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Most film is art, not life/reality. Sound designers have to match the visual art on screen with the sonic art of their mix, and that usually includes a certain amount of "realer than real", suspending some of what we "know" about physics in order to tell the story in a way that translates to this 2-dimensional, 2-sense media.
Case in point, when we see some ...
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The highly simplified answer is that sound in the real world is not sine waves with fixed frequencies. We learn about sound initially as frequencies or notes and simplify the concept down to thinking about various sine waves to make it easier to understand the fundamentals of what is going on.
The reality, however, is that all sound propagates through the ...
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In the special case that we are travelling with the sound source (e.g. in a plane), when we reach the speed of sound, the sound waves in the same direction will not be able to move away from the source. At this point, the sound waves will overlap which will cause accumulation of a lot of kinetic energy and resonance at every frequency in the sound. It will ...
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I believe Colin Hart's very excellent explanation is false in the second-to-last paragraph, beginning "NOW, ". If I am moving at the speed of sound and make a sound, the sound does NOT move at 686 mph relative to anything. The speed of sound is a property of the medium through which it propagates. It will always propagate at 343 (in this example). If the ...
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Unfortunately I don't have a direct answer for you as far as reading sources are concerned. However in my own personal experience, I learned about rhythm and timing from back when I used to be a DJ at a winebar working with beat-matching vinyl and such. It gave my a very tactile, hands-on understanding of pitch, rhythm, and timing manipulation - and ...
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Guitar and all fretted instruments for 40+ years and keyboard noodling.
Always have at least 3 or 4 string instruments in my edit suite for unwinding and decompressing.
Love to play with a couple of my sound buddies Dino DiMuro and Alan Rankin.
It's funny you ask because years ago I noticed that most of the people I work with are frustrated musicians.
...
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I started as a trombonist and moved through all of the low brass instruments before picking up a bass guitar and eventually a sound effects library! If you are noticing a pattern, I love the timbre of instruments in the bass clef!!
As to how it relates to Sound Design, it is all about what that experience does to your ability to perceive (and control) ...
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Ok, let's start from the basics. Audio is usually recorded (sampled - converted from a continuous analogue signal to a digital record) and stored as a series of numbers representing the momentary voltage of the signal at regular intervals.
Sampling rate is the rate at which we check and record the momentary value of the analogue signal. Common sampling ...
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Yeah it would appear to work that way, but the math reveals something else:
You have two channels, Left and Right, and you invert one, that is flip the sign on one channel and mix* them: Left + (- Right), or simply: L - R.
What you are doing here is essentially isolating the side channel. What was equal in both channels is now removed. What is different ...
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I recommend you research what a decibel is, how it works, then revisit this question.
Generally, digital audio samples are measured with reference to "full scale" which allows it to be measured with a unit dBFS which means "decibels with reference to full scale". 0dBFS is the largest sample value possible, therefore peak.
Consequently, every sample value ...
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The theory you found at the CMU article explains things very well - particularly when looking at the differences between linear and constant power panning.
In every case you are "panning" a mono signal across two or more output channels using some sort of control surface.
in the case of 2 or 3 channels the ideal control would be a "rotary knob" where you ...
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A way to understand timbre and differences between instruments is to interpret harmonics by casting an eye on their spectrograms:
The flute has some tremolo visible on the high-end sustained harmonics that look consistent throughout the sample.
Piano, on the other hand, has gradient like harmonics fading towards the higher ones. Also the wavefile has a ...
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Sorry, but I don't have the ability to ask clarification on your question. Do you mean you're adding the ability for the end-user to choose a soundtrack themselves or you're asking about you adding he soundtrack before exporting the video?
Assuming the latter...
For me I try to first see if the song's natural ending can work before trying a fade. This ...
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DISCLAIMER:
I am veeeerry tired and maybe the following text is just plain stupid. In that case: Excuse me and ignore the following :)
I think thunderclaps can be used in different ways.
If thunder is used only as a dramatic effect, there is no reason to be realistic when it comes to time delay. In those cases the thunder could be understood as something ...
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I think its because as you say; the time offset would be odd in a narrative. In films the point of the thunder/lightning is to possibly give information about the environment for plot reasons or to enhance the mood of a scene. In mot cases there is no story reason to have "accurate" time offset of the thunder.
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Don't know if you have the time and money to grab it but Micheal Chion's 'Audio-Vision' is brilliant. I read it in my first year of uni and it explains the relationship between what we see and hear in a descriptive, interesting and easy to follow way. It also goes into the diagetic, non-diagetic paradigm and how this relates to the Mise-en-scène.
£7.80 from ...
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I agree with Mark, I think this is a great opportunity to speak directly to the cinematographers and talk about how sound can help and affect their work. A lot of directors and DPs that I have worked with have heard the "sound is 50-80% of the final film" quote, but they don't know what that really means. Therefore, I would say a good starting place is to ...
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Hi Manuel,
Perhaps this depends on how experienced you expect your audience to be, but as the conference is focused on cinematography, your approach could be trying to engage your audience with ideas which cross over to their practice. I've often thought that if I ever need to speak in front of a group of directors about sound design I'd base my talk on ...
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