Exploring Sound Design For Interactive Media

This timely new book provides an excellent foundation in the techniques of sound design production for the interactive arts. Coverage ranges from basic acoustics and digital audio theory to creating, mixing, and implementing sound and music in such interactive spaces as Web sites, games, and virtual worlds. Readers are introduced to the essentials of recording and reproduction, the key strategies for successful sound design, and the musical and psychological aspects of sound. The practical and theoretical knowledge presented in this book facilitates the important transition from the techniques of linear sound design used in film and video to the non-linear sound design techniques associated with adaptive audio spaces.

This volume provides a comprehensive introduction to foundational topics in sound design for interactive media, such as gaming and virtual reality; compositional techniques; new interfaces; sound spatialization; sonic cues and semiotics; performance and installations; music on the web; augmented reality applications; and sound producing software design. The reader will gain a broad understanding of the key concepts and practices that define sound design for its use in computational media and design. The chapters are written by international authors from diverse backgrounds who provide multidisciplinary perspectives on sound in its interactive forms. The volume is designed as a textbook for students and teachers, as a handbook for researchers in sound, design and media, and as a survey of key trends and ideas for practitioners interested in exploring the boundaries of their profession.

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

This book explores the underlying principles of sound design for linear and interactive media, and specifically how they apply to theatre and radio. The focus of the text is about how to design effective sound so that audiences' experiences are as close as possible to designers' intentions. Sound is omnipresent, it surrounds us and immerses us in the world. As a form of communication sound is fully embedded into our lives, providing information way beyond what we can ever hope to see, touch, smell or taste. Foetal human hearing apparatus is thought to be fully functional early in the third trimester, which is considered a key factor for both cognitive and speech development. As sound is a temporal medium we have to rely on memory to interpret what we hear, these memories have been built up since gestation, and are added to continuously. We have the ability to listen as well as hear, with listening we can choose what to attend to, and filter out to a certain extent, irrelevant content. What sound designers do is guide listeners on this aural journey, through the creation and/or the manipulation of sounds. These sounds can support a narrative, affect emotions or just confirm an action, but if designed properly events can be transformed into experiences, and observers into participants. Sound design is not about adding sounds to every element that might make a sound, there should be an elegance and economy by only using the bare minimum number of sounds to tell the story well. However, if obvious sound sources are omitted then an audience can become distracted, and with special effects films an increased use of designed sounds can help bring the small details to life.There are many different philosophical approaches to design, but the one being advocated here is that of the invisible practitioner, where the audience are completely unaware that any design took place at all. It is as if there was a perfect microphone on top of the camera and it captured everything without any need for postproduction. The designed sound is impossible to differentiate from the object, it belongs, and is perceived as if no third party was involved in its creation. Even when a stylistic approach has been taken, it is a case that that is the way the character is experiencing it, and whilst the sound might be new to us it makes perfect sense to the character, and we are not distracted in any way by the sound design. Nobody should have to think that was great sound, there was no sound, there was just the experience, and the sound was so intricately interwoven that is was impossible to separate it. The listener's interpretation of the sound is of major concern for the designer. It does not matter how a sound was created, all that matters is that the sound affects listeners in the intended manner. This is a very difficult thing to achieve as all listeners are unique. Whilst there are some commonalities, there are just as many, if not more, differences. If a design is not successful listeners will notice it. When a design is successful an audience becomes immersed and the entire experience is improved.

This volume provides a comprehensive introduction to foundational topics in sound design for linear media, such as listening and recording; audio postproduction; key musical concepts and forms such as harmony, conceptual sound design, electronica, soundscape, and electroacoustic composition; the audio commons; and sound’s ontology and phenomenology. The reader will gain a broad understanding of the key concepts and practices that define sound design for its use with moving images as well as important forms of composed sound. The chapters are written by international authors from diverse backgrounds who provide multidisciplinary perspectives on sound in its linear forms. The volume is designed as a textbook for students and teachers, as a handbook for researchers in sound, media and experience, and as a survey of key trends and ideas for practitioners interested in exploring the boundaries of their profession.

Principles of Game Audio and Sound Design is a comprehensive introduction to the art of sound for games and interactive media using Unity. This accessible guide encompasses both the conceptual challenges of the artform as well as the technical and creative aspects, such as sound design, spatial audio, scripting, implementation and mixing. Beginning with basic techniques, including linear and interactive sound design, before moving on to advanced techniques, such as procedural audio, Principles of Game Audio and Sound Design is supplemented by a host of digital resources, including a library of ready-to-use, adaptable scripts. This thorough introduction provides the reader with the skills and tools to combat the potential challenges of game audio independently. Principles of Game Audio and Sound Design is the perfect primer for beginner- to intermediate-level readers with a basic understanding of audio production and Unity who want to learn how to gain a foothold in the exciting world of game and interactive audio.

Designing Interactions for Music and Sound presents multidisciplinary research and case studies in electronic music production, dance-composer collaboration, AI tools for live performance, multimedia works, installations in public spaces, locative media, AR/VR/MR/XR and health. As the follow-on volume to Foundations in Sound Design for Interactive Media, the authors cover key practices, technologies and concepts such as: classifications, design guidelines and taxonomies of programs, interfaces, sensors, spatialization and other means for enhancing musical expressivity; controllerism, i.e. the techniques of non-musician performers of electronic music who utilize MIDI, OSC and wireless technologies to manipulate sound in real time; artificial intelligence tools used in live club music; soundscape poetics and research creation based on audio walks, environmental attunement and embodied listening; new sound design techniques for VR/AR/MR/XR that express virtual human motion; and the use of interactive sound in health contexts, such as designing sonic interfaces for users with dementia. Collectively, the chapters illustrate the robustness and variety of contemporary interactive sound design research, creativity and its many applied contexts for students, teachers, researchers and practitioners.

An examination of the player's experience of sound in video games and the many ways that players interact with the sonic elements in games. In Playing with Sound, Karen Collins examines video game sound from the player's perspective. She explores the many ways that players interact with a game's sonic aspects—which include not only music but also sound effects, ambient sound, dialogue, and interface sounds—both within and outside of the game. She investigates the ways that meaning is found, embodied, created, evoked, hacked, remixed, negotiated, and renegotiated by players in the space of interactive sound in games. Drawing on disciplines that range from film studies and philosophy to psychology and computer science, Collins develops a theory of interactive sound experience that distinguishes between interacting with sound and simply listening without interacting. Her conceptual approach combines practice theory (which focuses on productive and consumptive practices around media) and embodied cognition (which holds that our understanding of the world is shaped by our physical interaction with it). Collins investigates the multimodal experience of sound, image, and touch in games; the role of interactive sound in creating an emotional experience through immersion and identification with the game character; the ways in which sound acts as a mediator for a variety of performative activities; and embodied interactions with sound beyond the game, including machinima, chip-tunes, circuit bending, and other practices that use elements from games in sonic performances.