Sonoport

This week we interviewed Barry Dowsett, the co-founder of Soundrangers.

Barry Dowsett is a professional composer and sound designer working in the video games industry. He has created original audio content for an array of cool projects, ranging from small to large, AAA to mobile, for developers and publishers such as Activision, Popcap, Electronic Arts, THQ/Dreamworks, F9, Signal Mobile, Eidos, Gree, Playdom, Griptonite, Microsoft Game Studios, iWin, Disney Interactive, Google and many more. 

In 1998 he co-founded Soundrangers, an original pioneer in the online delivery of production music and sound effects and the first to deliver content optimized for game and interactive development. In addition to the custom design work, he actively creates and license content from this platform to interactive developers looking for high quality audio assets.

1) Thanks for taking the time to do this interview. Soundrangers has been around for quite some time now, for over 18 years! I think Soundrangers is probably the godfather of all the other online sound libraries available today.

You mentioned in a previous interview that this started because you were spending a huge amount of time manipulating sounds that was originally recorded for traditional media (film, TV) in order to use them in interactive projects, a field that was still new at that time. Now that interactive media is absolutely bursting everywhere, how you feel about the evolution of the whole industry?

Sure, and thanks for being a long time follower- it’s been a while now! Regarding the emergence of the interactive media field, I think it’s great. With the evolution of streaming technologies combined with bandwidth and memory constraints being freed from what they used to be, we’re seeing a higher quality of audio content surviving the integration process into interactive media.  This includes mobile and console games, online media and other areas of the interactive neighborhood. Because of this, we get to work with larger memory budgets which inevitably improves the quality of sound and allows more complexity and variation in the overall soundscape. Library wise, when we launched Soundrangers in 1998, we had to build everything proprietarily from scratch, including the website, the ecommerce system, the demo players- everything.  These days you can get a lot of this stuff out of the box which makes it much easier to evolve our systems since there’s so much concentration on cloud based content and the tech to support it these days.

2) You guys were the pioneers of several features that are common today in the online delivery of audio content, such as the individual auditioning of audio files through an interface and downloads with selectable file format, sample and bit rate. Since then you’ve continued to introduce innovative new features such as Soundboxes which I think is really awesomely convenient. As you continue to strive to improve user experience, what are the new features in development that you guys are currently working on or looking at implementing?

Currently, we’re improving the pipeline by which high volume film, TV and interactive users can access our library under a blanket license. This primarily affects our music library, giving end users more options than just a straight sync license. We’re also working on a set of protocols that will allow us to push our internal library over to 3rd party systems. And of course, and most importantly, we’re always improving the value and usability of our audio content.

3) Could you tell us what are the trends in this field that you are currently observing? Is there anything exciting that you are looking forward to in sound? 

VR at the moment seems to be the next and hottest thing. We’re looking forward to some consolidation in tech and best practices in terms of where the development of sound is going in this area. I’ve seen some amazing visual demos, but audio-wise it’s pretty far behind.  Once we start seeing higher quality audio content arrive, combined with the visual, you might not ever return from your VR experience.

4) Throughout your years as professional sound designers and recordists, what’s your favourite sound individually and what’s the most downloaded sound by users on your website?

Don’t really have any favorites, because there are so many moments in time where you realize what you’re recording won’t ever happen the same way again, making each session special. But I can tell you the most amazing sounds generally come from the most unexpected moments.  Very similar to the music creation process.  I personally am most interested in the character of the sound- you can talk all day about gear and sample rate, but in the end none of it matters if there’s no essence to what you’re recording. So I always listen to the character of the sound and often times just run into stuff traveling around. Part of the fun with this whole thing is getting to observe your surroundings in a way that mostly goes unnoticed through the eyes- especially when you’re on location recording… listening with your eyes closed.

5) Lastly, can you tell us what’s an ordinary day like at Soundrangers like?

Every day is different depending on what’s in my email inbox!  But generally, we schedule production runs where we’re developing new sounds or music tracks for our library and schedule this stuff out. Some of it requires more complexity than others based on location or special access.  In the case of music, there are players and studios to contend with. When we’re on custom design projects, the production pipeline is a set period of time depending on milestone requirements, which will drive our daily production duties.

We are currently featuring SoundRangers curated sounds for www.sonigram.io

Check our their sounds under the Featured category!

We’re always on the lookout for impressive web audio projects around the web and one of the many we’ve stumbled upon was Dreampipe’s HTML5 Drum Machine. We did spend a little too much time playing with it, making sick beats in the office can be pretty intense (it's called research!). Especially since the whole team went down to watch the 808 documentary together and we were in a "drum machines are the best things in the universe" phase.

Dreampipe.io is actually the brain child of Jamie Thompson, which is a collection of in-browser applications that he built for online music production. It still amazes me to see all these wonderful browser apps that we can create with the Web Audio API. I always look forward to the Web Audio Weekly newsletter by Chris Lowis. I think Dreampipe's web apps were featured a couple of times before. It's one of the few newsletters I actually open in my emails.

We first discovered you through your HTML5 Drum Machine which was awesome and it’s probably one of our favourite UI designs too. Could you tell us what led to the inception of Dreampipe and what made you start creating interactive web apps using Web Audio API ?

It’s difficult to say.. I guess I’ve always been inherently creative with a thirst for understanding how things work on a technical level. A combination the two plus a love of electronic music led me to being creative with computers, coding and music software as well as a small obsession with synthesisers and drum machines. Eventually all of this came together and I began creating my own music apps. I’d probably be doing this stuff even if no one was watching but I’ve been very happy with how successful it has been.

DreamPipe was in part created with the idea of me making a living by being commissioned to create promotional music-themed apps. At the time of its inception this seemed like a bit of a pipe dream, hence the name.

Recently you’ve released the Orbit Sampler, how was the idea conceptualised and what was the main inspiration behind it?

The original idea behind it was to create a sort of musical infographic which would represent the planets of our solar system in orbit. However, I found that this idea had been done before, so it sat half-completed for a while. I have many half-finished projects which will mostly never be completed. It changed direction quite a few times whilst in production. Eventually I decided the I would release it on the 3rd Monday of January (aka Blue Monday) , using samples based up the New Order song. The idea is to take all of the individual sounds from one song and rearrange / remix it to make another which can be uploaded directly to Soundcloud.

I enjoyed the instrument sounds you chose for the Orbit Sampler and the default song that plays on it! Did you have a background in sound or music? Or are you a full-time web developer?

I’m currently working full time as a ‘creative’ front end dev for an interactive video startup in London. I used to make a lot of music when I was a student and had a lot more free time. The music I made was never really as good as I wanted it to be but I’m glad I did it, since it led me to what I’m doing now. If anyone is interested, my old soundcloud account is here.

Is Dreampipe working on any new web audio projects at the moment?

Yes. I’ve almost completed a new project which I’m very excited about. I’m hoping for it to be released into the web at some point in the next month. More work has gone into this one and it’s also a lot more experimental so I’m intrigued to see how it will be received. you can watch the output of an early prototype here.

Are you interested in any collaborations in the future? If yes, who would be your dream collaborator?

Either Jaronn Lanier or Oneohtrix Point Never.

Understanding The Web Audio Clock

Founded by veteran sound designer and composer Peter Smith, 3maze has been around providing the sound world with high fidelity sounds since 2014. With clients ranging from Discovery Science Channel, TLC, PBS, History Channel to A+E, Peter has written over 3000 musical compositions, designed and recorded sounds for various clients worldwide. He has also worked with various kind of mediums from film, TV, commercials to installations. 

Apart from that, Peter and 3maze are also proud sponsors of the Theatrical Sound Designers and Composers Association and The Collaborator Party.

Hey Peter! Thanks again for doing this! You’ve been in this industry for a long time now, could you tell us one of the most memorable moments in your career?

One of the most memorable moments I can remember happened in 2015 when I was asked to sponsor The Collaborator Party to raise awareness of the value of sound design in the theatre community, and to bring attention to the fact that the TONY awards have removed this category from their awards. Because of my involvement with this cause, I got to make contact with some really nice people who have a totally different approach to sound design and music.

Another memorable moment was trying to record street ambiences in Vietnam and having every single motorcycle rider beep their horns into my microphone!

What led you to pursue a career in music composition and sound design?

After receiving a tape recorder from my grandfather when I was around 4 years old, I quickly realised that I loved capturing sounds. It became a career when I started writing and recording music to release on cassette tapes. In the 90's, some filmmaker friends asked me if I could write music for their student films, which led to them eventually asking me if I could also record sound effects and edit dialogue. I've always been obsessed and hugely affected by film and music, so it naturally took over my life.

Could you tell us which sound collection in your archive is your favourite and why?

I really like my Urban Environments collection, because I enjoyed the whole recording process and it woke me up to the fact that interesting sounds are everywhere - we just need to listen.

For all the years you’ve done music and sound design for different types of media, for which medium do you think both of them intertwine at the highest level?

Most of my experience has been with film and TV - so for me, these mediums that tell a story and create a world full of characters and atmospheres. I find the blend of vision with sound very magical. As a person who creates music and sound effects, I believe that each element should become part of the whole experience when it reaches the screen, rather than thinking of them as separate entities.

Your discography is amazing! From orchestral jazz to ambient soundscapes. Who would you say is your main musical inspiration?

Thank you, I really appreciate your kind words! My musical inspiration comes mainly from my childhood. My parents listened to everything from Frank Zappa to Motörhead during the week, and at the weekends I was exposed to Miles Davis and Wes Montgomery while staying with my grandparents. My family were also obsessive film viewers, so I became aware of the emotional power of sound and image on the screen at a very early age.

At the moment which sound or loops collection is the most downloaded among users?

Doors, Locks and Drawers. With the ROOMS collection close behind.

Last but not least, what’s your favourite sound?   

From the collections that I've released, it would be the sound of the Cadillac V8 revving. I will always remember recording the aggressive roar of the engine, coming from a pink car with a lady driver - also dressed in pink. I also love the sound of my Gibson Les Paul.

See original Sonigram here

We are happy to announce that Sonigram is in collaboration with LiveSoundtracks!

Live Soundtracks is an interdisciplinary project which explores the intersection between film and experimental music through live performances, screenings and workshops.

To celebrate our collaboration we invite artists and graphic designers to participate in a contest to win €300!

How can you participate? Just create an image for our next official tote bag!

Make a design inspired by the theme "Sound + Moving Images" Feel free to experiment, your work has to be a maximum size of 25cm x 25cm at 300 dpi. The design must be done in one color. It will be used for screen printing on the bag so it should not contains gradients.

Send your work to [email protected]. Delivery deadline, April 29th.

Singapore Design Week (SDW)

A few weeks ago, I attended the Singapore Design Week (SDW) organised by the Design Singapore Council. The main objective of this event was to raise awareness of good design, deepen the appreciation and understanding of design innovation and encourage the use of design for productivity.  Despite the warm weather, I must say that I did enjoy both of the days as I tried to get some hands on design technique skills from the pros. Enjoy the pictures! 

Event Details: 

Saturday, 19.03.16 

-     The Half Half Studio 

-     Floral Magic 

-     PayPress 

-     Fictive Fingers 

Sunday, 20.03.16 

-     The South Beach 

-     Detention Barracks

 -     Karafuru Desserts 

Check out more pictures by listening to the Sonigrams I made for this event.

Cute Plants

Delicious Ice Cream

Electric!

Bebe Barron

Bebe Barron together with her husband Louis Barron were two American pioneers of electronic music. Most well known for writing the first electronic music for magnetic tape also creating the first entirely eletronic film score for the movie Forbidden Planet (1956).

Delia Derbyshire

Delia Derbyshire was a composer of electronic music and musique concrète. She is also known for her pioneering work with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Her electronic realisation of Ron Grainer's score for the theme of the Doctor Who series is considered one of the most influential works of electronic music in that era as it bought to a wide audience, compositon methods that was exclusive to experimental music and that it was made even before basic analog synthesizers came into use.

Clara Rockmore

Clara Rockmore was a virtuoso performer of the theremin. She helped to influence the design and evolution of the instrument by working closely with Léon Theremin, whom she had a close relationship with. She is considered to be the most accomplished performer ever of the instrument.

Wendy Carlos

Wendy Carlos is well known for her electronic music and film scores. She oversaw the development of the Moog synthesizer which was then a relatively new keyboard instrument designed by Rober Moog. She is well knowned for her album Switch-On-Bach, which is music by Bach performed on a Moog synth. She also did the scores for movies such as A Clockwork Orange (1971) and The Shining (1980).

Whitevinyl is the visual work of Luke Twyman. 

His work includes Flora Drift, an interactive web experiment which also uses realtime synthesis to procedurally generates music & visuals on the fly. 

Solarbeat, an interactive audio/visual which generates music using the orbital frequencies of the solar system.

Yume - the interactive music journey created for Helios / Keith Kenniff, which also won The Cutting Edge Award from Adobe & FWA

Here is today, an interactive art/science HTML5 site illustrating the scale of time on Earth.

Check out the rest of his impressive portfolio here.

The Sonoport team are quite fond of your work that we’ve featured you quite a number of times on our page! =) One of your recent works is the interactive musical exploration site, YUME by Helios. That was amazing, how was the initial idea conceptualised and what was the main inspiration behind it?

Thanks for featuring me! Yume was a fun one to work on, I had a lot of freedom and time to devote to the concept. I wanted to make something where all of the interaction felt very rewarding when you play and explore, so I started with just the rough idea of these tactile controllers you can drag around. From there I just drew lots of sketches, any little graphical ideas that came, and it evolved into the controllers being these floating rock shards, spread out over different scenes, each with a different feel, reflecting all the different sections of the Helios track.

Lately I think I've been inspired a lot by exploration video games, the focus on mood and slower-pace is already something that appeals to me, but also I like how interactions can be very ambiguous, with unknown results, but remain inviting to the curious. There's a bunch of great examples, one I really like is the dashboard in the game MirrorMoon EP.

You mainly do freelance work in graphic design, illustration, web/interactive design and make or record music in your free time. That’s a whole load of skill sets! What was your background? Did you start out with a design background and then branch off into sound and music or the other way?

I started as a musician - I began playing guitar as a kid, and tried a bunch of bands before moving into writing & performing my own music. While I was in college I also started making small video games as a hobby, and that was my introduction into creative programming and digital imagery. I don't think it took long before I just naturally started combining the two.

I studied music at Uni, but at that time had no intention of doing anything musical as a job. By the end of my course I'd decided that I might enjoy freelancing in design, and despite being pretty naive about what that involved, I just kind of jumped into it and taught myself as I went.

On your website you’ve stated that you would like to steer your work into the areas of science and informal education,  in the ideal world what would your dream project be?

A three-way collab with NASA and Björk! Lately I've found myself doing a lot more work involving music which I'm really enjoying as well, so anything where I get to combine sound, science and visuals is likely to go down well with me. It is pretty niche though, so I guess NASA and Björk can get in touch individually if they like.

We’re already seeing interactive music videos, audio-visual websites and album showcases etc, so based on your own experience and vision, what do you think would be the future trends of sound communication on the web?

I think whatever makes for a great experience combined with readily available tools. Wanting to make audio stuff for the web always came instinctively to me even though for a long time I was working within the audio limitations of Flash. Until you know any better you still just focus on trying to make a strong concept & experience with whatever tools you have.

The Web Audio API has opened things up so much more and I feel like there's lots I want to explore with it, it makes it easier to come up with the ideas you desire without being overly concerned with technical restrictions.

I think there's a lot more scope and we'll start to see much deeper interactive experiences of all kinds. And with musicians in mind, a movement away from web creations which are seen as just toys & playthings, toward highly useable music making ideas.

What’s next for WhiteVinyl? =D Are there any new projects from you that we should keep a lookout for? *excited*

Yeah, I have a big collaborative project with my friends Ed Silverton & Luke Phillips called BlokDust which we're close to releasing. It's a browser-based music maker which lets you build synths, effects and self-playing contraptions, by connecting together blocks using a drag & drop interface. It's got a whole load of cool toys and features, and once you've made something you're happy with, you can generate a unique URL to share it with the world.

I'm also planning a range of individual Web Audio instruments, each one focussing on doing one thing well, but all of them sharing this underlying element of procedural generation, so that the sounds they create are always evolving in a smart way. There's lots of procedural generation in music out there, but lately I've been experimenting more with applying it to very core aspects of digital synthesis and waveform creation, and I'm keen to see where that can go.

Last but not least! What inspires you everyday?

I guess more than anything is just the enjoyment of learning. I'm currently teaching myself drums in a more considered way than I ever had before, practising every day and finding it really fun, but also realising everything else I'm learning as a result - better listening, better patience, better co-ordination, learning how to relax.

Best Sonigrams of the week!

- Cats playing the bass & moog

- Motordog

- Github whiskey

- Sexy butt

We’ll be part of CHOPPA Experimental Music Festival 2016!

The 2016 C.H.O.P.P.A Experimental Music Festival is the most ambitious festival yet, presenting exploratory music at the cutting edge of their practice. The festival will be hosted at the impressive LASALLE College of the Arts campus in collaboration with the School of Contemporary Music.

The C.H.O.P.P.A Experimental Music Festival 2016 will be held over two nights in January. C.H.O.P.P.A Experimental Music Festival 2016 will not only feature the tightest Singaporean talent, but artists from Asia, USA and Europe.  

Sonoport will be there to showcase their web app Sonigram and giveaway merch! Happening January 29th - 30th!

PolyRhythm by Peter Van Der Noord

Mta.me & Piano Phase by Alexander Chen

Little Drummer Toy by Ableton

Skullcat by Brent Jackson

We Need Us by Julie Freeman

George & Jonathan III & Dennis by George & Jonathan 

True & I Will Never Let You Go by Brightly

Music For A Dying Star by ALMA Music Box

Resonance by Orchestre De Paris

Holding Up By Jabberwocky

Yume (Helios) & Flora Drift by White Vinyl Design

Tether (Plaid) & Patatap by Jono Brandel

Octahedrone by Ehsan Zya

Synthesising Sounds with Web Audio API

StickEar is a smart sensor that translates sound into visual notifications

In this day and age our daily tasks often include certain levels of concentration because we can be easily distracted by things happening around us. We often work with our headphones on, listening to music, to mute out surrounding noises. This also means that common audible cues are blocked, such as doorbells, or people calling out to you. To us this is just a minor inconvenience, however to the hearing impaired, this is their whole life. 

From the Stickears website,

“The low demand for assistive devices have led to high cost and little innovation. While mobile phones have gotten smarter with each passing day, assistive devices like the door bell for the deaf has pretty much remained the same all these years. “

To find out more about Stickears, we decided to interview Yeo Kian Peen, the CEO of Embodied Sensing to understand the story behind it and how this device can help innovate the world of assistive devices.

Hi Kian! Thanks for doing this interview! I think StickEar is an excellent project and I'm quite excited about it! A simple solution for a persistent problem. Especially for people like me who tend get too engrossed in their work whilst listening to music, having a visual notification would definitely be something useful. Not getting started for people who have actual hearing problems, their need is definitely far greater and this would greatly benefit their lifestyle. 

So anyways based on its production timeline, I saw that StickEar started off as a research project at SUTD in 2012. Would you like to elaborate more on its beginnings for our readers? Like how did the idea started and how did it grew from there?

StickEar had a very interesting beginning. The idea was actually conceived while I was still working at SUTD as a research engineer, and doing an attachment at the MIT Media Lab. During a brainstorming session, I brought up this crazy idea of what if we could detach our ears from our body and attach it anywhere we wanted to, what kind of new interactions could be achieve? And what if we had more than 2 ears? What kind of new abilities could we possess? Can we also lend our ear to an object so that the object can now hear and respond to sound? There was this future vision of ‘sticker-like’ sound sensors that you could just buy in a pack, peel it off and stick it anywhere you wanted to. They would harvest energy from the environment and be able to sense sound.  

There were many possible applications that we wanted to explore with StickEar, from extending our hearing range to sound localization using multiple ears. We presented our work in a few major academic conferences alongside with other research institutes such as Microsoft Research and Disney Research.

The idea somehow got the attention from a group of hearing impaired people in Singapore and we started to co-develop StickEar together. We took away some of our original research ideas and focused on one specific application -  to convert sound into visual notifications, so as to assist them in their everyday life in responding to sound events at home or at work.

In early 2014, I made a bold move to leave SUTD and start my own company Embodied Sensing to further work on commercialising StickEar.

As of now what are the main issues that you think might arise once StickEars is deployed? If there aren't any, what were the main challenges that the team faced during the development process?

One of the important concerns that we have is the reliability of our detection algorithms. While we have taken efforts to make our recognition algorithm as accurate as we can, it is in reality not possible to achieve a 100% accuracy. We have chosen to be less ambitious for the first product iteration, just focusing on detecting a few specific types of sound in order to have less false alarms. Managing expectations is important and we want to be sure that users do understand that StickEar will work well in most situations and can be tolerant in few unexpected false alarms.

On the StickEar website, it is stated that "The low demand for assistive devices have led to high cost and little innovation", I have a feeling this is due to the fact that we take for granted the little things that people with disability are unable to do, for us not being able to hear someone knocking on our door because we're on headphones is a minor annoyance but for the hearing impaired that's a major problem. However not many people are willing to spend money to solve a minor annoyance so I'm glad that you guys have partnered up with deaf organisations for backers to donate StickEars to. 

In the future what do you think would help increase the demand for these kind of assistive devices in order to make it more affordable for the common users?

Having interacted with many deaf people here in Singapore, the most common feedback I have been getting from them is that assistive devices can be expensive and there is very little product choices for them. Some of the products do not have a nice design and its just very primitive in terms of the technology. I personally believe that universal/inclusive design is the way to go. Devices should be designed to be inclusive for everyone. It should not be just viewed as just an assistive device for a specific group of people, but rather something that anyone else with a need can use.

Moving forward, does the team have any future plans on developing other kinds of sound related assistive devices? Especially with sound classification being the core technology behind StickEar. I imagine having a means of detecting and recognising sounds would definitely be useful in all kinds of applications!

There is a whole lot of possibilities with StickEar when we start to think about other sounds that we can detect and classify, especially now that everything is connected to the cloud and there is so much processing power there. Think of StickEar as being a small portable wireless sound sensor where in the future we can load different sound apps into it. Today it could be attached  to your car where it can hear and tell you if the engine is working fine. Tomorrow, it could be placed beside your baby’s bed to tell you why your baby is crying – whether he/she is hungry, bored or sick. It will be exciting!

Check out Sonigram, our latest mobile web app that allows you to integrate sound into social media

Select any of the Competition Category that you would like to join: Fashion, Food or Travel

Sonify it! #SayitWithSound

And share on Facebook or Twitter!

The most Liked Sonigram on the app gets to win an amazing Fashion, Food or Travel gift!

WebAudio Hack Day was a day long event part of DevFest.Asia 2015. The idea was to hack on WebAudio and create hacks, libraries, demos, musical instruments, apps based on WebAudio and WebMIDI.

Devfest Asia 2015: Web Audio Hackday Github Page

Inspired by WebAudio Hack Day at JSConfEU

The winning project goes to Auto-Beatbox by Joe Sarre & Laurent Le Graverend where users can record their own beatboxing using a microphone and it will be translated to drum samples.

View post on imgur.com

Here are some of the other works that was produced on that day:

Korg NanoKontrol support for JSM Player - Chinmay

LineOut.js - Tan Shiaw Uen and Naor Biton

Blind Game - Michał J. Gajda and Siah

Turn Something - Joshua Koo

Fluid Synth Emscripten - Joshua Koo

Markov Music - Pomin Wu

Start of the day, everybody gathered for some web audio hacking!

Claudio had some cool contraption but his end presentation was the very cool nightmare machine where he used web audio to splice an audio waveform and loop them.

Here we have Rob and Andrew who were working on a Music Camera where there will be sounds generated based on the colour of the object placed infront of the webcam.

Right at the corner we have Subh who used drum samples and web audio to create a drum track.

Alon entertained us with his awesome web audio launchpad which is available both on mobile and desktop.

Luke’s Markov Music was amazing! He made an auto-generated song using web audio and Korg Volca Keys

Paul Adenot’s Monome + Web Audio API Hack