I've been thinking a lot about the concept of "sound design" lately. I realize the general concept has been around as long as theater or even religious services has been. But surely the advent of electronic musical instruments has re-defined the concept entirely.

Over the weekend I was auditioning all of the new patches that come stock with "Absynth 5". As I sat marvelling at some of the sounds I was hearing, it got me to thinking about how underrated or undervalued this aspect of making music can be.

With a fixed set of instruments, the skill set of the musician has historically revolved around creation of rhythms, harmonies, melodies, etc. With the introduction and constant evolution of electronic instruments, the skill set of sound design continues to grow but is still a skill set that I think is not taken seriously by many musicians.

Brian Eno would often say of himself that he "wasn't really a musician but liked to see what kind of musical sounds he could create". Richard Barbieri is another that I've heard describe himself in the same way. But I'm not sure that I would agree with them about the non-musician part. I would be more inclined to suggest that the culture that mixed music and technology has also added an additional skill set and/or focus to the mix.

Not surprisingly, when I researched a handful of the people who were responsible for creating some of the latest sounds in Absynth, they were people that work in creating sound/music for TV and film.

So true. One thing that kind of bothers me is that in a lot of electronic music circles you are kind of looked down on if you use 'presets' from a synth - hardware or software. My opinion is that if I hear a sound I like, I'll use it. A lot of time and effort goes into some of the sounds crafted by the people who make the presets - it's part of what you pay for when you by the synth...why not use them? Years ago I used to do sound design on hardware synths - still do to some extent. Most of the time though it's a matter of finding something close and then tweaking it to do what I need.

Some of the work being done is fantastic! Hold a key down and a whole soundscape unfolds before you. Some people call these 'money sounds' because of how much they can add to the perceived value of a song or tv spot, etc. The opening notes for the series LOST I believe was a preset from Spectrasonics Atmosphere...

Of course something you have to be careful about is sounding like everyone else. If a preset becomes too popular or identifiable it becomes taboo to use it. Think about the shakuhachi used in Peter Gabriels 'Sledgehammer' song... ruined it for all potential shakuhachi users in the future...

Sound designers certainly don't get the credit they deserve.

I'm definitely sharing this view! As long as I can remember it has been equally important for me what emotion timbre (pure "sound design") evokes as what musical laws a part shows off (melody, rhythm, tempo, harmony). For me the musical pleasure, both as a listener and as a creator, comes with the summed experience of all this happening at once.

Before I understood this I often felt annoyed listening to some jazz musicians and composers that to me sounded as giving priority to narrow theoretically musical variables while neglected sound. I was guessing that these people had had their natural perception abilities a bit twisted by undertaking a lot of weighted studies: that they were in fact biased! But luckily curiosity kept me listening to people I thought "sounded bad" and that slowly broadened my perspective and I started to enjoy things that might sound bad but did express a strong attitude in sounding that bad So today I wouldn't call "bad" just "bad" since there are lots of shades to grey.

The sound designers at Spetrasonics have the coolest job. Check out this video that gives a glimpse into their process. This is for their incredibly powerful OMNISPHERE.

http://www.spectrasonics.net/video/ipad-playback.php?id=112

Nice video. I love that! It is a cool job indeed.

It looks like Omnisphere and Absynth are very similar. The envelope generators in Absynth are so powerful that there is no longer any need for a dedicated step sequencer. You can do everything imaginable with envelopes, wave morphing, LFOs, etc.

I love it! I was up early this morning with mad Absynth loops going on in the house before work

I guess the biggest difference is that Absynth is just oscillators and noise as soundsources correct? Omnishpere has some rich psychacoustic sounds that ground even the craziest sounds somehow. The depth is ridiculous I think it is the most incredible synth out there. Pair it with their Trillian bass product and it is unbelievable.

Not correct actually. In addition to the oscillators and the various synthesis methods (subtractive, additive, FM, etc), Absynth is also fully sample based. There are folders full of audio samples that come stock but you can also, of course, start with your own. Just based on what I've looked at so far, they look very similar. Both NI and Spectrasonics have really good reputations as well.

oops I stand corrected I once had Absynth on my computer and loved it for it's soundesign potential Omnisphere's my new favorite i would love to get Absynth again though

Popular consensus is that Omnisphere has a more intuitive interface but also eats a lot more disk. One of these days I'd like to pick it up. I do love Absynth.

When I was going to buy a third-party software synth with built-in arpegiator I did chose Alchemy instead of Omnisphere. One reason was of course that I couldn't afford both and didn't have the disc space for Omnsphere. Today disc space is a non issue as external FW drives are so cheap but I still can't afford Omnisphere ) But another thing that interests me with Alchemy is that it offers cool granular processing and even accepts your own recordings for mangling.

I do own other Spectrasonics software though. I picked up RMX from day one and have been using it very much. I even created my personal library of funk guitar patterns for RMX, recorded with my brother's -62 Telecaster. I think RMX has a very good randomization algorithm for making programmed rhythms "just enough non static". But since then Omnisphere has been upgraded with a sync locking mechanism to work together with RMX. IMHO that is a strong selling point! I'm thinking that it may be very creative to play with the arpegiator in Omnisphere with sync locked RMX on the side.

I might pick up Omnisphere somewhere in the future, but right now I'm on my second year as a STick owner and I think the STick provide as much cool source sound I need for now. I also picked up an electric cello and with these instruments it is just more fun to record orchestrated layers - compared to using MIDI driven software instruments. I also use the Mobius looper to chop up audio on-the-fly as you are playing, and for me that is a faster method of coming up with useful musical source material when producing a piece of recorded music for whatever purpose. Since the Stick is such a magnificent full range audio instrument it provides excellent raw material for most kind of recording sound design.