For starters... What's the difference between a soundscape and well... a sound design? A sound design is the complete set of music, sound effects, and reinforcement for a production. A soundscape is an on going environment created by sounds. Sound designs may include several small soundscapes, or they may BE one continuously running effects bed.

A soundscape's purpose is to support events of a play, helping to draw the audience into the time and place in which the show is set, with or without reinforcement of other design elements.

For example, a busy Victorian street may be created using the sounds of horses hooves on cobbles stones, the clatter of wagon and cart wheels, voices and footsteps of pedestrians, perhaps church bells or a clock tower. If the show is A Christmas Carol, the scape is probably played along with actors in period outdoor wear, street vendors with barrows, gas style lamp posts, and buildings produced in three dimensions or painted on a drop. On the other hand, if you're producing On the Verge, it's more likely that the set consists of some abstract non specific platforms, cubes, or furniture. Regardless of what is represented scenically a specific environment has been created.

A soundscape may include music, or be entirely effects based - depending on the environment to be created. Carol is likely to include some Christmas Carols, with either actors singing live or via a taped track. Who knows with On the Verge.

The idea of creating a soundscape for a show certainly isn't a new one. (I would imagine sound designers have been creating them even prior to recorded sound.) Movies have certainly pushed theatre to create more realistic scapes, and some theatre's have even borrowed sound reproduction technology from the film industry with 5.1 and similar surround processing.

But that doesn't mean that a scape can't still be done poorly, even with the modern theatre's gear: more channels, automated control and playback systems, never mind higher quality file sources and recordings. In my mind, there are some key things to remember when creating a soundscape - and more importantly, things to remember to keep your soundscape from going off all wrong.

Here's my two cents:

Avoid too much repetition. Using the same file too often (unless you're attempting to create something recognizable or your doing a production of Ground Hog Day) quickly becomes recognizable. Much like a top 40 song, the first few times your audience will be - hey! I know that! And beyond that, the more it plays, the more ready they are for it to fall of the charts.

Clarity of effects. Make sure that the effects you choose aren't ambiguous. What you're using needs to be identifiable to your audience - unless you're trying to create confusion. As a sound girl, nothing will yank me out of a scene faster than an effect I hear and can't identify, or doesn't match the other effects used. If you're in that Victorian street, and I hear something that sounds like a frog, I have no idea if buggies had horns or this town happens to be a few miles from the swamp.

Mind how you loop. If a scape is going to run for a significant length of time, beds or repeating sounds need to be edited carefully if you're looping an effect to get the time you need. This is especially true if your using a source effect that's significantly shorter than the total time - for example repeating a 20 second track. If your scene is 15 minutes long, you'll be listening to the SAME bits 45 times. Crickets, birds, dogs, even traffic can create recognizable patterns if they're used to often. Once or twice may be noticed but not minded, where 10 or more times can quickly become the never ending chorus on the juke box you want to unplug. I've found that this is even MORE true for effects that already are repetitive sounds - for example a train. If the entire file sounds the same - in other words the click clack is always the same tone - and the track doesn't change (no bridges, tunnels, or connections) you can repeat it indefinably without a problem. However, if in 1 minute of train, there is a section at 15 seconds where the train passes a crossing signal, and you simply loop top to tail over and over, you end up with a regularly repeating crossing signal, and your environment becomes a skipping record, rather than a train ride.

Mind the tops and tails of your loop. Many environmental effects from libraries have fade in and fade outs at the top and tail. If you don't chop the fade off of the effect - you're going to have dips in the effect loop. This can be incredibly jarring if the file has a fade out at the end, but starts at full volume at the top. The loop creates a big POP. It's also important to be especially carefully with effects like rain or wind, that may simply start and end at significantly different volumes from the original recording session as the weather changed naturally.

Be careful of density. If you have too many files playing a the same time, or files with too much going on in them, you're going to just create noise, and likely compete for air space with dialogue. On the other hand, if your layers are too thin, the environment will be also. This is especially true if your are using music as a part of the scape. Too many effects on top can take away from the music, or make the scape far too busy. You can also end up with some funky tempo/percussive contrasts that can make the music seem wrong. For example, imagine a thunderstorm on top of the 1812 Overture. There's already so much percussion that thunder that wasn't perfectly timed would add strange beats out of time with the piece.

Use sourcing carefully. In other words, if you're going to use specific speakers for a single part of the scape, be gentle with that source. The plus of surround and more sends is being able to spit effects into various areas and levels - and being able to use speakers for specific on stage items - radios, trees, basements, even water or "away." This can create incredibly realistic scapes, and entirely enmesh your audience. It can also drive some of them nuts. I recently saw a show in a black box theatre, and happened to be sitting next to an audience side speaker. The show had a scape for a night scene, that over all was quite wonderful, however the speaker I was sitting next to had a single cricket voice in it. I'm sure from anywhere besides my seat, it was fine. But being next to the speaker, I ended up paying attention almost entirely to the damn cricket, and missed most of the action of the scene.

Watch out for period and location. The sounds you pull need to reasonably accurate - not only to the script and staging, but to each other. Going back to that Victorian street scene, if you're doing Carol you use some "market voices" that on headphones are indistinct, but in the theatre have modern American accents rather than English, you've destroyed the scape, and pulled your audience out of the time and place of the play. As sound designers, we are no less responsible for aiding in the "suspension of disbelief" than any other element.

Soundscapes have to match the energy of the scene. If you have a romantic, gentle love scene between two young people that are just getting together, you can support that gentleness, or you can contrast it. If the couple find each other despite the chaos and crime of a city - blaring traffic, sirens, and jack hammers are going to contrast. However, if your couple are a Shepard and a milkmaid, that kind of chaos is going to be totally wrong for the moment, clashing rather than contrasting. Tempo can also be a problem. If you have crickets that chirp constantly you're going to set a fast tempo to the scene, intentionally or not. You may need to slow those crickets down some, rather than leave your audience wondering why the actors are talking so slowly, or having the urge to tell them to hurry up.

Overall. For me, the most successful soundscapes are subtle, yet the sounds they contain are deliberate and intentional. That said, rules were meant to be broken - and guidelines are just that, guidelines. Sometimes the best art is created by breaking the rules and coming up with something entirely new. The soundscape is an art - one that can be mastered with time and attention to detail.

Until next time,

Cheers!

~R