Negative Space
Negative Space
It's challenging to design sound for things never heard (or seen) before. It's traditional to begin using an additive process that attempts to make the sound of the thing itself.
Maybe there's other ways?
A favorite technique of mine is to emphasize the effect that something has on it's surroundings and develop the relational and interactive attributes around the sound, rather than develop the sonic properties of the sound itself. This is one way to use "negative space".
Recently, I was developing sounds for a futuristic way of "moving". I experimented with elements that gave it a traditional sense of propulsion; engines, motors, rockets etc. but all felt "added on", akin to the many sounds science fiction audiences had heard before. The solution came through developing not the sounds of the propulsion system itself but the physical effect it had on the environment it was working in. We created rhythmic vibrations of the objects in it's proximity and the shaking of these objects ebbed and flowed with the varying intensity of the propulsion system depending on how it was moving.
We didn't make the sound, we made the sound of its effect on the world it inhabited. By defining that which was at the periphery or borders of the sound, we outlined its actual shape with negative space.
Sound design does not necessarily need to be additive. Subtraction is a useful way of using negative space. Sound Design is as much about the choices you make to not add, such as silence and restriction, as it is the sound you "design" or do add.
Negative space leverages absence as a tool. Absence can be thought of as a temporal condition of sound. In other words, the space and time between events is a design choice as much as it is the sounds you decide to include.
For example, a useful way to create quiet is not to remove all sound from the track, that could be confused as a technical problem with the equipment and the projectionist might stop the screening or the audience would start chattering before sound re-introduced itself. A more useful way to create silence is to introduce very quiet sound and interrupt it sporadically. The temporality of these interruptions defines the depth of the silence because we subconsciously clock them for their intervals.
I am reminded of a related story a friend told me recently. His ex girlfriend sat bolt-upright one night saying “What’s that noise?” Only in the morning did they determine that the trains didn’t run the night.
Think as often about the sounds you don't use as the sounds you do.
Sunday, January 10, 2021