Exclusive Interview with Diego Stocco, A “Sound Magician” | Sonic Terrain. You probably have heard about Diego Stocco, a composer and sound designer with a pretty particular way of creating sonic experiences mostly using rare instruments, found sounds and by doing special explorations of the sonic environment. He has done a lot of fantastic videos exploring different perspectives of field recording, sound design and experimental composition, actually creating its own instruments or using the whole environment as an instrument. He has recently finished a work called “Diego Stocco – Sound Magician” for DTS company, where he did small but interesting projects on exploring sonority and reality in a very interesting way. I recently did an interview with Diego for the Spanish site Hispasonic and he asked me if I could publish the interview in English as well so it can reach more people. He is a really nice person with a fantastic imagination and approach to sound and I thought his view and experiments would be something Sonic Terrain readers would enjoy.
The guide to sound effects. I like to think of such sounds as having two general components: a ‘defining’ one, and an ‘impact’ one. The defining one is what sounds up front and tells the listener what the sound is, especially if combined with picture. The impact one can be anything at all, designed only to pump up the sound to hyper-real. For defining sounds, simply record what things really are: For a face slap for example, record a real slap, hand clap, slap on thigh, etc. For a body kick, record a fist on chest thud, etc. For impact sounds, anything goes. A broomstick whacked really hard and flat onto a couch or mattress makes a great beefing-up component for a body hit.
Other purely impact sounds: kick drum, fist-pound on closet door (tapered), car door slam (tapered), kicked or stick-hit cardboard box, leather belt snap, whip crack, etc. The tried and true is doing the Rocky – Punching some steak or other large animal part – Dismembering carcasses can be helpful too – though awfully unpleasant. - Charles Maynes.
History of Film Sound. Music Thing: A Radio Sequencer, How to Get Into DIY Synth Modules, How to Have Fun. Lured by the siren song of modular synthesis and DIY electronics, but not sure how to navigate the piles of requisite knowledge – or uncertain what the trip down this rabbit hole might have in store? For years, Tom Whitwell’s Music Thing was a beloved daily read, as that site and this one were among the early blog-format destinations for music tech. Tom moved on – something about a major day-gig at a paper called The Times, perhaps named after the font? – but that makes us all the more delighted to get a dispatch from him. In this guest column for CDM, he introduces one project, a brilliant FM radio sequencer, but also helps us catch up on reading on modular synthesis and electronics dating back to the origins of the technology.
And he has a realistic look at what this will do to your life – all inspired by “pure enthusiasm,” as he puts it, “this is fun, you should try it.” Hey, isn’t that what the drug dealer said in those just-say-no instructional videos we watched in the 80s? Soda.swedish-ict.se/4048/1/Game_Sound_Experience.pdf. George Valavanis :: Tencent. Audio Mastering In Your Computer. Many home recordists hope to perfect their productions by doing their own mastering on their studio computer.
However, few seem to achieve the classy results they're after. So how much can you realistically achieve by going it alone, and what techniques will give the highest-quality results? Craig Anderton Mastering is a vital part of the recording process, so much so that a substantial amount of mythology is associated with it. We've all heard stories of high-priced mastering engineers with mystical, proprietary gear based on gilded vacuum tubes salvaged from ancient Russian submarines... or something similar.
But we've also heard of computer studio owners with a two-track editor and a few plug-ins who have started mastering their own material. What gives? Can You Do Your Own Mastering? Prior to the digital revolution, mastering had a very defined set of functions. So does this mean only experts should attempt to do mastering? Besides, the only way to get good at anything is practice. The sexiness of ambient sound design: How inFamous: Second Son leverages next-generation audio. Brad Meyer is the audio director on inFAMOUS: Second Son, and he’s excited about the possibilities that the next-generation systems offer developers.
We don’t often talk about sound when we fantasize about what the extra CPU, GPU, and RAM will do for game development, but Meyer took the press through a series of demos about what is now possible in the game’s audio design. We stood in a small room covered in recording equipment and expensive looking microphones, as he played sounds and explained the complexity of the game’s audio. Including the microphone built into the Dual Shock 4. He also admitted that this was a trick we’ve seen before, but the PlayStation 4 will do it better. “It is ridiculously higher quality than the Wii one was, this is basically the same speaker that is in the Vita, so it’s near CD quality,” Meyer explained. “It’s clearer than the arrows and fishing they had on the Wii.” Next-generation sound, not just graphics This is what you get moving from 512MB of RAM to 8GB.
Www.musicainformatica.org.