The Score Magazine - Archive April 2009 issue! | Page 21

Sound Waves
Sound Design & Synthesis
21
Rishabh Rajan
C
reating custom soundscapes, ambience and sound effects for music or film production is a very specialized and fo-
cused field. Sound designers for film, television and video games are as much sought after as composers. Being a sound
designer used to involve having a very extensive knowledge of analog media like tape, hardware synthesizers and its
manipulation, but in the 21st century, it has completely been shifted to the digital domain and every thing is now done
with the help of computers. It has also become very modular, as you can design an instrument to process and manipulate sound
just the way you may desire.
There are numerous software that have been created specifically for sound synthesis and sound design. Some more accessible
than others. If you are even remotely thinking about getting involved in this field, you must have a very good understanding of at
least one or two of these programs.
Kyma X:
Very few people really know about Kyma X but a lot of people
have heard the sounds generated from it. If you have seen
Wall-E, War of the Worlds(2005), Star Wars (Ep. II and III) or
Finding Nemo, you have heard Kyma X in action. It is one of the
most used tool by renowned sound designer, Ben Burtt. The
main issue with this program is that it requires a signal process-
ing module called Capybara. The other issue is that the cost of
this setup can go over $3000.
Csound:
Another great sound design tool made popular by Dr. Richard
Boulanger a professor at Berklee College of Music. Csound is
probably the oldest ‘C’ based programming language for sound
synthesis. Lot of the other programs like MAX/MSP, Reaktor or
Tassman don’t have the depth of programmability like Csound.
To top that, it’s a free program. The only issue with this pro-
gram is that there is an incredibly steep learning curve.
In the Csound Journal, Jim Bates had mentioned that learning
Csound is a lot like learning Chinese. Both languages use thou-
sands of different characters where each character can be used
in different contexts.
The SCORE Magazine | April 2009