By: Kirsty Gillmore

It’s not a mic, a recorder, and it’s definitely not a plugin. The best sounddesign tools you have are attached to you, your ears.

Hopefully, this won’t be news to you. As a sound professional, you’llhave been told, probably repeatedly, by your teachers, tutors, mentors,other engineers and designers that in order to get good at sound, youhave to learn how to listen – and listen with a critical mindset.

I feel sometimes that the perception of sound design is that it’s all aboutcreating cool new sounds – the sounds of dragons in Game of Thronesfor example, or the fifth dimension in Interstellar, or a nuclear explosionin Copenhagen (a play about pioneering nuclear physicists) or thesteampunk machines in the game 80 Days.

Creating innovative, effective sounds is definitely a big part of a sound designer’s job, and it’s also important toremember these sounds won’t exist in a vacuum. It’s no good having this wonderful sound which you’ve createdfrom a reversed pitch-shifted coat hanger drop combined with a 1950s desk fan whirr with a quarter-tap delay, if itsounds jarring (and not in an intentional way) when you put it into your design. Learning how we perceive soundsin their surroundings is a vital tool when you want to make a sound believable in any environment.

Let’s take creating a soundscape. Anyone who’s worked on sound design for picture will be familiar with startingfrom the quietest background sounds (also known as BGs, atmospheres or ambiences) and working up, buildinglayers as you build the soundscape for a particular scene.

Here’s an exercise that really helps you to hone in on those layers. Takea moment and stop where you are, wherever you are. Close your eyesand open your ears to what you can hear. Don’t concentrate on any onesound at first, just take it all in. After a few minutes, bring your auralfocus to the sounds that are furthest away from you – the distant sounds.What individual sounds can you hear? How do those sounds contributeto your sense of location? What is it about each of those sound that tellyou that you’re outside or inside, urban or rural, or in a specific country?Which of these sounds are clearest and why? Is it volume or timbre – orboth?

Now bring your focus further in and listen to the sounds in the middledistance – near, but not close to you – maybe across the street, or in thenext room. Ask yourself the same questions again and consider howthese sounds relate to the distant sounds. Finally, bring your focus rightin close and ask the questions again. What details do you notice aboutthese close sounds that make them different from the distant sounds?How are you – your breathing, your heartbeat, your body sounds –contributing to the soundscape you can hear?

Once you can identify these layers, you have the beginnings of a sounddesign, without even touching a record button.

From here you can expandeach section to flesh out your

design. Consider what is it about each of those distant, mid range andclose sounds that really indicate your current time and place, and adapt,add and subtract as necessary to create the same balance for the timeand space you’re working with. The exercise is also a really useful way ofmaking you concentrate on sounds that we overlook, even as soundprofessionals, which make up a really important part of our everydaysoundscape. It may be obvious to say traffic from 2015 sounds verydifferent from traffic from the 1920s but there’s also aspects like thehum of light-bulbs and the almost inaudible constant thrum of a housewith a different piece of technology in every room (computer, TV,dishwasher, modern heating) compared to a house with a single valve

radio set.

If you apply the same critical listening skills to individual sounds, youcan really get to grips with what makes a sound believable when it’sattached to a specific action and object, and then you can play with theseparameters to make something completely new, and also completelybelievable. So say you’re creating the sound for a baby lizard-mammalhybrid creature. You might take your cat as a starting point, as it’saround the same size, and pay attention to the sounds it makes when it’shappy, startled, curious, angry. How does the pitch, duration andamplitude change? How does the cat make the sound – is it a smallmouth click or something that resonates through its entire body?

Once you’ve trained your ears to understand the makeup of sounds bothindividually and as they exist in an environment, you can make the conscious decisions to create the sonic worldyou want. Break the rules to create something really startling or to focus on a specific element. The sonic world isyours – as long as you listen to it first.

Blog, Kirsty audio engineer, audio engineering, Kirsty Gillmore, recording engineer, sound design,Soundscape

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