Storytelling Functions of Sound

February 29, 2024 - Randy Thom

When someone asks “What does sound do in a movie” most of us are at least a little confused about how to answer that question. Obviously both music and sound effects can make you feel a c...

Exploding Bridges and Bowling Pins

January 31, 2024 - Randy Thom

In Sam Wasson’s fantastic new book about Francis Coppola and American Zoetrope, he quotes Walter Murch ruminating on the sound of colliding bowling pins. I remember those pins well. When ...

The Connoisseur of Mistakes

January 03, 2024 - Randy Thom

Great art depends on accidents and mistakes.Most non artists think that a work of art begins with an imaginary, grand design, which is then made real by using the techniques the artist ha...

On a Roll

November 30, 2023 - Randy Thom

It’s a little-known fact that the sound of a rolling object is caused by impacts with the surface it is rolling on. The more frequent the impacts, the smoother the sound. This is even the...

Why Microphone Placement Trumps Microphone Type

October 30, 2023 - Randy Thom

Placement vs Type In the world of audio recording, the debate over microphone type and brand has raged a hundred years, largely fueled by individual mic manufacturers’ and retailers’ de...

Artistic versus Technical Creativity

September 29, 2023 - Randy Thom

Differences between Artistic Creativity and Technical Creativity I recently posted a piece on social media in which I talked about how little respect is given to sound teams on movie an...

The Coolest Audio Tools

August 31, 2023 - Randy Thom

In the early years of work, most of us are obsessed with tools, so obsessed that they become the focus of our attention, rather than sound itself. The desire to acquire the best tools, to...

Designing Creature Vocals Part 3

July 31, 2023 - Randy Thom

Part 3 Making creature vocals using recordings of animals and birds often requires multiplesources, sometimes multiple species, in order to cover the range of emotions needed. For examp...

Designing Creature Voices Part 2

June 29, 2023 - Randy Thom

Part 2 Picking up where I left off in Part One, the emotional content of a creature vocal is almost always its most important characteristic… more important than how technically good th...

Designing Creature Vocals Part 1

May 31, 2023 - Randy Thom

Part 1 In my opinion, designing believable and organic-sounding vocalizations is the most difficult kind of sound design. Over many decades I’ve received lots of audition tapes from you...

Squish Is the Epiphany I Finally Had

April 28, 2023 - Randy Thom

Have you ever observed a stream of water flowing where there were no ripples, no splashing, and no bubbles? Did you notice that there was also no sound, or nearly no sound? Here’s my theo...

Mono versus Stereo versus Multi-Channel Sound

March 31, 2023 - Randy Thom

In a field as vast as audio and audio for media, it’s dangerous to generalize about what is good and bad, what is more useful and less useful. A great sound strategy for a theatrically re...