weren’t what he was looking for.

You should also explore other techniques to create new sounds. Try mixing unrelated sounds together, playing sounds or music backward, using subliminal sounds, or processing sounds with radical amounts of equalization, reverberation, delay, or other effects.

AVOIDING UNIDENTIFIABLE EFFECTS

There will be times when you’ll listen to an effect from a sound library and find it hard to recognize what you’re hearing. Prime examples of this are noise-based sounds such as rain and fire. Recordings of fire often sound like radio static or white noise, while prerecorded rain can sometimes sound like bacon frying. Listen to every cue with fresh ears. When playing back the sounds you’ve created, ask yourself if you’d be able to recognize them if they were heard completely out of context. Certainly a dog bark or a police siren would be easy to identify, but how do you approach less distinctive sounds like fire and rain?

In Chapter 2, we discussed finding the essence of a design. In order to avoid unidentifiable effects, you have to determine the essence of the sound you are creating. You need to comprehend what qualities or characteristics would most clearly identify that sound. The essence of a car crash might be the sounds of squealing tires, metal hitting metal, and breaking glass. You would combine those sounds to create a car crash effect. If you can break down a certain sound into its primary elements, then you can find a sound similar to one of those elements. For example, part of the sound of fire is its crackle. Years ago, soundmen working in radio discovered that if you crinkled cellophane in front of a microphone, it sounded like fire. The faster the cellophane was crinkled, the bigger the fire sounded.

The essence of rain is the individual drops of water hitting a surface. The usual rainstorm recording, however, doesn’t sound real, because the rain is hitting only one type of surface, so all of the drops sound alike. A richly textured rain cue might be built from a combination of a downpour on cement; slow, large drops hitting an upsidedown bucket; and other drops hitting various surfaces like aluminum cans, a plastic tarp, and a car. If the drops hit enough distinctive surfaces, the audience will perceive that recording as rain. When you know the essence of the sound you are trying to produce, you don’t always have to use the real sound.

BUILDING/EXECUTING COMPLEX SEQUENCES

As with any single cue, when creating a complex sequence of cues like a storm, you need to find the sounds that comprise the essence of the phenomenon. What is it that gives the storm its characteristics? Imagine that you have to build an ominous storm. How do you construct it so that it can adapt to the actors’ performances?

The constant elements of the storm can be rain, wind, and distant rumbles of thunder. Specific events that could be cued individually are loud thunderclaps, toppling trees, and gusts of howling wind. The constant effects are the foundation of the storm. This bed track can be played on a stereo or multitrack playback device. With the latter, you have more control over the balance of the different sounds.

Cues that have to happen at specific moments in the action need to be cued individually, instead of being mixed into the ambiance. This allows the actors to perform at their own speed without having to pace themselves to the recording. A digital sampler or a computer-assisted playback system can be useful in a situation like this. Producing the sound bed track may call for building and mixing long segments of sound that can be continuously repeated or looped. A good loop is seamless; it’s impossible to tell where the splice is and there are no overt “landmarks” that stick out every time the loop repeats. The term loop comes from when reel-to-reel tape decks were used to produce sustained sounds or music. The beginning of a section of tape would be spliced onto its tail, making a continuous loop. Today, loops are made using either a digital audio workstation (DAW) or a sampler. There is no ideal length for a loop. As a rule, the longer the loop, the less obvious it is that the sound is repeating. One way to keep loops from sounding monotonous is to mix two together. For example, if you mix a seven-second loop and a six-and-a-half-second loop of rain at the same time, chances are the two loops would never repeat exactly. In some cases, this technique can mask an imperfect edit. If the sound at the edit isn’t seamless, mixing in another loop of the same sound can smooth out the rough edges by burying the imperfection in the mix with the other loop.

It’s simple enough to build a storm with a bed track and the big thunderclaps individually cued, but there may be times when you’ll want to take one effect and split it into two cues to accommodate variations in the actors’ timing. Suppose you have the sound of a car starting up and pulling away. You cannot build this as one cue because after the car is started, the two characters in the car talk for about forty-five seconds. A solution would be to split this effect into two cues, one with the car starting and idling and the other with the car leaving. The operator can “dump” the sound of the first cue under the second, once it starts. This will work especially well if the cue of the car leaving starts with a big sound, like the rev of the engine. It will overpower the idle and mask the fade.

When producing a complex cue that might require you to commit to a mix of several elements, see if you can keep those elements separated as individual layers. With computer-assisted playback devices, you can mix these layers in the theatre, eliminating the need to go back to your studio after rehearsal and remix a cue. You can even add optional layers, and if they don’t work, you can delete them or turn them off. While this won’t work for all types of cue situations, mixing layers in tech can provide you with more subtlety and precision in the final “mixed” cue as well as keeping you from having to work all night revising your cues.

ADJUSTING THE LENGTH OF CUES

How long to make a cue is always a concern. If it’s too short, it may not have enough impact; too long, and it can get in the way. Over the course of rehearsals, you’ve probably come up with a good guess at the timing for each cue. As you hunt around for the right sound, keep its length in mind, but remember that with a little editing or mixing, most cues can be tailored to the proper length.

A script may indicate a series of applause cues. You may have made a number of different recordings that you like, but some are too short and some are too long. Applause usually has at least one section in it that sustains at a constant level. If the cue is too long, cut out some of this constant applause; if the cue is too short, try recording the cue twice. Cut near the end of the sustained portion on the first take and near the beginning of the sustained portion on the second, edit the two together, and you should have a seamless length of applause. If your recordings were made all at the same time with identical recording volumes and microphone placement, it will be easy to find good sections of applause to splice together from different takes to obtain the right length. The only thing you have to match up at the splice is the intensity of the audience. But be careful, because even if the VU meters are showing the same volume for each take, if the audiences’ “performances” differ in their emotional content, the edit may not work.

If splicing doesn’t work, you might be able to crossfade from one recording to another to get the right length. This technique works well with nonsegmentable music, and different sections of music that can’t be edited together can sometimes be mixed to crossfade gracefully.

THE DOPPLER EFFECT AND PANNING

When a fire truck with its wailing siren passes by, it sounds as if the pitch of the siren drops. This is the Doppler effect, named after physicist Christian Johann Doppler, who published a paper describing this phenomenon in 1842. When you create sounds that move within the theatre, the pan (movement from one speaker to another) must happen at the same time and speed as the shift in pitch—otherwise, the effect sounds unrealistic.

The easiest way to ensure that the pan from one speaker to another will happen at the correct time is to build the movement into the cue. Let’s say you have a wonderful mono recording of a cropduster passing closely overhead, and you want that sound to travel from behind the audience to the stage. One way to accomplish this is to “stereo-ize” the recording. Using a DAW or other playback device, transfer the recording into the playback device so that the approach of the plane plays on only the first track of the device. At the point in the recording where it sounds like the plane is passing by, pan the plane to the second track. Assign the first track of the playback device to the rear house speakers and the second track to the stage speakers. Note that using a stereo recording as is may not be discrete enough to make the pan convincing. Unless the movement of the plane from one channel to another is very obvious, the effect won’t be believable. The more of the same sound on each channel, the less the sound appears to move.

One alternative to producing a two-channel pan is to use a mono recording in performance and have the sound operator move the pan pot from left to right at the correct time in the cue. This won’t be as foolproof as building the pan into the cue. Another drawback to this scheme is that you may have to adjust the input volume of the cue as you pan to compensate for differences in volume between the two sets of loudspeakers. To work around this problem, you could adjust the levels of the outputs before the cue begins. If that isn’t possible, record the mono effect on two channels at the same time. Assign one channel of the playback device that plays the effect to the “incoming” speaker and the other channel to the “outgoing” speaker. When the effect starts, the level of the incoming channel can be preset. As the plane passes, the sound operator fades in the outgoing channel to the proper level and then fades out the first channel. Keep in mind that there is a point in the pass when both channels are up. These techniques work not only for planes, but also for sirens, cars, and other sounds that you want to move. The faster the pass, the faster you have to move the pan pot or faders.

Using two mono channels to operate a pan is also a great way to crossfade music from the house into a practical unit onstage. Suppose you wanted to start a play with a recording of Elvis Presley singing Blue Suede Shoes playing over the house loudspeakers. As the scene lights come up, you want the music to travel to a jukebox on the set. Record Elvis in mono to two channels. Assign one channel to the house loudspeakers and the other to the jukebox. In many instances, you can have both sets of speakers playing because the volume of the house speakers will probably be loud enough to mask the sound of the jukebox playing at its volume. To make the sound travel to the jukebox, fade out the channel feeding the house speakers, and the music coming from the jukebox will be “revealed.” The rate of this fade must be exact or it won’t create the illusion of movement. Too fast a fade would sound like a loudspeaker was turned off, while too slow a fade would make the pan imperceptible. Of course, if you are using a computer-assisted playback system to control the volumes, pans, and assigns, then you can program pans just the way you would with a mono recording.

You can also add the Doppler effect to recordings of stationary objects. Say you are building ambiance for a scene that takes place on a fast-moving train. In addition to the rhythmic sound of the wheels, you want to provide the occasional sound of a railroad-crossing bell. Unfortunately, you only have a recording of the bell from a fixed location. All you need to do is find a way to change the pitch of the recording and record that. Digital samplers have a pitch-bend control that allows you to change the pitch of a sound as needed. Just about every DAW today will allow you to do the same thing. To achieve the sound of passing a crossing bell, fade up the sound of the stationary bell. As you get to the loudest volume you want, quickly lower the pitch of the bell and immediately start fading out the sound. Coordinating the peak of the fade-up with the drop in pitch is what makes the effect convincing.

Another situation might call for the sound of a distant old mail plane passing overhead. If you can’t find a recording that sounds like a vintage plane, you can loop a lawnmower engine and slow it down, and it might sound like an old, large motor—which would work well for the airplane. You could then complete the illusion by building the pan on tape with a Doppler effect.

BLENDING PITCHES AND CHANGING MUSIC

If you have a basic background in music or are working with a composer or music director who can assist you in determining the key of the music you are using, there are ways to blend the respective pitches of recorded and live music. For example, if you have prerecorded music for either a preshow or an entr’acte leading into live singing (either a cappella or accompanied), you can adjust the key of the entire composition by adjusting the pitch of the recording so that the last note will be the same pitch used as a cue for the singers onstage. This technique gives a feeling of continuity to what happens before the action onstage, and works especially well when the prerecorded music is instrumental. Most audio software programs have pitch shift or time-shifting capabilities. These programs let you adjust either pitch or length without necessarily changing the other. Regardless of how good the software, too much alteration tends to make voices sound unrealistic.

To alter the length of a piece of music so that it better fits a situation, you may sometimes have to tack on different endings or beginnings from other sources. There are production techniques that allow you to take chords or notes directly from the piece itself and lengthen them—isolating the note or chord, looping this small segment, and adding it on to the existing recording. Suppose you have found the perfect piece for a theme, and all that’s missing is a fanfare to introduce it. If the only suitable fanfare you can find is not in the same or a complementary key, you can adjust its pitch to fit the original.

FIELD RECORDING

The techniques employed in recording effects and music in the studio are the same as recording in the field, with one exception. In the studio, extraneous noises are controlled, but in the real world, sounds that you don’t want to record often surround the effect you’re trying to capture. Unwanted bird chirping can make it difficult to record the sound of a car leaving. In most places in the United States, it’s hard to record outdoors without picking up the sound of aircraft. And don’t be surprised if while you’re recording urban sounds, people say “Hi” or ask, “When is this going to be on the news?”

One way to reduce extraneous noise is to use the proper microphone. Omnidirectional microphones are good for recording ambiance because they pick up sounds all around them without focusing in on any specific location. A cardioid microphone is more selective in its pickup pattern, but is useful for most recording situations. For recordings where you need the most isolation from extraneous sounds or when you can’t get close to the source of the sound, use a hypercardioid microphone, a shotgun microphone, or even a parabolic dish/shotgun microphone combination. Selective microphones such as these can be used to record specific birds, for instance.

Wildlife, like birds and crickets, tends to produce sharp, shrill sounds that may not seem very loud if you look at the VU meters on the recorder. But those sounds contain very high frequencies that can easily overload a system and cause distortion. Regardless of whether you are making analogue or digital recordings, always check your recordings while you’re in the field. You want to make sure that your recording levels are correct and that your recorder is working properly. If possible, purchase high-quality headphones to use when field recording. The better the headphones, the easier it will be for you to tell how your recordings will sound in the studio or theatre.

COMPRESSING UNDERSCORING

It’s often a good idea to compress the volume of underscoring. The concept behind underscoring is to play music under a scene to support the moment theatrically. Music obtains much of its emotional variation through changes in tempo and volume. Obviously, an orchestra playing presto at its full volume will carry a different emotional value than a serenely plucked solo harp. When you underscore with music that has a wide dynamic range, it’s difficult to set a constant volume to the cue that won’t play too loudly at times and/or inaudibly at others.

Compressing the music as it’s transferred to the deck automatically reduces the dynamic range of the recording so that the loud sections aren’t as loud and, in comparison, soft passages aren’t as soft. This is much easier than having the operator listen to the music and control the gain manually. Beware of using too much compression. If you squash the dynamic range radically, the music may sound artificial.

BUILDING A FADE INTO THE CUE

When a cue must fade in or out, have the sound operator (or the computer-assisted playback system) do the fade instead of building the fade directly into the cue. The reason for doing this is that it’s hard to compensate for the speed of a built-in fade if you need to change it. There are several exceptions to this rule. If building in the fade makes a difficult sequence of cues easier to operate, then by all means help the operator. Perhaps the operator needs to cue up and reset faders for an upcoming series of cues at the same time he is supposed to be fading in another cue. If the fade is built into the cue, the operator is then free to set up the next sequence once the deck has been started.

TIMING CUES

When building ambiance or any other long cue that doesn’t end naturally, remember that it’s important to build the cue longer than the timings you get from rehearsals. You don’t want to run out of the cue if the performance is paced slowly, or if something unusual happens that makes the scene longer. Anything can happen, from an actor forgetting lines to a stage door sticking, delaying an entrance. There is no perfect formula for how much “fudge factor” to build into your timings. When the timing for a cue is thirty seconds, doubling the length of material should be a sufficient safety measure. A cue timed at four minutes probably needs only an additional forty-five seconds.

Figure 11.1 was developed with the reasoning that the minimum amount of extra material that provides a degree of safety is thirty seconds. But if a cue was timed to run twenty minutes long, then thirty seconds, percentage-wise, isn’t much of a pad. If you added twenty percent to most long timings, you’d have plenty of sound. As the length of the timing increases, the multiplier decreases from two down to 1.2, at which point the graph becomes a straight line, not a curve.

FIGURE 11.1 Cue length guide/chart.

If you’re creating the ambiance for a scene involving an actor who usually hams it up over the course of the run, you may want to build more time into the cue. Slowly fade out the ambiance before you stop your transfer of the final cue. That way, if something really unexpected happens and the ambiance does run out, at least it’ll fade out and not just end abruptly.

Unexpected delays can happen even before the play begins. If your show has a fifteen-minute preshow that leads into the top of the act, build it so that if problems come up before curtain, you won’t run out of music. A good way to approach a preshow—whether it is music, montage, or spoken words—is to divide the cue into two parts. Part one contains the material you want the audience to hear until curtain, built long enough so that you won’t run out of material if the show starts late. The second part, cued up on a second deck, is what you want the audience to hear last, possibly leading into the action. Crossfade to this cue when you’re ready to go into the top-of-show sequence. You might want to start it a minute before the houselights dim so that the audience is less aware of the change, or you might want it to start big and herald in the beginning of the play. Regardless of your strategy, splitting the cue into two parts lets the preshow be flexible enough to compensate for house or backstage problems, while still letting you have control over what is heard at the top of the show. The stage manager will appreciate having the option to hold the curtain without running out of preshow. The entr’acte should employ the same safety methods.

PROCESSING THE PERFORMER’S VOICE

Voiceovers are usually either narration or a character’s thoughts represented by a disembodied voice dripping with reverb. This is one example of how a performer’s speech may be processed for a production. When you produce a voiceover, make sure it’s obvious that you are heightening a theatrical moment. Although this convention is commonplace in film, it may not be immediately apparent in a stage production that a voiceover is playing.

Adding processing to an onstage performer’s voice can be useful when you want a character to become different from others on the stage. Imagine you have a stylized scene, where an adult actor has to sound like a child. You could try using a body mike on the actor and processing his voice so that it is four semitones higher in pitch. It might be an interesting (or very peculiar) concept with which to experiment.

Microphones don’t have to be used just for reinforcing the actor’s voice. A microphone hidden on the performer or on the set allows you to change his voice quality or even the sound of the whole stage.

PLAYING SOUND CUES WITH A MIDI TRIGGER

In comedy, as the saying goes, “timing is everything”—and the same applies to executing sound cues. A mistimed sound cue can destroy the theatrical illusion faster than a sandbag dropping onto center stage during Cyrano’s death scene. Virtually any sound cue can be called by a competent stage manager, but there are those moments when a stage manager can’t anticipate the call of a cue with enough lead time for the operator to react and play the sound. In this situation, the stage manager might allow the operator to initiate the cue herself. There are those rare instances, though, when an operator cannot anticipate her cue, and her reaction time will not be fast enough to start a deck or press the key on a sampler.

RELATIVE DISTANCE

One consideration when manufacturing an effect is the relative distance of audience to the effect. How far from the stage should the sound appear to be? For example, is a gunshot supposed to be heard coming from outside a window, or is it coming from a gun a quarter of a mile away? Making an effect sound realistic is rarely as simple as turning down the volume for distant sounds and cranking it up for close ones. Although volume is one of the qualities to keep in mind when trying to create a sense of distance, another characteristic is reverberation. When climbing up a long stairwell, you’ve probably noticed that if you’re right next to someone talking softly, his voice doesn’t bounce off the walls very much. But if someone two floors down is calling up to you, her voice will reverberate throughout the stairwell. The farther from the source of sound, the more reverberation and echo accompany it. Sounds heard from a distance also lose some of their lower frequencies. An explosion right outside will be very sharp and loud, causing glass to break and the floor to shake. That same explosion from a half-mile away will be quieter, with a tinny boom that might have a bit of echo. Creating this realistic sense of distance in the theatre can be accomplished through loudspeaker placement, reverb/equalization, and distant miking.

BLENDING LIVE AND PRERECORDED SOUND

When assembling sound effects and music for a show, most designers and composers consider whether a cue will be live or prerecorded as an either/or proposition. But there are many opportunities when prerecorded and live sounds can complement each other and produce a sound superior to either alone.

Imagine having to produce the sound of a tornado picking up a house and dropping it back down to the ground. All of the complex sounds—the wind, the house ripping loose from its foundation and hitting the ground again—can be prerecorded. You can augment the recording, though, with live breaking glass and crashing pots, pans, and other metal objects. The sharpness and clarity of live effects can give the completed cue an added realism that may be difficult to achieve if the entire effect is prerecorded. (Mixing live voices into a crowd recording is another example.) You can also add prerecorded material to a live performance, filling out the sound of a small ensemble or supplementing an onstage chorus.

TIPS FOR PRODUCING LIVE EFFECTS

There are times when it will be preferable to use a live effect instead of a prerecorded one. Live effects can sound better than prerecorded ones, and are usually inexpensive to produce.

PHONE BELLS AND BUZZERS

One way to make live phone rings or doorbell ringers louder is to augment the practical effect with another bell. Another way to adjust the volume of a practical bell or buzzer is to change the location or the way the unit is attached to the set. Obviously, the farther away from the audience the effect is played, the softer it will sound. But it will also sound distant and removed, which isn’t the same thing as just being softer. If you attach the bell or buzzer to a flat, which is part of the set, the flat will act as a sounding board for it. Damping or isolating the doorbell or buzzer from the flat by placing some foam between it and the flat will lower its volume.

CRASHES

Thrift stores are wonderful places to collect crash sounds. Because of their many moving parts, old metal ironing boards make a fabulous clatter when dropped, and they can be purchased for just a few dollars. Old pots and pans, metal serving trays, metal ice cube trays, and very breakable china are cheap and abundant at thrift stores.

DOOR SLAMS

The best way to make the convincing sound of a door slamming or shutting is to use an offstage door unit. Practical door units can be as simple as a half-height door complete with doorknob and latch built into a frame; more elaborate door units are full height, with the frame anchored securely to the stage floor. Attaching the unit to the floor gives the door slam a solid sound. Sometimes, in cases where backstage space is limited, alternative solutions can be found or created.

PRACTICAL LOUDSPEAKERS

If you’re creating the effect of a radio or television playing on the set, it’s best to use the unit’s original speaker to help the effect sound realistic. Many old TV speakers had a thin, tinny sound. Although you could equalize the signal sent to the speaker to imitate the original sound, the speaker itself can often provide the proper EQ. It’s usually as simple as disconnecting the leads that link the electronics inside the unit to its speaker and running your own speaker line to the built-in speaker. Make sure that the rewired speaker works properly, and that it will play as loudly and clearly as you need. Even if the speaker sounds fine at a normal listening level, it may need to play quite loudly to be heard adequately in a large theatre. Also, bear in mind that an effect may have to be of unrealistically high fidelity if the audience needs to understand what’s heard over that speaker.

AND FINALLY …

With a talented ear and an artistic sense, the sound designer and composer develop ways of shaping the emotional core of an audience. As you build upon your experience, you’ll learn innovative techniques and explore alternative approaches, always keeping your work fresh and exciting. Your design experiences will present opportunities—often from necessity—to create new tools for artful and practical expression. Keep experimenting, taking risks, and moving the knowledge and creativity of your field forward. Use the concepts and suggestions in these chapters as your tools. As you work, you’ll continue to refine our ideas for yourself and improve upon our discoveries and techniques. Unseen technologies and your own unique innovations will ferry you beyond these pages—and give you a refreshing voice in redefining the sound of the theatre.