On Women in Sound Design

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Sound Design and its related fields are lacking anything close to a gender balance. The vast majority of designers in MFA programs are men. The vast majority of designers in the freelance world are men. The vast majority of people who work sound on Broadway, work for sound-related companies, work in sound design training programs, or work on the sound crews in regional theaters are men.

It’s a shame.  And we all know it.

So, why aren’t there more women working in sound?

The answer is not because women can’t ‘do’ sound. There are some great women sound designers out there: Janet Kalas, Liz Atkinson, Veronika Vorel, Jana Hoglund, Elisheba Itoop, and the Tony-nominated Cricket Myers all do excellent work (and to my ears, the percentage of women sound designers who are talented is vastly higher than the percentage of men sound designers who are talented).  There are great women working in non-design capacities: Liz Coleman & Bridget O’Connor in NYC and Amy Wedel at Baltimore Center Stage are all highly skilled. There are talented women working in the business side of sound: Ellen Juhlin at Meyer Sound is a constant fixture at conferences and events worldwide (and, of course, let’s not forget Helen Meyer herself!). MFA programs around the country are adding women sound designers to their faculties.  Eileen Smitheimer at U. Delaware, Victoria Delorio at DePaul, and EunJin Cho at Louisiana State are some of the few female sound design professors, but they’re joined in the (academic) gown this year by two exceptional women: Amy Altadonna at UMass-Amherst and Sarah Pickett at Carnegie Mellon University.  Each of these women proves every day that women CAN ‘do’ sound.

The problem is not that there aren’t ANY women who can ‘do’ sound. The problem is that there aren’t ENOUGH women who can ‘do’ sound. The cause for that, I think, is easy to identify: the institutionalized chauvinism inherent in almost every field that could factor in to an interest in sound design.  Consider these various ways that a young person might be first introduced to sound and sound design:

• Working on stage crews in school or at local music clubs. Stage crews are often male-dominated, and chauvinism is rampant.
• Composing music. While music performance is much more fairly balanced by gender, composition is still dominated by men.
• Theater Design, except for costume design, is still a male-dominated field (we have eight design faculty in design at UCI, only two of which are women), and it’s easy for educators to overlook interested students who don’t match their image of what a designer should look like.
• Science and the scientific mind. Despite early test scores that reflect equal intellectual aptitude in math and science, girls are often left behind in science classes at an astronomical rate. After many years of work by dedicated educators, this trend is starting to change, but there’s still a lot of work to do in this area.

Say you’re a young woman with an aptitude for sound.  In order to discover sound design, you have to thread a gender needle. Maybe you’re good at science, but you have to get through school without giving up. Maybe you’re a bright composer, but you have to have the right opportunities to shine. Maybe you’re technically inclined, but you need to convince the crew chief that you’re not a weakling full of dead weight before you can go near the sound console.

Solve for XX (that’s a chromosome joke…)

If we want to bring more women into sound design, we need to attack on all of these fronts simultaneously, and while none of us can do everything, each of us can help in our own way. At UCI, here’s what we’re doing to promote women in sound:

• Cultivate undergraduate sound designers of both genders. Our first contact with undergraduate students is usually through a class called Drama 50D: Introduction to Sound Design, and it is usually during that class that undergrad students start to discover sound design. We’re very alert to any and all aptitude for design in the class, and we work very hard to fight against the tendency to focus on men during technical discussions.
• Graduate student population. Even though our program is still fairly young, we have a strong history of women in our sound design program. In the last four classes to leave UCI, we’ve had three women (Cory Carrillo, Noelle Hoffman, and Beth Lake), all of whom are doing excellent work now that they’ve left UCI. Having a high rate of women in the program has a number of benefits unconnected to the women themselves: 1) a visible plurality of women is another way to indicate to undergraduate students and potential MFA students that women are welcome in our program, and 2) a plurality of women serves as a deterrent for the men in the program (faculty, staff, and students) to accidentally lapse into chauvinist behaviors.
• Recruiting. Understanding that young women lack the institutionalized support to discover sound design (see the previous section), it’s unsurprising that women are deep in the minority of the application pool. Because of the lack of support that women in sound, science, and/or design often get, we operate under the assumption that the average woman applying to our program has had less experience, mentorship, and encouragement than the average man. That doesn’t mean that she’s any less talented; rather, it just means that on average, she may not appear as strong as the male applicants.  To counter this, when we recruit, we take an extra-close look at female candidates, digging deeper to see if what may appear to be an unqualified candidate is actually a diamond in the rough. (I want to be quite clear here – we do not practice any sort of Affirmative Action, and we would not accept an unqualified woman instead of a qualified man. We simply make an extra effort when reviewing female applicants.).

In Conclusion

Every few months, I have another conversation with a different colleague about women in Sound Design, both professionally and at UCI.  During those conversations, most of what I’ve written here comes up, and I’m happy to have the conversation multiple times to keep the topic at the forefront of our thought. I typically wouldn’t write something like this on the blog; it’s a sensitive subject, and I’m sure I’ve rubbed someone the wrong way. However, we’ve recently started classes for the year, and for the first time since we’ve had a full roster of sound design MFA students, we only have one woman student. The dearth of women is not for lack of trying, but in the last two years, we have not found any women that we thought were ready for UCI Sound. Maybe we’re looking in the wrong places?

At any rate, I’ve been thinking a lot about this, and I wanted to take a time to reaffirm our commitment to women in sound design and to confirm that I am looking forward to having more women join us in the future.  If you’re a woman sound designer (or a man, for that matter), and you are interested in UCI Sound, please drop me an email of introduction and let’s talk.

(note: the views expressed above are entirely my own and do not reflect the views of UCI, UCI Drama, or the UCI Sound Program)

Special Guests: Nagel and Frears

Yesterday was a day full of special guests here at UCI.  In Trends in Modern Sound Design, a rotating topics class for all MFA Sound Designers, we welcomed Andrew Nagel. Andrew works with L'Acoustics, a manufacturer of high end loudspeakers. L'Acoustics is based up in Ventura County, so it was an extra-special treat for Andrew to come down and visit with us down in Orange County. He talked with us for three hours about his career path from freelance design through consulting and ending up at L'Acoustics, his thoughts on education versus real-world experience, and some products that L'Acoustics has developed recently as they try to build market share in the theater market. He also invited us up to L'Acoustics in the future, and I'm hoping we're able to make that happen soon!

Mark, Brian, Matt, David, Andrew, Josh, Patricia, Michael, and Stephen

In the afternoon, we inaugurated the new Design Colloquium Series with a talk with Will Frears. Will is a busy theatre & film director, primarily based out of NYC, but he's in town working on Build at The Geffen Playhouse, which is currently in previews.  We invited him down to talk about his career and thoughts on the theatre with our students. We had a good turnout - not only were the designers present, but we had some actors and some undergrad directors. Will spoke for about 90 minutes, answering questions, telling stories, and providing advice to the actors and designers as they start to build their career. He had a lot to say, and we were glad to have him down.

Will Frears (left) talks with Head of Directing Jane Page and Sound Design Student Josh Fehrmann after the Colloquium.

Thanks to both Andrew and Will for taking the time to come down and talk to us!

Rational Acoustics SMAART Training.

Rational Acoustics SMAART Training.

(A.K.A Adventures in Becoming a Better Sound Communist)

As the summer of 2012 slowly came to an end, we at UCI Sound decided to jumpstart our thinking machines by hosting Jamie Anderson from Rational Acoustics for a three day SMAART training class.  Though I have a Louisiana public education, I am not spelling Smaart wrong.  SMAART stands for Sound Measurement Acoustical Analysis Real Time. It is a brilliant piece of measurement software that we use here at UCI to understand and quantify what our systems our doing in the room they are in. Smaart is an industry standard in measurement software and, as we learned, it can serve as a valuable tool for system design and optimization. Over the course of three days we learned a tremendous amount about theory, application, and use of the software.

Day 1 began with an exploration into the fundamentals of sound. This was a wonderful opportunity to review and revisit many of the topics we discussed at the Meyer Seminar earlier in the summer. It is always great to have a refresher and further understanding the physical properties of how sound works.  Jamie broke down the system design timeline into six parts. He also reminded us that often as sound practitioners we are thrown into the creative process at various points along the process.

The six points to good system alignment are

1.                    Concept/Artistic goal- (What are the artistic needs of the piece of art? What story does the system need to help tell?)

2.                    Venue Evaluation/ Modification- Where is the performance taking place? What are the acoustical/physical limitations of the space?

3.                    System Design/Equipment choice- Make sure you have the right equipment for the job.

4.                    Equipment Verification/Installation-Once the equipment is installed verify that it works. SMAART is a great tool for verifying problems within the signal chain.

5.                    System optimization/ Tuning/ Voicing- The process of voicing a system to meet the artistic goals and demands of a production. For example, a rock show might want to have a heightened low end to provide that “punch” to the kick and the bass.  This is where Smaart really excels. Using the various forms of measurements, Smaart gives the designer valuable information that can aid in tuning/ alignment.

6.                    Realization, Use, Adaptation- We have all seen the engineers at FOH constantly looking at their RTA or Transfer Measurements. Because we don’t work in perfect environments the sound is constantly changing. We have to be able to adapt the system to the conditions of the night. Every show is different. Smaart is a great tool to monitor and understand system response during the show. Especially with the use of wireless microphone a system tech could literally walk around with an iPad and capture traces all around the space for reference. The possibilities are endless.

During day one Jaime said that the goal of the training was to become a better “Sound Communist.” We want everyone to get the same show. Yes..... this is impossible, but I feel it is a great thing to strive for.  So, embrace/ strive for equality in your systems. Day one was filled with a ton of information about the Smaart interface and some techniques on getting better measurement data.

Smaart does two forms of measurements. The first is single channel measurement. These measurements are absolute. A spectrum measurement is one type of single channel measurement. For example a mic would go into Smaart and analyze the frequency response of the speaker at that given location in the space. These measurements measure frequency and amplitude. The time domain is excluded.

Smaart also performs dual channel measurements. These measurements help dive into the guts of a system. They can help solve problems within the time domain as well as show the differences in frequency response from what is being sent to what is actually being produced though the air.  The transfer function is a great example of a dual channel measurement.  In this measurement, a reference input signal is compared to a measurement on the output (i.e. direct pink noise from a console is sent into Smaart as a reference and out of the speaker. The second channel would be a microphone measuring that signal out in the house). Smaart then compares the differences of the two signals to formulate a transfer function. The phase response and spectrum response of the data are then graphically represented within Smaart.  What makes this measurement so powerful is it takes the time domain into account. With this information we can decipher the phase response and arrival times of sources. We can even determine the polarity of a speaker using the impulse response.

At the end of day 1 a lot of our minds were blown at the fact that Smaart will easily average numerous traces. This is useful and gives the engineer a better understanding of the average response of a system in a given area. The process of averaging is done by taking multiple traces in a given area; then, within a menu in Smaart, the user can select those individual traces and average them together. A graphical average will appear and show the overall trend of response.  The averaging feature is quite useful in showing any big issues within a system. Going after the big issues is much more effective than going after the small stuff because every seat is different.

Jaime has a great phrase for discussing prioritization: “Rocks, Pebbles, Sand, ……Beer.” In order to be better sound communists, we should tackle the big problems first. Once the big problems are solved, then we can work on the little things if we get the time. Of course, beer must happen after a long day of alignment. Do make time for that.

Day 2

The second day was where we really learned how to utilize Smaart. In the morning, we took many different measurements and put Smaart through its paces. Here at UCI, we often use Smaart for tuning. Jamie showed us many tips and tricks of better navigating the interface. After our measurement calisthenics and lunch we started utilizing Smaart to set crossovers and exploring the impulse response trace.

The Impulse response measurement is a powerful measurement. It is a dual channel IFT measurement that measures amplitude over time. Why is this useful? Well an impulse response can show your arrival times of reflections, other speakers, other drivers, and even polarity.

 

(Above is an example of an impulse response measurement. The large spike is the first arrival of sound. The smaller spike represents a later arrival.)

Day 3

Day three was a practical application day.  Instead of sitting around and talking theory, we came up with some practical applications for using Smaart. Before we began, Jamie made a point to discuss reference microphones. Thru the whole seminar, we were using various measurement microphones at various price ranges. The lesson we learned was that though these microphones have a difference in frequency response, noise floor, and price, they can still get the job done for measurement. The frequency response curves for every microphone had differences in the high end past 5k. This difference in frequency response is minimal to the difference in response one would get by moving the microphone and inch in any direction. Also, Smaart can import data correction curves to flatten out the response of a microphone. So…in the live environment an $89 microphone will perform quite well for measurement.  Where you do run into problems is that the sensitivity and noise floor of cheaper microphone is often less desirable than the more expensive quality measurement microphones. Yet, as a grad student on a budget, it was comforting to hear that an $89 microphone could get the job done.

The Smaart training seminar was an amazing opportunity that allowed us to further familiarize with the powerful tool. More importantly, we were reminded that the journey to good sound is a constant leaning process. We learned a ton and it was a great way to start off the year. I know all of us will utilize the things we learned for the rest of our careers. A big thanks goes out to Jamie Anderson and all at Rational Acoustics for an amazing three days of learning. This has helped us grow as artist, sound practitioners, and sound communists. Thanks for the fun.

-Josh 

A year after his passing... a quote that rings true...

It's technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities that yields us the result that makes our heart sing.   -Steve Jobs  1955-2011

Using Shotgun Mics Indoors...

...might be a bad idea, according to this interesting piece I read this morning.  Check it out four yourself; I'll post a bit of it here to whet your whistle...

I have been researching an idea that I have been hearing for a while:

It’s not a good idea to use a shotgun microphone indoor.

I want to check this question out and, eventually, make some tests. Here we go!

Audio GL

Some really cool 3D sequencing software that's still in beta.

Ain’t Nothin’ But a Phase Thing

Last week, UCI hosted the Meyer Sound seminar on Fundamentals of System Design, Implementation & Optimization, led by Steve Bush. For all of us involved, this was an excellent opportunity to return to the basics of system design and ear training for live sound. Steve started at the ground level and took us through the process of critical decision-making, at a pace that allowed everyone in the room to stay on board.

The first day was spent reinforcing the basics. Steve set up combinations of UPJ arrays, UPJ & M1D subs, & M1D sub arrays, and demonstrated the results both aurally and visually in SIM. We did a lot of listening to comb filtering and polarity reversal with pink noise to get our ears acquainted with those sounds. Steve drilled us on wavelength and period recognition, asking questions like:

Q: If Period = 1/Frequency & Frequency = 1/Period, what is the period of 100 Hz?

A: 10ms. 

Q: What happens if two 100hz sine waves are sent to the same speaker with one delayed 5ms?

A. Complete cancellation

The underlying point of the exercise was to reinforce the importance of loudspeaker placement when designing systems, allowing us to speedily approximate the basic interaction between two speakers at any distance from each other. Just remember: 100hz is a mini cooper, 1kHz is a hoagie, and 10kHz is your pinkie finger.

Steve heavily reinforced the causes and effects of phase in all stages of system design. He set up a situation in which one source of pink noise was split and sent to a single speaker, and one feed was delayed an unknown amount. By examining a combination of the frequency and phase traces in SIM, we were able to see correlation between the frequency of the first dip in the combing and the 180º phase cancellation point. We would then double that frequency to determine the frequency of the next peak, then find the period of that peak to determine the delay between the two sources. For instance, if the dip is at 500, the peak would be at 1k — therefore, there would be 1 ms of delay present.

To demonstrate some of these effects, Steve set up a fairly typical tuning situation with a single UPJ and an M1D sub. Typically when tuning these speakers, you typically insert some form of high pass filter on the UPJ & low pass on the M1D sub. As Steve demonstrated, however, these filters introduce a shift in the phase curve of each cabinet — specifically, these 2^nd order filters used within the Galileo 616 processor create a 90 degree phase shift at the cut frequency for each speaker. In other words, if the two filters are set at the same frequency, they create a 180º phase difference at this crossover point. The solution? Steve merely flipped the polarity on the sub, “turning the nulls into peaks and the peaks into nulls.” This shifted the cancellation point of the two speakers upwards in frequency, to a range that the subwoofer does not cover — in other words, there was no perceivable cancellation!

We also practiced arraying 2 UPJs, but in a different style than has been done here at UCI recently. Steve decided to treat one of the two cabinets as the main source, with the other acting as a kind of a fill that expands the width of coverage of the first. The measurement process went as follows:

1.  Capture the response of the main cabinet on-axis in SIM.

2.  Shift the captured trace down 6dB.

3.  Move the mic toward the coverage limit of the horn, until the live trace matches the -6dB one. This is the “-6dB point” of the horn.

4.  Mute the main speaker and bring in the fill.

5.  Adjust the placement of the fill until it matches the -6dB response of the main speaker. This means that the coverage of the speakers crossover at the -6dB point of each.

6.  Unmute the main speaker and tune the delay of the fill until the responses match.

7.  EQ the fill as necessary

Effectively, this creates the illusion of a single UPJ that has the extended coverage of an additional UPJ horn in one direction. Very cool, and definitely something we will want to experiment with.

One of the most interesting topics we covered was the phase response of a single loudspeaker within itself. Steve definitely blew a few minds in the room when he talked about the slow response of the woofer of a cabinet when compared to the tweeter. He also covered the use of all-pass filters in tuning. All pass filters provide no change in the frequency response of a signal, but merely introduce a delay in the signal. Steve explained that Meyer tunes the phase response of its cabinets by splitting the input signal into frequency ranges and inserting all-pass filters in such a way that the higher frequency ranges are delayed to arrive more in time with lower ranges  — effectively evening out the phase response of the cabinet. In the case of the UPJ that he used for the demonstration, the phase deviation is no more than 540º. Steve also mentioned that all-pass filters can be useful tools when matching the phase response of two speakers made by different manufacturers — but he also warned us that misuse of the all-pass filters can result in significant problems in other areas of tuning.

Steve touched on numerous methods of arraying subwoofers to allow directional control of the low frequencies. A sub-gradient array consists of two subs facing forward in a single-file line, with 3.5’ of separation. The rear sub is delayed to the front one, and then the polarity is reversed on the rear sub. This effectively creates strong cancellation in the rear, allowing the overall volume to be pushed without affecting those behind the array as much. An endfire array is a similar setup, except that the front sub is delayed to the back one, and there is no polarity flip. This creates constructive interference in the front, and destructive in the back. Endfire arrays can also consist of more than two subs in a line. Steve also showed examples of arrays-of-arrays with subs — for instance, a line of endfire arrays across the front of a stage.  He cautioned us on the use of these sub arrays, though, as even the smallest problem (like an XLR wired with reversed polarity) can completely destroy the effect.

One of the goals for the seminar was to practice our newfound skills on the rep system of the Claire Trevor Theater. The rep system includes:

 

•   Two line arrays, each with (8) M1Ds & (1) MID sub, on either side of the proscenium

•   (2) arrayed UPQs serving as the center

•   (2) MM-4XPDs at the rear of house serving as fills for the FOH mix position and the handicap seating

Steve decided to leave one of the arrays set up in the rep position, and experiment with the other one for comparison. We lowered the array to try new splay angles and heights and listened to how each set of boxes interacted with the room. It was a rare and unique opportunity to go through the steps of tuning a line array while Steve talked us through what we were hearing.

This seminar was an incredible experience for all of us at UCI. Steve was a wonderful teacher who gave some of the best-worded examples and definitions for fundamental concepts I have heard to date. He did a fantastic job of translating the results of SIM measurements into aural examples, and he explained everything in a manner that everyone, at every pace, could grasp. We really can’t wait to try out what we learned in the fall! Thank you to everyone involved and we hope to do this again soon!

^Patricia & Matt

Phase, Phase, Phase

This week, we were happy to welcome Steve Bush from Meyer Sound to UCI. He taught 2 seminars: Fundamentals of System Design, Implementation and Optimization. And Quick System Setup and Alignment. And the reoccurring theme was "Phase Phase Phase". And my brain, being what it is, kept putting it to the Paul McCartney & Michael Jackson "Say Say Say" song.

Seriously, the classes were great. Everyone loved them, and thought Steve did a wonderful job getting the material across. The little pearls of wisdom, from Mini Cooper/Hoogie/Pinky Finger, to "It's all soup!" were great! It's amazing how those little pearls stick in your head. There was science. There was math. There was art. And discussion of A.R.T. (Absorption, Reflection. Transmission)! I will leave it to the grad students to go into more details of what they learned.

It was also great opening our doors to our community to join in on the fun. We had a wide range of participants. A few folks from the corporate a/v industry. Some freelance FOH engineers. Folks from other schools. Theater people. And a few church folks too. A great smattering of people who use sound! I can't wait until the next one. Not only the opportunity to learn new tricks and tips. But also, to meet more of my compadres in the sound world, that work in avenues I don't travel down often. I'm always up for a good war story!

Thanks again to Gavin Canaan, Mac Johnson, Steve Bush, and John & Helen Meyer, for making this all possible.

Early Adopters Beware!

Apparently, there are some USB3 compatibility issues that may prove problematic for power users like sound designers.  Check out the link here (thanks to CDM!).

Obsolete tech sounds

Gizmodo has a great piece about obsolete tech sounds - sounds we used to hear all the time but have now virtually disappeared from our world.

Here's my favorite description:  

Dot Matrix Printout

Long before the days of color laser printers that churn out 30 pages a minute, we had dot matrix printing. There was something hypnotically relaxing about the sound of the chirpy print head moving from left to right as reams of paper slowly pulled past it. We could meditate to that sound."

You can read the whole piece here.

Sinan Zafar, BA, UC-Irvine

UCI commencement exercises will be held today for the undergraduate students.  Among those students receiving their Bachelors Degrees will be Sinan Zafar. Sinan is our first real sound design undergraduate student at UCI. He showed up on our radar over two years ago, and quickly made himself indispensable at UCI. He worked on large projects with the graduate students, was the go-to designer for workshop productions with his classmates, and took a significant number of graduate level classes. This year, in addition to all of that, he also designed two shows for the UCI mainstage season. Not surprisingly, he also became our first Honors in Sound Design student.

Sinan will be moving to LA following graduation to pursue his creative work, and the future has great things in store for him.  Congratulations, Sinan!!

Beth Lake and Jeff Polunas, MFA, UC-Irvine

Congratulations to Beth Lake and Jeff Polunas, our most recent graduates of the sound design program here at UCI! They're both terrific designers, and Mike, BC, and I are proud of them and wish them great success!

Beth hails from Arizona by way of Colorado, but she also spent time at Jacob's Pillow out in Mass.  Her thesis design was Arcadia, and she's looking forward to relocating to NYC.

Jeff spent formative years in Ohio, but had been in California (including work for PCPA) for quite a while now.  His thesis was a design for Dance Visions, our faculty-choreographed dance concert. He'll stay around the socal area for the time being.  Jeff is also getting married this summer, so it's quite an exciting time for him!

They have both been terrific students and designers, and I look forward to the great things they'll do in the future!

Darron West, Tony winner

Just a quick update for those following... Darron West won his Tony Award last night. Congratulations Darron!  We're all proud of you!

Which future Tony winner will visit our classroom next year?  Wait and see...

Final Projects!

Each spring for the past four years, I've taught a class called 'Creating Sounds from Scratch.'  SfS starts out exploring old synthesizer technology through a digital lens, looking at oscillators, filters, and midi to create entirely new sounds or to give a unique sheen to old sounds. The bulk of the class time, however, is spent digging into the details of a program called MaxMSP. Max is a piece of software that lets the user create complex creative packages for sound & video based on data and numbers. In SfS, we use Max primarily as a data mapper, taking real-world control (pressing keys or twiddling knobs on a keyboard) and turning that data into opportunity for creative control.

SfS is a required class for MFA Sound Designers here at UCI, but this year, I let the class open up to students of various backgrounds and aptitudes.  It was a great challenge for me, as I found myself having to frame the class in such a way to engage both the students who were comfortable and versed in this kind of thinking and control as well as the students who were totally new to this kind of work. I must admit that I didn’t think it had gone particularly well, but yesterday, my mind was changed.  Final projects were due recently, and I was consistently delighted by the kind of work that the students did.  So impressed, in fact that, I want to share them with you.

The prompt for the final project was simple: ‘Use digital tools to create a modifiable soundscape of an event.’ Over the past few weeks, we looked at ways to get real-world control data into Max and ways to use that data to create/control sonic events.  Let’s look at what the students came up with:

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Bryan is an undergrad with a focus in sound for games.  He was my student in a different class in the fall, and I thought that SfS would be useful to him in his game work.  He created a warzone, using his Android phone running TouchOSC as a controller.  Bryan did an excellent job in prioritizing energy and attention on foreground sounds v. background sounds (a requirement for the fast-paced world of game design).  Here’s a screenshot of his work:

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Dean (an MFA Stage Manager) and Jenna (an undergraduate Sound Designer) created a car-driving sequence using a Wii Remote as a controller. The user controls speed of the car and volume of the radio using the gyroscopic parameters of the controller, and the buttons on the remote take us through a sonic event, ending in a surprising car crash (spoiler alert!)

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Elliot (an undergrad Sound Designer), Pablo (an MFA student in the ICIT program in the computer music wing of the Music Department), and Stephen (an MFA Sound Designer) worked together to create a comprehensive sonic event, tracking the result of a botched bank robbery during a Fourth of July celebration. A wii remote served as a master controller, an iphone (running TouchOSC and Facetime) streamed data and audio to the host computer), and the bank safe was cracked in real time using a cardboard box modded with various sensors.

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Kat (an undergrad Sound Designer) and Phil (an MFA Stage Manager) created a very precise aural replication of Super Mario Brothers to be played using a Wii Remote.  They used chance to re-create events, but they used brute force programming to get the sounds to behave correctly.

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Kristen (an MFA Stage Manager), Michael (another ICIT student), and Patricia (an MFA Sound Designer) created a space battle using a JazzMutant Lemur as a controller.  They implemented their battle using an eight-channel delivery system. Unfortunately, the user loses the space battle.

You may, by now, noticed a theme of catastrophic death in these projects. Don’t fret – the theme continues.

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Phillip, another undergrad game sound student, created a medieval sword fight for two Wii Remotes.  He created comparison events to trigger sonic events: if only one ‘sword’ was swung, that sword would hit, but if both ‘swords’ were swung, they would parry and clang off of each other.

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Sinan, our final undergraduate Sound Designer, also created a sword fight, but his vocabulary was Star Wars light sabers.  Sinan built his sonic event using theme music, differently-pitched sounds for light-side or dark-side fighters, and victory music that changed depending on which side won:

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I was thoroughly impressed by all of these projects, and I’m proud of them all!  I’m looking forward to teaching the class again next spring!