I mean… most of us can easily make a kick, a snare, a bass, a lead, a pad, or a pluck sound easily. but how do you get even better at sound design?
I saw this photo before that challenges people who use 3D software to model these objects as similar as possible because I tried learning Blender before. The photo is from Blender Guru’s “Best exercises to improve as a 3D artist”
It got me thinking, is there a benchmark/checkpoint that shows you’re good at sound design? Is there a challenge that can truly challenge a sound designer? Are there any exercises that helps musicians and sound designers on improving what they’re doing?
I’m not going to estimate how good I am because it would be hubris at best but there is a point where you develop an ear for the components of a sound and know what tools are good for the job. just yesterday I was thinking about how analog/VA sound design is better for a lot of softer sounds because it doesn’t go nuts as FM at different pitches/small changes, which is important if you need to modulate your sound over time.
as the good Mr. Fourier taught us though, all you really need are sine waves.
For me, “sound design” encompasses the whole production: designing the overall sound and its progression; it sits at the overlap of synthesis, mixing and composition. In fact, you could do sound design without strict systhesis (although you might wanna include sampling and collage as a type of synthesis in this context).
So… I think there’s a few paths, or maybe levels to go once you can “make a pad”.
combine several sounds, with different durations, so that the overall effect is “one thing”. Think brand identities, TV/radio show stings, “orchestra stabs”, and complex risers
the choice of sounds to emphasise a mood. Does that hand drum go with that bass tone, or is it “just what you had lying around”? Think about how a Boards of Canada track sounds like the psychedelic 70s haze at every level: the drums, the synths, the melodies, the sample selection and treatment - without sounding unintentionally murky. I often find I make tracks where 50% of the track goes together: makes a coherent groove, or has a good harmonic structure… but then my use of a big dub reverb sticks out as “not on brand” with _the rest of the track, even tho’ it might be a nice sound in itself. You can (and probably should) apply this same idea to things like film sound - in the same way the cinematographers and art directors will think about colour grading and set design.
conscious structured practice. By all means you can brute force getting better by fucking around but it’s exactly the same as learning an instrument. Sound design is an extremely wide catch all term. Making an industrial album is hardly making a classical symphony but they both involve sound design. Pick a direction and focus on it
I think the benchmark is being able to create what you want, or to recreate what you hear in your head.
Everything you mentioned can seem fairly basic, but if you add context to it, where you created a kick specifically for something and it sounds good, then there’s your next level.
As others mentioned sound design goes beyond synth and percussion sounds. In film and television its easier to understand as you’re setting a mood with sounds to support the onscreen visuals. Much of this can be applied to music too and the same techniques do get used, so I would consider this another level too.
Aside from learning the fundamentals of synthesis, when I was in school we would do sound alike projects, very similar to your analogy with 3D modeling. It’s essentially a study of someone else’s work. You won’t have the exact tools and probably won’t get an exact match, but you should learn something along the way when trying to recreate the sound.
For me, sound design is built up of a bag of tricks. The more you learn and study how others do it, the more tricks in your bag you can pull out when needed in your own compositions.
A few years back on gearslutz/gearspace, we had friendly sound design competitions where someone would post a snippet of a song and we would try to recreate the sound. The winner gets to pick the next snippet, etc. It was a lot of fun, and a great learning tool, especially to hear how different people approached it. Might be worth doing something similar over here if there is enough interest.
To add a mildly contrarian tone to the discussion, I’d say a big part of it is having/training a good ear for sound. And maybe accepting not everyone is good at/likes sound design?
I saw an interview with Oneohtrix Point Never where he said he sucks at sound design so he uses patch randomisers until he finds a sound he likes, then maybe polishes it a little. And to my mind he’s been creating some of the more interesting sounds of the past couple of decades.
It’s a funny thing that we think all synth musicians have to also be sound designers. I think of it like classical or pre-synth rock and pop - there’s so much excellent sound and exciting music but the musicians and composers are barely ‘sound designers’ - they’re just using a violin with a cello, or using a guitar with this or that pedal.
And even in synth music it’s crazy how many great tracks are using presets. Like, Richard Devine is clearly a highly skilled sound designer but I’d rather listen to a basic-ass Moog preset any day.
Ofc, sound design is a vast and interesting and rewarding realm of work, but I guess I’ve just been thinking lately about how synth nerds often get caught up in this aspect, rather than timbre and balance of sounds and so on.
I think this is a key point. Sound design is a means to a goal (or at least should be), i.e. creating a great piece of music that does exactly what you said, has a good balance of timbre, dynamics, etc. A great sound designer knows how to find the balance, whether that’s from creating a patch from scratch or picking the right presets. Nothing wrong with standing on the shoulders of giants.
Amon Tobin is one of my favorite musicians and a great sound designer. I recently got a Haken Continuum and there is no doubt that more than a few of the stock presets show up on his records. I’ve heard a bunch of samples from Maschine expansions on his Two Fingers work as well.
coming to analog and FM synths from a pure layman’s POV, using different synths for over 35 years . . . it’s more art than science to me. Typically, I’ve come to programming patches from either (1) hearing a specific sound and wanting to see how close I can replicate it (and now, with YT etc, seeing if anyone else has replicated it and how they did it); or (2) knowing I need a kind of sound generally (strings, pad, bass, lead) and then getting into the ballpark and seeing where things go from there. but ultimately, it mostly comes from living with the gear long enough to know how X parameter(s) are probably going to be the best starting point for getting to Y sound and then a lot of slightly-educated trial and error to achieve the result. and then also allowing for the happy accidents that often occur along the way
simple sounds are just as valuable as complex ones. its all about context and knowing what you want to do, which feeling you want to evoke, what mood you want to set, which story to tell.
like with your 3d modeling example, you can make any number of high poly toasters, but they worth nothing without a scene to place them into, which usually consists of all kinds of models.
the only “hard grind” part of the process is learning the tools, be it software or hardware, and finding what works for you.
I used to overcomplicate sound design, wanting to utilize every tool a synthesizer has to offer. I was wrong. Even a simple sine wave, placed in a right spot, can sound gorgeous.
My first few years of earnestly trying to make music involved trying to emulate things I would hear on records, whether that was old WARP releases, ambient dub music, or super whacked out lo-fi stuff. Eventually I would stumble on a trick and think “ahh, that’s how these guys do it” and in the process accidentally make a few new sounds of my own. After a while I stopped trying to copy people and would just mix and match those methods in different ways until something tickled my ear.
Now I’m approaching something that feels like it could be a distinctive sound, eventually…but there’s still a lot of work to do. I imagine the journey I’ve taken from the beginning to where I am now is what many would call learning “sound design”, but I would just call it making music in general. In a traditional sense I probably don’t know much at all.
I think even some kind of modern film sound design course if someone was looking for a structured way to learn a lot of how to achieve certain objectives
But I basically would not have the patience and just go with my gut and see what happens!
which guide is it
and yeah effects processing has been something I leverage a lot of times when I make sounds.
Hmmmm what do you think makes a good ear?
Lately I’ve been trying to see if there’s ways to improve songwriting or arrangement. I’m still figuring out on how to learn them.
so basically you have to know what it is you’re trying to make (eg the mood or the story) before actually making it?
it does seem like recreating sounds are one of the ways to improve. I’d join if anyone starts one of these sound design competitions
I think it comes back to knowing what you wanted to make before you try to make the music; without the mood or context it’s hard to know what sounds to choose.
I think a lot can be learnt by choosing a complex synth or sampler and focusing on the features and options that you don’t really use or understand - the deeper items in the menu, the mysteriously named modulation destinations, the toggle on:off features where you can’t hear any difference between the two states. If you force yourself to play with those options until you can hear and control what it’s doing, you have ‘aha!’ moments and new tools to work with.
