As a prelude to what will hopefully (time permitting) become a longer series of posts, and blog as a whole, about sound and its creative uses, we thought it would be nice to share some of the places we go to for inspiration and information…
If you know where to look, there’s a large community of people out there using sound creatively and thinking about how sound can be applied in new ways. And more importantly, blogging about it; sharing their thoughts on how they are using sound, and what it means to them to use it in the ways they do.
Behind the scenes at navy&grey this community and the ideas it generates is something that greatly inspires our own work. From our creative concepts, ideas and writing, through to the choices we make on music, production and recording. The thinking we do around our work can often be informed, fed and developed by the work of people we’ve never met or spoken to, but who share their techniques and thoughts on sound through their writings on the web.
It’s an informal community that we’ve contributed to individually in the past, and that we hope we can continue to contribute to through our work and this blog. Time permitting we’ll be posting here about our side projects, experiments and failures, and sharing our thoughts on the creative uses of sound, it’s connections with our culture and spoken word, and the future of creative audio.
Here’s 6 of the best to get started with…
Nathan (we don’t know his surname) is a multi-discipline creative based in the Bay Area of San Francisco. He posts on Noise Jockey about his experiments and successes in sound design; sharing techniques, equipment and the results of his experiments. Have a listen to his recordings of ice melting in a glass of soda if you want to know what we like about him…
The best podcast out there at the moment. bPm and D’Wala are based in London but broadcast twice a month from Marseilles and via download from their site and itunes. If you need to sit and get some work done, or you need to hear something new, old or just plain out-there that you’ve never heard before, this is the place. And they have a great elephant bumper.
This is a new one for us (and possibly just is new as there’s currently only 91 members) but it’s fast becoming a favourite. Pphilosophy of Sound is a social site that poses questions about sound and how we perceive it, encouraging an open debate in response. Not sure how the ‘gifts’ button works, but it’s probably not important…
Designing Sound is a blog that collects interviews, features, news and information on the history of recorded sound and sound design. If we’re a bit flat (sometimes we are) it’s a great place to have a poke around and grab some inspiration. There’s a video featuring Ben Burtt talking about how he did the original sounds for Star Wars… if you don’t know already, go and find out how the laser sounds were created…
Variety of Sound is a blog run by a guy called Bootsie. He’s a computer scientist and musician who makes free software for use in music production and sound design. The software is a bit special as it is, and for it to be free too is even more special. Unfortunately we can’t use it because it’s only for PC’s.
However, he also posts on a range of subjects on the blog that always seem to end up providing some sort of creative spark. From heavyweight technical stuff to simple cartoons, there’s always something on there that makes us think.
Last but by no means least is Create Digital Music. More wide ranging and less personal than some of the others here, this is a great place to keep up with what’s going on with musical equipment and developments in audio software without having to read a ton of editorial stuff at the same time… Check the post on the recent release of a range of classic guitar pedal fx for use on the iphone. We had no idea.
