Improving Communication With Your Sound Designer Part 1
by Kane Minkus

Contents   Introduction   Tools of the Trade   Creating Audio: Sound Design   Creating Audio: Composition   Printable version   Discuss this article The Series   Part 1   Part 2

Steps to Creating Audio

Composers

Pre-Production

This is where the creative conversations take place (we will talk about effective creative conversations later), reference material is found (this is a great time to reference another film, game or project that contains a score that you like or dislike), integration and audio engine considerations take place here as well. In the film world, you would have a “spotting session” here, which means the director and composer would get together and go through the whole film to pick out “cue points” – or places where the music should be synced to the film edits/emotional content. This can be done for games as well – even though games are not linear, they can have some linear elements in the early discussions.

Writing

The composer will go to work writing early sketches of the music. Every composer will compose slightly differently, so I will not attempt to layer one process over everyone, but from a macro scale, the composer will have at least two phases – 1) rough ideas or ideas in progress and 2) final compositions (“pre-mixed” or not mixed). Many composers are concerned about giving rough or not finished compositions to producers for fear that they will not be able to hear the final musical vision from the rough sketch.

Recording

Once rough ideas are started (or if the composer likes to start immediately writing in their sequencer), recording the parts can begin.

Let me share about the writing/recording process a bit. The writing/recording process will often start with melodies, chords or drum beats (if a score is going to be really textural or out of the norm, the writing process might start with a concept – i.e. banging on a piano to create a horror feel, etc). Then the composer begins to layer instruments in the sequencer on different “tracks”. To explain what a “track” is, imagine a racetrack where several cars are all driving. However, each car is restricted to staying within their own lane. This is how a track in the recording world works. You can have one track for guitar, then another track for bass, another track for vocals, and another track for drums. When you play all the tracks back simultaneously, you get a fully orchestrated song. This is why it makes it possible for one composer to play and record all these different instruments separately and then play them back together. Tracks in the DAW are limitless – for the most part. So you can have 80 tracks if you have 80 different instruments in the orchestra all playing at the same time and recorded on a separate track.

In the cave man days, we had real instruments :) Now a days, we have samplers that trigger recordings of real instruments. And if you have amassed a good sample library of instruments, you can have incredibly realistic sounding instruments from every corner of the world at your fingertips. Sprinkle in some good “programming” (this is what it is called when a composer plays an instrument, like a flute, on a keyboard) chops and you can create incredibly realistic sounding orchestras, world compositions and beautiful scores. If you are still a skeptic of the quality of sampled instruments go check out “Ivory” from Synthology or Symphonic Choirs from East West. These samplers will knock your socks off. If your composer is using cheap or bad samples this will show up by the piece sounding too “midi”, “fake”, “synthesized” or cheap. Feel free to request better samples; there are incredible samples out there for every instrument on Earth. Since composers should be constantly updating their sample libraries, or spending time creating them through recordings, this should be a major reason why you chose to work with a composer or not. You will know right away by listening to the horns, pianos, strings, guitars, etc, if your composer is using high quality samples or not. The instruments should sound like they are played by live players since most good sample libraries are recordings of live players now a days.

As the composer layers each track with new instruments, harmonies, melodies, etc, they are creating their final vision (or trying to find one, depending on how they like to write). We believe a composer should have a clearly defined vision of what they are going for and should be able to clearly explain it, before they even start writing anything. This means you should be able to have meaningful conversations with your composer about where they are headed (by meaningful I mean you should understand in non-musical terms what the result will be – we will look at this later as this is a communication process in itself) at anytime during the creative process. If a composer has lost the vision, it is likely they are lost in general in their composition.

Some producers ask for initial sketches of music to make sure the music is headed in the right direction. A word of caution about this: often musicians are concerned that their finished work will not be able to be envisioned by someone who isn’t them, or isn’t a composer.

Let me give you a personal example. When I compose, one of the mix engineers might stop in my studio to hear how things are going. I often get a funny look like “what are you doing man?”, and then they leave confused. However, once I get all the parts I envision into the songs (with complex orchestral orchestrations, many times it can sound like nothing until all the parts are playing together), they will come back in and totally get it! A sigh of relief will be given from them as they realize they just couldn’t hear the final vision from the initial sketches. You and your composer will have to work out when the right time is to listen to early sketches, just remember that you cannot always hear the composer’s internal masterpiece in initial sketches. But again, the composer should be able to clearly explain to you where they are going with the sketch.

Editing/Mixing

Once the basic instruments and parts are all put into the song, the composer will move into an editing/mixing stage. Cutting and pasting music like words in a word document, the composer will begin to edit parts together or use editing tricks for a specific effect (often used in electronic music these days, i.e. – stutter or vocal edits).

The mix will begin coming together here as well. The mix is comprised of volume levels of all the instruments, the panning (3-D placement of an instrument in the sonic space), reverbs, delays, EQ, flangers & special effects.

The mix is one of the most important and often overlooked components of a song. More often than not, a composer is not a mix engineer and will admit that their biggest weakness is in mixing their music. The mix is where all the parts start to get shaped and molded together into a cohesive piece of music. Mixing involves a musical and technical understanding of compressors, reverbs, delays, frequency response, EQ’s, special effects (phasers, flangers, etc.), the big picture, dynamics, automation, de-essers, limiters, expanders, etc. Most problems, mistakes and issues are created, discovered and fixed in the mix. At SomaTone we have a dedicated multi-platinum mix engineer mixing everything that goes out the door. And it is night and day what comes in from our composers and goes back out to the client – once run through a proper mix process.

Without getting too technical, let’s look at a few very important parts of the mix so that you can understand what to suggest instead of “it just seams too cloudy!”

Volume

One basic part of the mix is volume – some instruments will need to simply be made quieter or louder. BUT don’t forget that your composer has the ability to “ride” the volume, or create dynamic changes in the music. The strings don’t need to sit static at the same volume through a passage – it is not either loud or soft. Expect and demand from your composer that the mix sound DYNAMIC. This is one of the most forgotten parts of music from young composers. Keep the music and parts moving and create tension and release through the volume.

Pan

Pan is often overlooked too. This is where an instrument is placed in the stereo field. You will be amazed how much space opens up in music when instruments are properly panned in the sonic space. Imagine a jazz trio all standing in the same place trying to play. It would sound “crowded”, because it is! If the music/mix sounds crowded, or too much, all happening at once, it could be improper panning (although it could be too much playing per instrument also). Also, panning can help separate frequencies that are all competing for space. If a mix is too muddy try requesting the panning be addressed a little more.

EQ

This is a secret weapon among mix engineers. A good EQ job can make a world of difference. Make sure that different instruments are not competing for the same frequency space. Make sure that instruments containing lots of mids and highs (in the frequency spectrum) like guitar and piano, are “rolled off” or have no or little low end competing with the bass. If your mix sounds muddy, or two bright/harsh, this is the area you want to recommend your composer address.

Effects

Reverb and Delay are two common effects in music. Reverb gives you the spatial relationship that the instrument has to the room it is in (reverb is actually just a long delay repeated very closely). If you want a dry violin sample to sound like it is in a cathedral, crank up the reverb (or use a little delay). Of course too much is described as sounding “wet”. If you feel the mix needs more dimensionality perhaps individual instruments need more reverb (or delay depending on the type of music). Or if the mix feels too loose and sloppy sounding, it might need less reverb to tighten up the cohesion of the instruments working together.

Compressors

Compressors work to stabilize the sound in the sonic space, by making it not have as much of a dynamic range (in this instance, sometimes you want to reduce the dynamic range to cause the sound to feel more controlled). If a sound is too wild, or too dynamic, using a compressor will help reel it in.

Mastering

Does you composer hand in fully mastered recordings? If not, they should be! Mastering is a process of taking the final mixed 2 Track (or music composition) and running it through one more stage of audio processing. This stage of audio processing will usually contain: multi band compression (to restrain the dynamic edges of the mixed tracks a bit), limiting (squeezing the music to the loudest point before distortion – this also removes some of the dynamic range) and perhaps a bit of EQ to adjust any levels for the whole track. This stage is what gives it that “radio quality”.

When you sit in your car and tweak the knobs on the EQ, you are mastering (or affecting the master recording) the song in your car (of course the song on the radio has already been mastered professionally!). You will notice that each time you mix and then master (or use a compression stage) you are limiting the dynamics of the piece. In order to properly get a professional sound and keep the dynamics of the piece (so it doesn’t just sound flat dynamically), the mixer/mastering engineer must really know what they are doing. If your composer is not handing in mastered tracks, you will know it because it will sound weak when played against a reference piece of music in the same genre. Also, it will be quieter then other pieces of music played at the same volume on your stereo or computer.

Next Time

This gives you lots of tools to have effective conversations with your composer about technical changes. Stay tuned for the next article where I explore effective ways to discuss creative content design, more tools and a deep breakdown of the process of music and SFX design. Until then!