Talk:Sound design/Archives/2012

Radical article idea

So I have a radical idea, it came from seeing the merge tag at the top of the film section. Maybe we should make sound design be a basic articles about sound design and then create seperate sound design (film) and sound design (theatre) articles? I may be completly misunderstanding it, but aren't theater sound and film sound two completely different theories? If I'm wrong I'm wrong, but I think this could benifit both the stagecraft project and the filmmaking project as we won't be fighting over ideas and concepts. Anyone else have any thoughts? --Lekogm 00:42, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Sounds logical to me... Charlie Richmond 20:54, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Sound design in both film and theatre have the same basic premise. You're interpreting a written piece of work and emphasing portions of that work. This gives the audience a heightened view of the work. In both film and theatre, the sound acts to reveal a setting; emphasis a mood; focus the audience to a specific location or to enhance the sound on stage/in the film. The qualities of sound, role of the designers and recording/finding/building effeccts are basically the same. The differences lie in the presentation of the final design and the amount of sound that goes into it. Film needs to have sound for everything that happens on screen, theatre has it's own atmosphere, it just uses enhancements. I think that the basic sound design should have it's own page, then sub catagories for film and theatre. The film people could help contribute to the section. The stuff that doesn't fit both can go in a sub-catagory. I just think that sound in both fields are close enough that we will be repeating a lot of information. Humhead 01:22, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

there does seem to be an issue here. I think the difference between sound design - in the context of crafting sound using recording and synthesis techniques - and the design of sound reinforcement systems (including the incorporation of architectural acoustics) should be much clearer. Also, there is significant overlap between the sound design techniques used for film and those used in certain types of sound art such as music concrete, various acousmatic art practices, and electroacoustic music; so potentially this means a third article will be required. Why not have one main sound design article which gives an overview of the three (four, if computer games is included) major forms and then have film and theater specific articles that dwell on issues specific to each variation? to There appears to be nothing in this article regarding practical sound design techniques or details relating to the how and why of it all. Semitransgenic (talk) 21:25, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

I think that idea has merit. Binksternet (talk) 23:51, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

I would support a breaking out of Sound design (film) Sound Design (Theatre) etc. Idea --Ottoman42 (talk) 20:20, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Looking at the way other Wikipedia articles are written, I feel the layout of the current article is in-keeping with the rest of the Web site. I feel that having all strands of sound design in a single article is a useful comparison. For example, I would never have thought to look at an article on Sound Deign (theatre) when looking for an article on Sound Design (film), however I am grateful for the extra dimension offered when reading the current article. Egrabczewski (talk) 21:35, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

I this article is very out dated. Sound design is used in games, film, theatre, consumer goods of any kind. It seems that wiki does not account for all these aspects at all.::::: —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.81.0.73 (talk) 00:23, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

References?

So... I contributed a large amount to this article based on my own personal involvement with this craft and contributed based on my own knowledge. How does one reference that? Charlie Richmond (talk) 05:34, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, I think we need to find external references to back up the contributions you've made. The idea is that any other reader of the article will be able to verify any of the claims in it for themselves. I'm relying here on the guideline No original research under the section No original research#Citing_oneself. Sounds tricky though, under the circumstances. Can you think of any good references we could use for any of the material? --Spoonriver (talk) 11:25, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Without wanting to devalue the insights provided by Mr Richmond, this article needs sources or references that appear in reliable, third-party publications. The banners may seem like an overkill, but all are valid issues which need to be attended to if the article is to improve, and it saves blabbing on about it here. A rewrite is needed, to remove unsupported POV entries. Some of the verbiage just does not seem relevant to the topic. Semitransgenic (talk) 21:33, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Good luck with the independent verification! In the meantime I'll help wherever I can and keep watching this space plus you can call me Charlie ;-) Charlie Richmond (talk) 07:01, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

This raises an interesting debate on the contribution of editors and the philosophy of Wikipedia. There is little doubt in my mind that Mr. Richmond's contribution is a mature and experienced account of Sound Design in the Western world. To insist that referential material needs to be found to back up the content is irrelevant in the light of such experience. It is often the most experienced people who fail to write articles and books about their knowledge. Insisting that we reference published material when it does not exist is a constraint that will limit the knowledge in Wikipedia itself. The philosophy of Wikipedia appears to be that between us, we can all contribute to a vast expertise of knowledge; and because of this democracy then Wikipedia is self-regulating. To insist that this knowledge lies only in the domain of published "experts" seems to go against the grain of what I imagined Wikipedia to be all about. I understand the principle of independent verification (where this is possible) but equally, I am relieved that Wikipedia does not apply this principle too rigidly and remove articles that are not verified, as this would severely reduce the usefulness of Wikipedia as a whole. Egrabczewski (talk)

Hear hear! Binksternet (talk) 01:11, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

couldn't agree less WP:VER is a cornerstone, personal experience is useless here, as are so called experts who can't cite his/her sources. Measles (talk) 01:39, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

If you were trying to decide whether a blog was or was not suitable as a reference for a film article, and the blog was authored by Leonard Maltin, would you reject the blog even though the editor was an expert in the subject? Binksternet (talk) 01:58, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I think the general rule is that if we link to the website of an individual who is a notable expert it may be RS. There might be some vetting on the notability aspect of this, but self-evident expertise shouldn't be too difficult to judge, but sources are still required and there may be WP:SELFPUB issues to contend with. Measles (talk) 12:24, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Referencing may be a "cornerstone" but open knowledge is the foundation on which Wikipedia is built. Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater! Egrabczewski (talk) 06:18, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Education?

What does one actually studies to become a sound designer? The article currently lacks that information... --Nathanael Bar-Aur L. (talk) 04:33, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

A sound designer is essentially a creative sound editor. Having the basic skills of audiography are an essential prerequisite. Over and above that, there are some books that help to nurture the "creative" side. For example, see "Sound Design" by David Sonnenschein. It is also possible to approach sound design from a musical perspective. Having a creative music background and learning the skills of sound editing is an equally valid approach. Egrabczewski (talk)

Excessive external links

There are way too many external links in this article!

It's silly (and useless) to have so many external links that they must be grouped into subsections. I deleted a few that are obvious spam, but most of those that remain are either spam or so indirectly useful as to be irrelevant. Isn't the whole idea here to extract and integrate meaningful information from such sites rather than just lazily linking to them? I'm inclined to delete the lot of them, but there might actually be something useful hidden amongst the chaff. Also, it would seem that many of these are little more than baldfaced attempts to inject commercial links into WP. Not to mention that upon cursory inspection, I found that several such corporate links actually appear more than once!

As things stand now, there is a sufficiently large mass of extlinks to split them off into their own article. Perhaps something like List of external links, promotional and otherwise, that are related in any way whatsoever to sound design? Lambtron (talk) 20:10, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

I completly agree. The entire "Qualifications" section of the links has to go. I would be willing to help pare this way down.--Found5dollar (talk) 14:52, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, Found5dollar -- I will also work on this as time permits. Lambtron (talk) 21:47, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

External links have been pruned so that only the appropriate ones remain, and a reasonable number at that. Now the only remaining task is to completely overhaul the article's content. Lambtron (talk) 15:20, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

List of notable sound designers

It seems that every sound designer who is connected in any way with a notable WP topic is deemed notable by association, and therefore worthy of mention in this article. However, there are a great many such sound designers and, if they were all to be listed here it would be a long list indeed. Is this really the best place to list them? It makes sense to mention the pioneers here (in prose, not in a "list") when discussing the history of sound design, but any more than that is pointless and just clutters the article. I propose that the list be moved to List of sound designers, and in lieu of listing designers here, this article could link to the list under See also. Comments, anyone? Lambtron (talk) 03:58, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm all for a separate article listing sound designers, but until it is written, it does not hurt to list in this article the ones who have an article about them. In this manner, the sound design article will be a lot like the one about audio engineering. User:Adam Org, in removing the listed sound designers, called it "shameless promotion" but I disagree. Designers who are dead or no longer working would still be on the list if they were notable during their careers. The list is merely a navigation aid for the reader, in case they were looking for a certain sound designer but did not quite remember the name. Binksternet (talk) 06:25, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm agreeing with Binksternet in that sound designers should be kept provided they're notable as sound designers. If the number of notable sound designers becomes too huge, then we could consider moving it to a list; at present I think the arrangement works.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 11:57, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Well, that's the rub, isn't it? How does one determine whether a person is notable as a sound designer? Notability is implied if a sound designer is the topic of an article, but is such a person automatically "notable as a sound designer" or must the person have done something especially creative or groundbreaking in sound design? If creativity is the measure, how can we know whether the work was sufficiently creative to mark the person as a notable sound designer? After all, creativity is a fundamental job requirement for all sound designers, not just the notable ones.

For example, Ben Burtt, who is said to be most notable for creating Star Wars sounds, is listed. Is that really groundbreaking work or just another creative sound designer doing his job? Roy Harter, who is described first as a composer and second as a sound designer, doesn't appear to have done anything nearly as notable in the realm of sound design, yet he is listed, too. I'll bet there are at least 50 articles about composer/sound-designers that could (arguably) qualify for inclusion in the list.

It makes sense to discuss (in prose) truly notable sound designers in this article because they performed groundbreaking work relevant to the main topic. However, a general list (of any size) of sound designers fails to expand reader understanding of this topic and therefore doesn't belong here. As Binksternet pointed out, though, there is justification for such a list as a navigational aid. For these reasons, I propose that the list be split from the article now. Any objections? Lambtron (talk) 14:46, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Splitting seems reasonable. I just did a good look-over of the Roy Harter article and I agree -- it's mostly fluff, advertising. So I'm thinking maybe we need a list of sound designers (only criteria for inclusion: that they have done something in sound design AND they have an article about them); and leave the more notable (ie referenced) sound designers here in this article in prose form, with a focus on what specifically they did to advance sound design. Does that sound good?--Tomwsulcer (talk) 15:08, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

That sounds great, Tom! I boldly created the list and linked to it. Lambtron (talk) 01:07, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Okey dokey. Good job for acting and being bold.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 01:21, 14 June 2011 (UTC)