Month: July 2014

First, a definition:

A soundscape is a sound or combination of sounds that forms or arises from an immersive environment.

OK, I admit that’s from wikipedia, but it’s not a bad starting point.  There was a bit of a nod to the concept of a soundscape in my last post when I referred to using wind and flapping sails to establish a sailing ship, in that case making up for a crummy knocked-together set piece and making it clear what we were actually looking at.  (It was actually pretty amazing what could get built in only a couple hours the day before tech when the Director added the new set piece at the last possible second, but it never looked like more than something built the day before tech.)

But this is so much more.

Keeping with the same image, a full-on soundscape would involve speakers in multiple positions around the audience, and appropriate sounds coming in from all directions.  Immersive, remember?  In the setting I’m referring to, the audience was looking at the front of the ship as though it was about to sail straight up the center aisle.  So we’re magically floating 10-80′ in front of a ship crossing the English Channel, looking back at the ship.  What do we hear?

Wind, all around us.  The sails are above and in front of us, likely starting 10′ or so above the deck.  (This would have been a multi-masted schooner… notice how these details keep coming?)  We should hear waves against the prow of the boat as it cuts through the water.  Creaking of the wooden ship.  We could place birds pretty much anywhere around the audience.

In the end, the audience should feel like they’re truly in the environment, even without any set at all.  Rain forest?  Lots of animals, dripping, rustling leaves.  Angry mob?  Angry walla coming from all directions… but not coherently, because one yelling voice doesn’t come from all around you, it comes from over there on the left, and a mob is a collection of individuals.  Restaurant?  Unless your table is against the wall, clinking glasses, silverware on plates, and (again) walla coming from all around.  Who needs sets?

… we’ll get to underscoring at some point, I promise.

Right out of the gate, this is a bit misleading.  Sound Design gets such short shrift in general that many college theatre programs don’t cover the possibilities nearly enough.  So even trained Directors may be functionally untrained for my purposes.

I’ve been known to say that of anyone in the theater, I have the most power.  An actor has their tools: their voice, their body.  A set designer has wood, paint, etc.  Lighting has color, brightness, and angle.  Costumes has fabric and accessories.  And so on.  All of these have real, physical limits imposed by their very nature.

I have your imagination.  Limits?  I don’t need no steenkin’ limits.

Sound can set a scene anywhere.  Sound can make anything happen.  Turn out the lights and I can drop you into a crowded street, a restaurant, a ship at sea, a spaceship… anything I can imagine I can pass along to you.  A crummy plywood attempt at a ship’s bow suddenly makes sense when you hear the wind and flapping of the sails.  I don’t know how many people I’ve “killed” over the years, mostly by gunshot, but my favorites were broken necks.  If you do it right, at the end of Diary of Anne Frank, the audience is just as terrified of the SS breaking in to take them away as the characters up on stage.

How does this tie into untrained vision?  Easy.  Most Directors have no idea what you can do with sound so it has no real place in their theatrical vision for the show.  I’ve had Directors tell me: “I trust you, just do it” without so much as a time period to aim for.

In every case, creating a sound design involves starting by interpreting the script with a ear toward what it should sound like.  This involves coming up with your own “vision” for the show, and going back later and working out with the Director where the two visions don’t line up.  Without a Director’s vision, instead this means understanding where the choices are in the design that effect how it will integrate with the rest of the show and prying choices out of the Director, possibly with pliers.  The easy example is a doorbell: What’s the era?, How recently was the house built?, Are the owners wealthy?, Are they hip and modern?… there are hundreds of different doorbell sounds out there, ranging from a bell rung with a string to a bell on the door rung by a mechanical twist to the classic “bing, bong” chimes to a modern electronic fake of that classic chime.  If you don’t tell me when and where and who these people are, I’ll be sure to pick something you will not like just to force you to answer me.

This is before we even consider the concept of underscoring and sound scapes.  That’s a topic for another post.