"The clash of light sabers in the electrifying duels of Star Wars. The chilling bass line signifying the lurking menace of the shark in Jaws. The otherworldly yet familiar pleas to "phone home" in the enchanting E.T." "These are examples of the different ways sound can contribute to the overall dramatic impact of a film. To craft a distinctive atmosphere, sound design is as important as art direction and cinematography - and it can also be an effective tool to express the personalities of your characters."--Jacket.

A practitioner's guide to the basic principles of creating sound effects using easily accessed free software. Designing Sound teaches students and professional sound designers to understand and create sound effects starting from nothing. Its thesis is that any sound can be generated from first principles, guided by analysis and synthesis. The text takes a practitioner's perspective, exploring the basic principles of making ordinary, everyday sounds using an easily accessed free software. Readers use the Pure Data (Pd) language to construct sound objects, which are more flexible and useful than recordings. Sound is considered as a process, rather than as data—an approach sometimes known as “procedural audio.” Procedural sound is a living sound effect that can run as computer code and be changed in real time according to unpredictable events. Applications include video games, film, animation, and media in which sound is part of an interactive process. The book takes a practical, systematic approach to the subject, teaching by example and providing background information that offers a firm theoretical context for its pragmatic stance. [Many of the examples follow a pattern, beginning with a discussion of the nature and physics of a sound, proceeding through the development of models and the implementation of examples, to the final step of producing a Pure Data program for the desired sound. Different synthesis methods are discussed, analyzed, and refined throughout.] After mastering the techniques presented in Designing Sound, students will be able to build their own sound objects for use in interactive applications and other projects

Sound Systems: Design and Optimization provides an accessible and unique perspective on the behavior of sound systems in the practical world. The third edition reflects current trends in the audio field thereby providing readers with the newest methodologies and techniques. In this greatly expanded new edition, you’ll find clearer explanations, a more streamlined organization, increased coverage of current technologies and comprehensive case studies of the author’s award-winning work in the field. As the only book devoted exclusively to modern tools and techniques in this emerging field, Sound Systems: Design and Optimization provides the specialized guidance needed to perfect your design skills. This book helps you: Improve your design and optimization decisions by understanding how audiences perceive reinforced sound Use modern analyzers and prediction programs to select speaker placement, equalization, delay and level settings based on how loudspeakers interact in the space Define speaker array configurations and design strategies that maximize the potential for spatial uniformity Gain a comprehensive understanding of the tools and techniques required to generate a design that will create a successful transmission/reception model

Sound can profoundly impact how people interact with your product. Well-designed sounds can be exceptionally effective in conveying subtle distinctions, emotion, urgency, and information without adding visual clutter. In this practical guide, Amber Case and Aaron Day explain why sound design is critical to the success of products, environments, and experiences. Just as visual designers have a set of benchmarks and a design language to guide their work, this book provides a toolkit for the auditory experience, improving collaboration for a wide variety of stakeholders, from product developers to composers, user experience designers to architects. You’ll learn a complete process for designing, prototyping, and testing sound. In two parts, this guide includes: Past, present, and upcoming advances in sound design Principles for designing quieter products Guidelines for intelligently adding and removing sound in interactions When to use voice interfaces, how to consider personalities, and how to build a knowledge map of queries Working with brands to create unique and effective audio logos that will speak to your customers Adding information using sonification and generative audio

Sound Design for Film offers an in-depth study of one of cinema's most powerful storytelling tools, exploring the creative landscape and proposing a variety of contemporary approaches to audio design. Opening up a hidden world of narrative techniques, experienced designer Tim Harrison provides key insights into how sound works on audiences to guide them through stories. Topics covered include: the creative process from script to delivery; visualizing your design ideas; developing characters and settings, and using motif and metaphor. Also covered is recording foley and sound effects along with editing and manipulating audio and the final mix. Serving as a tool for creative reflection and development, this unique book offers invaluable approaches for enhancing your storytelling skills, wherever you are on your filmmaking journey.

Doing Research in Sound Design gathers chapters on the wide range of research methodologies used in sound design. Editor Michael Filimowicz and a diverse group of contributors provide an overview of cross-disciplinary inquiry into sound design that transcends discursive and practical divides. The book covers Qualitative, Quantitative and Mixed Methods inquiry. For those new to sound design research, each chapter covers specific research methods that can be utilized directly in order to begin to integrate the methodology into their practice. More experienced researchers will find the scope of topics comprehensive and rich in ideas for new lines of inquiry. Students and teachers in sound design graduate programs, industry-based R&D experts and audio professionals will find the volume to be a useful guide in developing their skills of inquiry into sound design for any particular application area.

An introduction to the concepts and principles of sound design practice, with more than 175 exercises that teach readers to put theory into practice. This book offers an introduction to the principles and concepts of sound design practice, from technical aspects of sound effects to the creative use of sound in storytelling. Most books on sound design focus on sound for the moving image. Studying Sound is unique in its exploration of sound on its own as a medium and rhetorical device. It includes more than 175 exercises that enable readers to put theory into practice as they progress through the chapters.