Film, TV, Advertising and Games composer services from Ithaca Audio
Ithaca Audio was asksed to create a light hearted sound track including sound design elements for Wiley publishings new promo video for “Business Continuity for Dummies” in association with the Cabinet Office.
The animation was created by the excellent Alan Warburton: http://www.alanwarburton.co.uk/
The audio was inspired by classic TV themes such The Noveltones - “Left Bank Two” (The gallery theme from Vision On)
Ithaca Audio was asked to create the intro music and sound design for hardstyle producer Brennan Heart’s latest track “Never Break Me”. No sound was recorded on location during the shoot so we were required to recreate all the audible elements in the scene.
Here is the full video featuring Brennan Heart’s track “Never Break Me”
We were recently asked by Berlin production company Moist Creation to create all the audio for their new animation for Red Bull. This included sound design for each of the different scenes in the video and music to tie the whole piece together.
Here is the video with just the sound design elements:
We were recently asked by Directors/Animators Jeff Han and Paul Sangwoo Kim to create the audio for their new short film World of Sounds.
The film is centred around the idea of a ‘world of sound’ being created when a musician plays an instrument. The character in the film plays the keyboard and around him an entire world evolves into being, containing the different elements of the sound, for instance the large floating ships represent the bass element of the keyboard sound.
The film allowed us to be very creative with the sound design and we were able to layer the audio to give the feeling of an industrial space where all these sounds are being created.
If you are interested in obtaining a copy of the film for presenting then please email [email protected] and we would be happy to provide a copy.
Directors/Designers/Animators
Jeff Han
Gyum Kevin Heo
Paul Sangwoo Kim
Jeewon Kim
VFX Advisor
Ming Tai
Cinematographer
Charles Rose
Product Manager
Paul Saskas
Actors
Colton Scott
Ronnie Alveras
Makeup Artist
Jessica Yu
Sound Design
Ithaca Audio Ltd
Take a look at this great interview with composer and sound designer Diego Stocco. Diego uses some really interesting techniques to create the sounds that make up his compositions.
You can download some of Diego’s great music here: http://diegostocco.bandcamp.com/album/the-broken-suite
It’s finally here, the last instalment in the film adaptations of the Harry Potter books. The SoundWorks have done another great job in interviewing the crew behind the sound of the film. This importance of the sound design elements looks to be far more integral and intensive in this film than the previous one. The film score has been created by composer Alexandre Desplat who also composed the music for part one and last years big success ‘The King’s Speech.’
Here is the video:
Loud noises attract our attention and these days adverts and brands are screaming at us from every angle to take notice. Consumers are overloaded, so it’s time to look at some slightly more cunning ways to get the attention of the public and get your message out there using the power of audio.
These tips will give you some insight into some creative ways of using audio to get people’s attention and will also dip into the science behind ‘attention grabbing’ sounds along the way.
The very nature of sound vibration is that it loses energy over time, meaning almost all sounds start loud and get quieter. Hitting a gong, plucking a string, dropping your keys, with all these noises you instantly get sound that then dies away at varying rates. Our brain is used to this, play a sound backwards and our brain focuses on the sound trying to work out what is happening.
Here is an example recording, the sound of a radiator being hit.
Normal
[audio:http://www.ithacaaudio.com/uploads/Radiator.mp3]
Reverse
[audio:http://www.ithacaaudio.com/uploads/RadiatorReverse.mp3]
Our ears have evolved to amplify certain frequencies. Your outer ear and your ear canal act as an amplifier boosting the signal where you need it most. This is centered around the human speech frequencies, which if you think about it makes sense. Humans have become the dominant species through the abilty to communicate with each other and it is only natural that we should have evolved to easily hear each other speak. The frequencies that the ear focuses on most are between 300hz and 3khz and this is one of the reasons why the bassist in a band gets less solos that the guitarist.
Here is an example from our news themes post:
Normal
[audio:http://www.ithacaaudio.com/uploads/NewsThemeShort.mp3]
Here we have just the 300hz-3Khz frequencies. While the sound is not as full you can still distinguish the instruments and the melodies fairly easily.
[audio:http://www.ithacaaudio.com/uploads/NewsThemeShortBandPass.mp3]
This time the 300hz-3Khz frequencies have been removed making it much harder to distinguish the important information about the audio.
[audio:http://www.ithacaaudio.com/uploads/NewsThemeShortBandNotch.mp3]
The audio equivalent of an M.C. Escher drawing, psycho-acoustic effects confuse your brain. Take the Shepard Tone for example, it is a sound that appears to be constantly rising with no end point:
[audio:http://www.ithacaaudio.com/uploads/Shepard%20Tone.mp3]
Silence is a very powerful tool in the audio arsenal. Again, much of the effect of silence on our attention stems from evolution.
Naturally the world is quite a noisy place and sudden silences are often an indicator of danger in the form of predators. As a successful species humans have evolved to take a particular interest in avoiding being eaten. As such our ears are always on, even when we sleep and our brain is constantly processing the input. It is very good at identifying sudden changes in audio that could be dangerous to us.
Much of the time our brain is ‘passively’ listening to the sound all around us, blocking out the everyday noises (traffic, computer fans, wildlife etc.) that are of no danger to us. When our brain very rapidly switches to actively focus on a particular sound this really grabs the attention of all our other senses. Load noises are a good example of this but often overlooked is the effect of sudden silence which in many cases can be much more interesting.
Here is a piece of music created by Ithaca Audio that focuses on the change in volume between loud and soft sounds to create tension in the listener:
Last but certainly not least is quality. High definition, well recorded or created sounds just get our attention. Any of the attention grabbing tricks mentioned above will be dampened by bad quality audio. Wherever possible steer clear of low quality encoding such as mp3. Where small file sizes are necessary try looking at some of the lossless audio codecs such as mp3HD, FLAC and Apple Lossless. If size and compatibility absolutely demand mp3 then encode it at the highest quality settings that you can.
Here is a great example of how sound can be used to immerse someone into a game. Sword & Swocery, created by games developer Superbrothers harks back do the days of Kings Quest style pixel heavy gameplay. The difference here is that the music and sounds, created by Toronto based composer Jim Guthrie produces a great sense of atmosphere and really draws you into the game, despite the 80′s graphics.
Take a look:
You can also get Jim Gutrie’s music on limited edition vinyl and digital download here
Sword and Sworcery is available for the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch here
Amon Tobin is a composer, producer and performer who is constantly pushing boundaries and a firm favorite here at Ithaca Audio. Whether it is his 7.1 surround sound shows or the exploration of sounds shown here in his new album, he is a musician to keep a close eye on.
Tobin’s latest album ISAM is available to listen to on sound cloud and features the composer’s comments track by track:
‘ISAM’ - Full album with track-by-track commentary from Amon Tobin by Amon Tobin
Tobin has also created this ‘making of’ video detailing how he pieced together some of the sounds.