Diegesis is defined as the narrative construct a story takes place in, a world or universe with its own set of rules. Diegetic sound is sound that happens inside of this world, the characters are able to perceive it and it follows the rules of the world, ex. talking, footsteps, radio. Non-diegetic sound refers to sounds that happen outside of this world, ex. narrating or scores.
If the characters of a story can only hear diegetic sound and we want the audience to relate to the characters, it could be argued that we as sound designers should strive to use diegetic sound as much as possible. Using diegetic sound immerses the audience into the characters position. We face a problem if we want to do this in traditional cinema, a score is non-diegetic. How do we bring this non-diegetic emotional expression into the diegetic world?
This scene from Bird-man achieves this feat excellently. The drums start as non-diegetic, it’s a musical accompaniment outside of the story’s world. However by bringing the drummer into the world, the film maker has brought the audience and the characters together, we hear what they hear and so we understand to a deeper extent their perception of the scene, placing us in the story.
I think it would be very difficult to create a score that is completely diegetic, and so instead I’m going to create one that is shaped and informed by the diegetic world. It remains as non-diegetic but it has the quality of the diegetic sound.
MUSICAL THEATRE’S INFLUENCE ON SOUND DESIGN AND MUSIC IN FILM:
Keeping the musical framing of the story in synchronisation with the character/subject organically.
Howard Ashman was an American playwright, artistic director and lyricist with a firm rooting in musical theatre. He wrote and directed such works as ‘God bless you’, ‘Smile’, and ‘Little shop of Horrors’. In 1986 (at the age of 36) Ashman began a collaboration with the Disney Company, turning his creative efforts to film. Disney gave him the option of three projects to work on, two live action projects and an animated musical. Ashman leapt at animation and began work on ‘the little mermaid.’
Ashman put a great emphasis on telling stories through music, he believed it was “central to what Disney is”. He presented a case to the staff at Disney that animation and musical storytelling were made for each other, he saw “a very very strong connection between these two media”. Howard understood that wherever you’re creating something, where the songs are in a context bigger than themselves, you’re creating musical theatre. They started taking the keynotes/high points of their story, where the characters can’t help but let their emotions run out, turning these points into pieces of musical theatre. “these songs aren’t just bolstered on, they’re the tentpoles that hold the movie up”
The animators at Disney commended Ashman’s ability to seamlessly transition from spoken word to song, he did this by backing the musical vamp up under the dialogue preceding the song. Using this technique they could go from a contextual scene, to a musical emotional scene smoothly, keeping the audience’s suspension of disbelief afloat and keeping them invested in the story. This gradual transition of emotional intensity is intended to organically express how a characters emotional intensity will change overtime, keeping the musical framing of the story in synchronisation with the character/subject.
Usage:
This brings me to how I could apply Ashman’s principals of seamless transition to song, and musical theatre influence to sound design for film. I would like to explore the effectiveness of creating smooth transitions from diegetic sound in contextual scenes, to more musical sound design for the emotional high points of a film. How do I create seamless transitions? One idea I would like to experiment with is using locational/contextual elements to build the score (or at least the beginning). As an example, vocoding diegetic sound to begin a score, or using the rhythm of someone’s speech or movement to build a drum score, even using diegetic sound as the samples for the beat. I want to try to tie the musical scoring of a scene as tightly as I can to the visual context.
‘Erect a structure of your belief Suspend into your thoughts Brick by brick Thought by thought Examine your surroundings Feel the architecture Run your hands along the walls that hold you in Linger in that space What did it take to get here? How much will it take to bring it down? What can I release? Resist the details Light the match Absorb the orange glow the inferno from within Demolish the unwanted Turn destruction into a manageable method Burn your own bridges Look back into the void that once looked into you Acknowledge the rest Let the demolition pave your way Use both hands to hold onto what you know Ash to fertile soil fertile soil To a bountiful harvest Believe that anything built Can be demolished And turned anew’
-Jakes contribution, a manifesto of our project
After explaining our group piece to my friend, he suggested I listen to William Basinski’s ‘Disintegration loops’.
The work is made using a piece of short melodic audio on magnetic tape, the tape is then played over and over through a tape head, this process gradually deteriorates the audio resulting in a texturally rich deconstruction of the simple audio.
I feel this piece is very relevant in the context of our project, it expresses ideas of deconstruction, repetition and reinvention of self. The creation of this piece coincided with the destruction of the world trade centre, the damage being visible from Basinski’s rooftop.
The piece has made me reconsider the structure of my work. I feel the subject matter is better expressed when the transition between states is emphasised. I’m presented with a problem in the creation of my work, I do not have access to a tape machine in the time I have to create my contribution. I’ve tried to create a self destructive audio sequence using logic but I can’t seem to find a way to make it work, I’m going to have to create the effect of the sequence. This will be done though manually reducing the bit resolution of each repetition, automating increased separation and amount of a vocal doubler, and automation of an equalisers hi cut.
Choice of samples is very important to this piece. As stated in the last blog post I have found a broadcast from 1962 that talks about the redevelopment of the area. It starts with the phrase ‘This, believe it or not, is the elephant and castle’. I think this is a good way of expressing the subject matter, it captures the themes of change, development and repeated self destruction.
Sample 1:
Ive separated the melodic section of the piece into two halves making use of two samples, each with political importance. I wanted the music to represent the cultural ramifications of this redevelopment. There was a thriving South American/latino community in elephant and castle, therefore I have used two South American composers/musicians to provide the emotional qualities of the piece.
The first is ‘Appassionato’, a piece written by Ricardo Castro a Mexican concert pianist and composer.
Sample 2:
The second is piece by Arturo Márquez, a Mexican composer. It’s performed by the National symphony Orchestra of Mexico.
We have a unique opportunity to produce a piece of work responding to the destruction of the elephant and castle shopping centre as the destruction is visible from the space. The destruction of the shopping centre displaces a large Latin American community, I want my contribution to the work to be informed by this in some way. I also want to include the history of the centre, and how areas go through continual change.
Ive found a broadcast about the development of the centre in 1962. It speaks about area being unrecognisable to the long time residents, I think this will be a nice parallel for what’s to come in the next few years. I find it interesting listening to peoples concerns and feeling about the development in 1962, almost all of the problems seem to still be prevalent now. I want to mangle the audio from the broadcast, creating a sense of distance, from reality or in time. The destruction of the audio also following the theme of demolition. This will be achieved through granular synthesis, bit crushing and subtractive equalisation.
Tatsuya Takahashi at his home workshop in early 2017, surrounded by a few of his signature machines.
Tatsuya Takahashi was born in 1982 in Shizuoka, Japan. At 6 months old his family moved to Frankfurt, and at 2 years old they moved to London where they settled. Tatsuya speaks a lot about wanting control in his life, he found control through technology. At 13 he began building speakers in his garage, he then started to branch out into broader electronics, pulling apart keyboards and making simple oscillators. Tatsuya attended Cambridge university and studied general engineering, structural engineering, thermal dynamics, electrical information sciences and control theory. Shifting his interests from playing back sounds to generating sounds, Tatsuya did a masters in analogue electronics, which set him on his career building analogue synthesisers.
Takahashi believed that synthesisers should be everywhere. In the same way someone can bring an acoustic guitar to a park and play a song, people should be able to be mobile with synthesisers. After university Tatsuya set his eyes on working for a synthesiser company, he had an abundance of knowledge on building synthesisers, but little knowledge on the industry. Being of Japanese heritage, he settled on Korg which was founded and based in Japan. In 2006 he moved to Japan and started working for the company. His first project was the microKORG XL, this synthesiser was already in production when he joined and so he had little control over the project. His input was slightly limited as the product was a digital synth, but it was still a valuable experience as it was his first experience working high speed electronics and his first time making a mass producible product. To summarise this experience, Tatsuya says ‘it was very educational but not very creative for me’. He managed to have more control over his second project, the KORG Monotron. It was the first analogue synth Korg released since the 1980’s, it was a very simple compact machine. The most important aspect of this experience was the transition from one off devices to producing tens of thousands of them. This experience shifted Tatsuya’s focus to think more about how he could make music making more accessible to people. Tatsuya created the Volca in later years, this was the definitive expression of this idea.
Korg Volcas
A collaboration with Apex Twin on the Korg monologue triggered a desire in Takahashi to pursue more interesting projects outside of Korg. In 2017 he left the company and moved to Cologne, he then joined a brand agency with a goal to work with more artists. The company was Yadastar, it was a brand agency for red bull producing redbull academy works. Through this he was able to work with artists that he admired, one of which was Ryoji Ikeda. They collaborated on an instrument, they made a hundred of them and performed a piece. Tatsuya really enjoyed this process, it was a middle ground between mass produced products and one off products. The piece was only performed once, and tatsuya appreciated this self destructive process, creating a piece of hardware and using it only once. They gathered one hundred car enthusiasts with large sound systems, and gave them each one of these devices tatsuya had designed. Ikeda composed a piece designed for this medium called ‘A for one hundred cars’ which explored different versions of the note A through history, the slight variations in frequencies. The result was a massive drone piece composed of 100 versions of the note A weaving in and out of each other, this was played through the cars sound systems in LA. Another project tatsuya did with Yadastar for RBMA was the ‘Granular Convolver’. This was a device that combined granular synthesis with convolution, convolution being the process of combining two signals together in terms of frequency. This was not mass produced, it was for a project where the device was given to a number of participants to create with. Tatsuya found it very interesting to watch how these artists would use his device, some manipulating field recording, some combining instruments with samples. This project provided Tatsuya with a desire to create mass producible products again, it just so happened to be that red bull sacked the agency shortly after this forcing him to make the change. Takahashi then went back to Korg to open their factory in Berlin, he now works with a small team creating musical equipment.
What I take from this talk is that it is important to love the work that you do, that is the best way to have an influence on the world.
‘Altruism is the most rational form of selfishness’
– Jaques Attali
‘selfishness is the most rational form of altruism’
Jana Winderen is an artist based in Norway. Her work focuses on hard to access audio environments and creatures, both locationally and in terms of frequency ranges. Her work is displayed as site specific and spacial audio, installations and concerts.
Jana has worked with many different aspects of sound, but she focused mainly on her work with water in this talk. In 2016 Jana was invited to join a project called dark ecology that focused on the area between Norway and Russia. A group of artists and scientist investigated an area on the border, this particular space had a political weight at the time due to complications with the north east passage and the oil industry. Jana recorded local people’s stories, people who are directly effected by the conflict. Jana also recorded the ocean with hydrophones to sonically capture the area. She talks about the use of hydrophones and how one has to be patient and a-tune to that form of listening, it can be that you don’t hear anything at first but in time you start to hear more, ‘without any exceptions, I always hear something that is triggering my interest’ she says. Jana was invited to investigate the marginal ice zone, it was an exhibition to catalogue small aquatic creature populations and the change in ice formations. Jana talks about the difficulties she faced due to the ships noise, and that she had to get away from the ship on land. She then faced difficulty due to a drone some scientists were using to record seal populations. Her work requires isolation, she talks about how she has to get very far away from machinery or people. Jana talked about hearing a dropping tone in the water and working out its source because a seal poked its head out of the water shortly. I find the idea that she hears a great deal more than what is visible fascinating, hearing more but what you hear is less defined. In this talk Jana shows a series of images of her seemingly isolated, it looks about as far away as you can get to human influence, but it is not the case. She says you can still hear machinery even if you walk very far away, you would have to ski for a day to get away from it.
Jana Winderen in the Marginal Ice Zone
‘We have colonised all of the planet with our sound’
During a project in Newcastle following a river source to mouth, Jana became interested in listening to the health of a body of water. She saw fresh water biologists counting underwater insects to say something about the health of the body of water. Jana became interested in trying to identify the sounds of these underwater insects, with the goal of understanding which insects survive certain changes to the river over the years, she found that this method would be quite difficult to prove quantity. While working with these fresh water biologists, Winderen became enamoured by the worlds she found within small sections of rivers, speaking about the variety of creatures and the sounds they produce.
Jana Winderen emphasises the value of drawing a subject, believing it forces you to pay attention to what it looks like, ‘you get to know them better so when you then see them again, in my experience you recognise and see them and remember them.’ I think this could be a valuable practice to just to familiarise yourself with your auditory materials.
Jana reminisces about working in northumberland listening to an ants nest using hydrophones. She describes the movement/vibration of the ants nest as an incredible sound. She emphasises the importance of just trying things out, exploring the auditory world, whilst being mindful to not disrupt it.
