Ink Sound Design Project

As a sound designer a huge concern while working on any project is the story that is aiming to be told. What emotional tones are trying to be portrayed and what steps do we need to take in order to display them? Listening to bad quality sound is difficult no matter how great the visuals are and should be treated just as importantly.  In my sound design class I recreated the sound design for a short animation film by the title of Ink. The first thoughts in my head were what emotions am I trying to leave the audience and listeners feeling? With it being only a two-minute clip I knew there wasn’t much time to tell a full story, but rather I could tell a brief one that everyone can relate to through lyrics. Since we are all in this world together I narrate a short story about traveling this road through life and having to fight for what we want. I do this through rapping a small verse I wrote and recorded for this project over my composition and sound design for the visual representation. I wanted my viewers to feel motivated to go out and fulfill their dreams and live life to the fullest, but also to keep in mind not to take life as a joke or for granted.  I chose this because the movie goes through many different transitions and transformations of the ink into animals, people, different life forms and styles etc. I knew that the compositional piece was going to be the driving factor for this project, so I made sure to create a beat giving off a serious tone or vibe, yet still calm or subtle in some environments. Then I recorded various foley sounds to accompany the visuals and lead them to make them seem and fell all the more real. For this particular project I used Cubase 6 as my DAW.

Ink Sound Design Project

Check it out here ^^

MicroKorg vs. MicroKorg XL

Currently in my studio setup at my house I only have one analog synthesizer, in which I had been recently interested in looking for an upgrade or another analog synth containing more features and plenty of different uniquely designed sounds. I researched and did some comparing of my current synthesizer the MicroKorg versus the newer model called the MicroKorg XL. The first element of the newer model the XL is off-putting at the first glance, but to some people may not be a big deal. It is not made up of solid materials of wood and metal like the original MicroKorg is. So immediately this posed the question will it be sturdy and a long-lasting piece of gear if I were to purchase and will it sustain if I were to take it on the road for shows.  One feature in particular that I did notice at the first sight was the XL has deeper keys in which are slightly larger and depending on one’s preferences can be of easier playing ability. In my case I would rather keep the smaller keys for consistent, smooth movement being an amputee. On the older version it displays a program select for choosing the genre. Then it has a corresponding program number under each genre with eight different sounds containing both an A and B-side. Which seems convenient, but in reality can be quite confusing at times when trying to recall numbers rather than names. Whereas on the XL, the newer version it has a program genre and program category. Genres range from Trance, Techno/House, Electronica, D N B Breaks, Hip-Hop/Vintage, Retro, and S.E. Hit on the MicroKorg and for the XL: R N B/Hip-Hop, Rock Pop, Vintage Station, Techno/Trance, House/Disco, D N B Breaks, and a favorite selection where you have the capability of saving any of the unique sounds you manipulated from the original sound. Also the XL lets one choose a sub category of one of the following: Poly Synth, Bass, Lead, Arp Motion, Pad Strings, Keyboard, Bells, S.E Hits, and a Vocoder. So the XL can provide a quicker way of getting to the desired sound instead of playing the guessing game on what program number makes what type of sound.  Both the original and newer version has an Arpeggiation feature as well as a Vocoder. In terms of layout and design I would go for the MicroKorg XL for the easier navigation as well as it has a USB port, which can make for portable equipment if going out on the road. The key advantage the MicroKorg has over the XL version is the edit select features. It has five controller knobs at the top right for the following: the cutoff, resonance, EG attack, EG release, and tempo. Use these five to control the sound or use the two-edit select knobs to alter the parameters of the sound as well. The XL has a similar feature, but it is more complicated to control and edit. So the conclusion I have came across is the XL is a better choice in terms of navigation, but not for editing. The XL is portable for doing shows on the road and can plugin USB rather than a power outlet making it a smoother transition of carrying equipment from point A to point B to setup a set. Overall the XL is a better decision in my opinion.