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Sound Design for Theater
Anne and Emmett
Anne and Emmett
Muskegon Civic Theatre, January 2023
Directed by David & Anna Alpert
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Anne and Emmett is a timely play that imagines a meeting and dialogue between Anne Frank and Emmett Till to discuss issues of prejudice, racism, innocence, death, loss, genocide and more. This adaptation took an overall gritty but fantastical design. Much of the story is set in an abstract, non-representational space known as "Memory" and the primary function of sound for this play was to evoke Memory and the characters memories as a characterful thing.
"Memory"
Transition Into "Memory" - Tyler Quinn
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The spatial "Memory" in this play is sonically depicted as a sort of limbo styled in parallel to a black-box theater. The gritty sound of an old radio tuning is used to poetically illustrate the transportation into this space between spaces and a clock is heard slowing down and ultimately becoming frozen mid-tick to further separate this space from reality. Once the setting has been "tuned into", the technology disappears and is replaced with an abstract ambient tone, conveying a sense mystery appropriate for a location that is more of an idea than a physical place.
Death Monologues
The emotional anchors for this play are when the two titular characters confront their traumas by facing the memory of their respective deaths. Jamelle Sargent, as Emmett Till and Gabi Tomes, as Anne Frank, both gave extremely layered, sensitive performances in their performances and my goal with sound was emphasize the pathos inherent in their monologues. These monologues follow the stream of consciousness progression of their storytelling. Instead of conveying the events described with realism, my sounds are filtered through the context of their feelings as they relive these experiences. The sounds were chosen, built and manipulated based on how they conveyed visceral sensations and emotions. Thus they maneuver in and out of naturalism and often evoke the messiness of memory and how trauma can cloud the accuracy of it.
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A through-line for both of these soundscapes is that they track the emotional journey with the sound of a beating heart that ramps up as the character's predicament becomes worse and slows down as their health declines. The quality of sounds also decreases in fidelity as both character succumbs to their death.
Emmett Till's memory of his lynching is characterized by a palpable sense of dread, agonized pain at the hands of the men who tortured and murdered him and rage as he tries to fight back.
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The monologue begins with detailed nocturnal ambience to evoke the environment. After the arrival of the Men's truck is heard, the ambience becomes processed in a way that elicits a disturbing sensation. From here he talks about the physical torture he suffered beginning with having his eye gouged out. I used sound to emphasize this moment and chose the selected sound to illustrate this moment because of it's internal quality. It didn't sound like a spectator would hear it, but how a victim would hear and feel the muliation in their own body. This aspect embodies the overall directorial goals of facilitating an empathic response from the audience and being respectful to the memory of the real life subjects. From here the ensuing pain is conveyed with a piercing ringing sound in the ears and an increasing heart rate. The anger and the intense stress of the moment is conveyed with the visceral sound of motion of blood in the head. As the tension of the scene mounts and Emmett recounts Bryant and Milam tying a Cotton Gin Fan around his neck, the sound of the fan is evoked with the movement of a heavy weight which crescendos into the burst of gunfire. The gravity of this moment is lingered upon with the echoing of the gunshot. The story and soundscape conclude with Emmett recounting the men dropping his body in the Tallahatchie River. The soundscape was designed to convey it as a place of Death, tonally grows darker, conveying the sensation of his life fading away.
Anne Frank's memory of her death is characterized by the anxiety of being in hiding during the Nazi regime, illness and a deep sense of melancholy
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The monologue begins with the distant sound of approaching German sirens, the soundscape is then flooded with aggressive voices that shift into an abstract progression of numb terror and ultimately a grim relief and a sense of time itself frozen. The story progresses to a nightmarish depiction of a train bound for Auschwitz. Anne's stay in the concentration camp is told through sound evoking stark solitude and the sickness that would cut her life tragically short. The wind described in the monologue is sourced from a field recording I took of the 2022 Christmas Eve Blizzard in Michigan, augmented with synthesized wind and granularly slowed Hitler speeches to add an underlying impression of depravity. As she describes the sensations of succumbing to Typhus, she describes sounds that she hallucinates including the memory of Nazis tapping on the walls of the Annex and the fluttering of wings. Both the tapping and the wings are synchronized to the beat of her fading heart and are tonally processed to sound sickly. During the final crescendo into her death, the heartbeat sound has fully evaporating and the sound of the wings shift in tone to becoming brighter and more delicate until they fade like air.
There and Back Again: A Hobbit's Tale
The Playhouse at White Lake, October 2024
The Hobbit
Directed by Cindy Beth Davis - Dykema, Sky Harsch & Amber Hellewell
Performed at the Playhouse at White Lake
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This brand new script, based off of JRR Tolkien's classic children's novel was written by The White Lake Youth Theatre. Bilbo Baggins, a Hobbit of Middle Earth, is swept off on an adventure by Gandalf the Wizard, joining the company of twelves Dwarves, to reclaim their mountain home and gold from the Dragon, Smaug the Terrible.
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I designed sound and composed music for the play with the overall auditory design goal of bringing it to life as a timeless fantasy tale for children.
Ambiences
This was the type of show where the story spans numerous locations, but visual scenery is used minimally. The diversity of locations is instead depicted with changes in light and sound. To support the globe trotting narrative, I created a variety of fantastical ambiences for each location the company passes through.
Shire Ambience - Tyler Quinn
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For the first ambience in this story, I wanted to establish carefree, idyllic agrarian haven of the Shire and used an original field recording of my Grandparent's backyard in the late Spring and augmented it with various closeup recording of livestock vocalizations.
Gollum's Cavern Ambiece - Tyler Quinn
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For the famous "Riddles in the Dark" scene where Bilbo is locked in a dangerous game of wits with the monstrous Gollum, the scene is underscored with a fittingly eerie ambience to convey the stark, desolate dwelling of Gollum's home.
Most of the components of this sound are sourced from new recordings of my basement sink, including the dripping (slowed down with digital reverb), as is the tonal drone. The gentle, lapping waves were recorded this past Summer at a vacation cottage on Higgin's Lake.
Goblin-Town Ambience - Tyler Quinn
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On the other end of the spectrum, the ambience of Goblin town is designed to be a stifling aural depiction of malevolent industrialism. I recorded ratchet wrenches, and decreased the speed to depict massive gears, used a field recording of a sawzall being used to dismantle an old theater set for the threatening motorized tool heard and an anvil hit, but the secret ingredient for this ambience is the ambient bed of raw heat. This is derived from a recording of my Dad's charcoal grill billowing a small pillar of fire.
Lake-Town Ambience - Tyler Quinn
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When the dwarves and Bilbo reach Lake-Town, they see that the once prosperous community has been reduced to one of poverty, neglect and decay, as the result of the Mayor's gold hoarding.
To create this ambience, I walked onto to a dingy dock in my hometown at a quiet hour and recorded myself putting pressure onto the dock to illicit the creaking of the wood. I also used the sound an eerie ambience I had previously recorded of schooner lashings clanking against their masts, and the same recording of waves used for Gollum's Cavern.
The Lonely Mountain
Ambience, Thrush Knock and Reveal - Tyler Quinn
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When the scene is set on the Lonely Mountain, the soundscape is brought in with an Owl hooting, a fade in on the ambient sound bed, and the prophetic Thrush Knocking at the Last Moon of Autumn to reveal the entrance.
The design of the Keyhole's reveal features a couple of elements including the scraping of a brick to convey the tone of the rock dissolving away. The initial hit of this brick was run through a very long reverb to create the 4 note melody heard to convey the magic of the moment, as well as the prolonged whistling to convey air from the Mountain keep gently escaping the keyhole.
Unlocking the Lonely Mountan Door - Tyler Quinn
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The moment Thorin inserts the key into the secret entrance of the lonely mountain is a magical one, with centuries worth of trapped air escaping.
This proved to be one of the most complex sounds in the play, utilizing stainless steel measure cups being rubbed together, a brick being dragged against cement and my house key being inserted into my front door for the key insertion. The turning of the key uses a keepsake music box cranked at a low speed and the creaking of a foundry bell joint. The sound of centuries of pent up air escaping with the doors opening is a combination of a shower door opening with a couple samples of me exhaling played back at multiple pitches and fed through heavy reverb to give it more of an arcane tone.
Combat
Sword Combat - Dwarve v. Trolls - Tyler Quinn
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This play features a handful of instances where the Dwarves engage in sword combat against various foes. In this particular sample, they are dueling against Mountain Trolls.
I may have fittingly "blunted the knives" for this sound because I did indeed use my own kitchen knives for these sounds, along with a various flourishes of a dowel to create the sound of the motion. The Troll's clubs used whooshes derived from tree limbs being swung near a large diaphragm condenser mic, played a slower pitch to convey a greater size, befitting of the Trolls.
Mirkwood
When the Dwarves and Bilbo pass through Mirkwood forest, they are ambushed, assaulted and held captive by the giant spiders that dwell within.
Mirkwood Ambience - Tyler Quinn
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Mirkwood Spider - Directional Scuttling - Tyler Quinn
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Spider Ambush and Scuffle - Tyler Quinn
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The scene is set with this eerie, quiet ambience. Characterized by a low wind and the very faint sound of the Spiders scuttling just on the Periphery of the Dwarves and the audience.
Just before the Dwarves are ambushed, this hyper-present sound is heard crossing the house speaker system from left to right.
This sound is a combination of a plastic house plant being shaken for a slimy, scuttley texture, but the six legs needed further augmentation and was accomplished simply with the sound of me drumming my fingers in a spiderlike motion across the surface of a hardcover book. This comped sound was then stereo panned left to right with a deep reverb automated to establish the illusion of the spider moving from far to near to far away again.
When the Spiders Ambush the Dwarves, several incarnations of the scuttling are heard in the far left or right stereo field and converge in the center and a duel is heard between the spiders and dwarves, with the sound of the dwarves swords heard against the spiders shooting webs at them.
The newly introduced element of the spiders combative web shooting is created with a squirt bottle, processed with a resonant spectral filter to create more of a "shooting" element. And an 808 kick is used to give it more of a heavy "bucking" attack.
Magic
Tolkien's created world is one of high fantasy, and thus, the sounds of magic need careful attention. My favorite instances of magic conveyed through sound are exhibited below.
Gandalf Turns Trolls to Stone - Tyler Quinn
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When all twelves Dwarves, plus Bilbo, are subdued by a trio of Hungry Trolls, the previously absent wizard Gandalf rescues them by unleashing the dawn sun upon the Trolls, turning them to stone.
For this sound, the sunlight was given a sonic tactility by taking the ringing of a brass bell wreath that had been time-stretched into a drone. Each troll turning to stone is heard with a respective recording of a big rock being rubbed against another big rock, with this recording processed with saturation and augmented bass. And some additional motions with driveway gravel to give it additional crunch. It also needed a bright, magical whoosh, which was made electronically with a white noise oscillator, giving it a timeless feel that was also fun and befitting of a kid's show. The final element of this sound effect are magical, echoing birds chirping, signifying the dawn.
Putting on the Ring - Disappearing and Reappearing - Tyler Quinn
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When Bilbo finds himself in Gollum's Cavern, he happens upon Sauron's ring of Power, and soon discovers that he can use it to evade danger by becoming invisible when he puts it on.
The gleaming of the ring's precious gold is made with a sample of one of my smallest bells and time-stretched into a long drone. This drone is processed with a sharp fade in and very quick fade out and a reverse 808 kick to create a gentle burst of air, signifying the wearer of the ring vanishing into thin air. The sounds for disappearing and reappearing have different contours, to give different sounds to something being hidden to something being revealed.
Wolf attack and rescue
Wolf Entrance, Attack and Eagle Rescue - Tyler Quinn
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This sound sample does a good job of illustrating my approach to the magical creatures of Tolkien's world building. After Bilbo, Gandalf and the Company of Dwarves escape the Misty Mountains, they find themselves "out of the frying pan and into the fire" when the disgruntled Goblins call upon the aid of monstrous wolves (Wargs) to run them down. These wolves chase them up some trees, but they are rescued by the Giant Eagles that dwell nearby.
I characterized the vicious, cruel, predatory nature of the wolves with a variety of pulled recordings of howling dogs and various samples of dogs growling and barking with considerable aggression. These were augmented with the use of distortion. But the vocalizations, I found weren't enough. I increased the feeling of the wolves aggression with the motion of their thundering paws, particularly claws by performing them as bespoke foley recordings. I used a large tree branch and recorded myself drumming it against the earth, with aggressive motion to scrape it up and then I used the same branch to claw at a tree in my backyard and layered multiple of these recordings together to create a battalion of vicious wolves running to the dwarves and attempting to climb the trees they take refuge in.
The sounds of the Eagles are derived from the vocalizations of Harpy Eagles, because they had the right sort of piercing "war cry" that I was looking for, instead of the overused redtail hawk screech that I wanted to avoid. The wings flapping are derived from recordings I took outside of me waving a suede button down shirt in front of a microphone.
Smaug
Perhaps the strongest moment of "audio spectacle" in this show. Smaug was the first challenge I was tasked with tackling. As a matter of fact, the titular Dragon was performed by no less than three actors in this production, with two actresses performing the movement of the handmade puppet and another providing the voice. Likewise, several components go into his realization through sound design.
Ambience - Smaug's Keep - Tyler Quinn
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Smaug Movement 1 - Shifting on Bed of Gold - Unknown Artist
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Smaug Movement 2 - Lunging at Bilbo - Tyler Quinn
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The first element in establishing Smaug is the sound of the environment that he lives in. The ambience of his keep in the heart of the Lonely Mountain is characterized by the drone of hundreds of tons of gold, as well as coins dripping like moisture in Gollum's cave, the twinkling of precious gemstones and the sound of his snoring vibrating every texture in the stronghold.
All of the gold sounds are derived from foley I recorded of pennies and pitched down to sound like the thicker, more precious material of gold. The twinkling sounds are crotales processed with reversed granular echo and the Giant Dragon's snoring is simply the purring of my cat, slowed down.
When Smaug awakens, sensing the thieving presence of Bilbo, his massive frame shifts on the bed of gold that he sleeps on.
This sound was created with me pouring out a couple hundred pennies onto carpeted floor and swishing my hand across them, and likewise to the previous sample, slowing them down. The weight was conveyed with an additional element of a duplicated track of the penny motion, but with all of the high end shaved off, leaving only the bass frequencies, with the aid of some transistor distortion.
After failing to find the Arkenstone upon discovery by the Dragon, Bilbo tries to charm the Smaug enough to make his escape and narrowly evades the Dragon's attack (Heard in the above sample).
A heavy whoosh, low end noise, swishing of pennies and pitched down samples of rocks and brick being smashed are used to create this sound.
Smaug Voiceovers (Assorted) - Tyler Quinn
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Early on, it was decided by the director that the voice of Smaug would be accomplished as a processed voiceover, performed by one of the cast actors, in order to give the movement performers something consistent to work with.
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Smaug's voice was performed by Noah Hellewell and he was recorded in the tech booth of the theater after rehearsal with a combination of a large diaphragm condenser mic and a shotgun mic. These recordings were treated meticulously to make the young actor sound like a dragon in the context of a stage play, without losing the integrity of his wonderful performance.
The first thing I did was pitch his voice down 2 - 3 semitones and augmented with compression and a bass boost to the EQ to convey a great size. After that I used a Subharmonic Synthesizer to create a clone of his voice recording exclusively in the subbass frequencies. This is where his voice really starts to sound massive and threatening. The final step was to send this effected recording to the reverb bus I had create for the Keep Ambience and that was that!
Smaug Breathes Fire On Lake-Town - Tyler Quinn
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After figuring out the Dwarves plan to reclaim their home and Gold, Smaug retaliates by laying his fiery wrath onto Lake-Town and it's inhabitants.
Smaug's fire breath is created, ironically, from a recording I found of a fire extinguisher, because it almost had a voice to it with an aggressive flavor that I found suitable. The jet of fire is simply made with two layers of processed, signal generated noise. One spectrally full-range, processed with a flanger and the other, spectrally bassed oriented and with heavy distortion.
The burning Laketown soundscape is made out of a wall of different sounds. It utilizes the same recording of raw heat from a charcoal grill used in the Goblin-Town ambience, real fire from a fireplace and campfire for the texture of burning wood. But the blaze is augmented to an almost overwhelming level with synthetic textures, including multiple layers of brittle shrink wrap being aggressively crinkled. Furthermore, the detail of boats burning is evoke with another field recording I have of Marina masts, this time on a windier than for the idle Lake-Town ambience.
Black Arrow Shoot & Smaug's Deah - Tyler Quinn
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Smaug ultimately meets his demise at the Bow and Arrow of Bard, bringing his reign of terror, Seizure of the Dwarf home and razing of Lake-Town to an end.
The shooting of the arrow was made by shooting an elastic string near the capsule of a microphone, the motion of the arrow is a metallic impulse, processed with reverb, reversed with a crescendoing pitch and the gore of the arrow entering Smaug's chest is accomplished with a combination of an Apple being impaled with a fireplace poker and a Navel Orange being scewered with an Olympic Bar.
See and Hear this scene in Action
Red
Red
The Playhouse at White Lake, July 2022
Directed by Michele Kiessel
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This intimate One-Act play depicts the relationship between famous Abstract Expressionist painter Mark Rothko, and his assistant Ken, also an artist. Their often turbulent collaboration and the saga of Rothko's pursuit of his would-be Magnum Opus are used to explore existential ideas of legacy, mortality, impermanence, worth, death and oblivion.
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Central to the play's sound design is Rothko's record collection. The play takes place during the late 40s through early 50s, so period accurate recordings of Mozart and Schubert recordings (Rothko's favorite composers) were sourced from archive.org. I used Izotope RX to "de-age" the recordings by removing some (but not all) of the imperfections of the recordings age, as they would not yet sound so old in the time period this play is set in. These recordings were then played out of a speaker hidden onstage near the phonograph prop so that the audience would localize the source in a realistic way.
Scene Change music
Red - Scene Change 1 - Tyler Quinn
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Red - Scene Change 2 - Tyler Quinn
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Red - Scene Change 3 - Tyler Quinn
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This piece demonstrates one of a few in the play where the recording was programmed to start playing out of the onstage hidden speaker, and then on cue, fading into the house speakers.
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In this moment, Rothko confides in Ken that he's afraid that one day his work will fade from time and be forgotten. I used sound design to support this idea and run a thread into the next scene by fading the already playing record into the house speaker system and introducing analog artifacts back into the recording to age it. As the play goes on, these scene change cues become more and more abstract.
In a heated exchange, Rothko goes into a prolonged tirade where he articulates his definition of oblivion.
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The scene change piece here illustrates his idea with the use of a soundscape depicting a black void of nothingness. The seed of this sound is the record scratches, dust and hair. It starts off dry and gradually becomes more overdriven, effectively boosting dark frequencies and run through a reverb of incredible vastness that doesn't evoke a manmade or natural space, but rather a fantastical openness.
Before this scene change, Ken challenges Rothko on his intent for accepting the Four Seasons mural commission. Through their battle of words, Rothko begins to question his intention but the points he raises makes leaves Ken in a state of wonder and intrigue in the way the pieces flow together. This mysterious and somewhat profane piece plays as Ken looks at them, deep in thought.
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This sound takes a beautiful aria from The Magic Flute and renders it unrecognizable. The piece is played back at a low speed and pitch, and skips to and from random places in the recording. It is further obfuscated by distortion and heavy reverb.
Room Tone
Red - Room Tone Cycle - Tyler Quinn
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During a couple of moments during this story, there are emotional beats of such delicacy and devastation. One such moment is when Ken recalls the moment he discovers that his parents were murdered and the other is during his confrontation with Rothko after he is fired. I decided to support these moments by using sound in a very subconscious, psychological way, where it is more felt than heard.
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In order to do this, I played a subtle sound that could evoke the sound of silence in the room of Rothko's studio and had it play on loop for most of the play. It is almost undetectable to the audience, but when it is taken away during these intimate moments, all of a sudden the atmosphere is uncomfortably quiet. As the tension increases during these scenes, a darker variant of the room tone fades back in, as well as a very low sub bass drone. The addition of this low tone, creates an emphasized unease that makes the tension of Rothko and Ken's arguments more intense.
Moon Over Buffalo
Moon Over Buffalo
The Playhouse at White Lake, July 2022
Directed by Natalie Carmoli
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This hilarious farce depicts a dysfunctional touring theater group, as their two lead actors, struggling financially and in their marriage, make one last bid at stardom by scrambling to pull together a doomed matinee performance when they hear that Frank Capra will be attending in the hope of finding talent for his next latest film.
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My design for this play was to support the farcical moments by designing impact sounds that were both violent and funny, and humorously depicting the ramshackle nature of the theater.
Ramshackle Theater
Moon Over Buffalo - Cyrano War Sounds - Tyler Quinn
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The play opens with a second rate rehearsal of the company's rendition of Cyrano. The stage roars with the sounds of war until George, actor and director of the production, grinds the rehearsal to a halt to address the rest of the company's poor performance.
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I wanted the war sounds to be accurate to the quality of playback in this era of theater at a low budget. After some research I learned that sound during this era had begun to move away from live foley to reel to reel tape playback. The director and I agreed that this made sense for this fictional theater company, as they would likely not include live sound performers in their budget. The war sounds I used were period accurate optical movie sound effects that had no reserved rights and reverted to the public domain. The tape slowing down and rising to speed were creating by running the audio through Wavesfactory's Casette Transport plugin.
Moon Over Buffalo - Rhapsody in Blue (Normal) - Tyler Quinn
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This scene change uses a period accurate 78rpm recording of Rhapsody in Blue, the most popular song of the 1920s. During the change into the matinee, the recording is clean save for some grubby vinyl noise.
Moon Over Buffalo - Rhapsody in Blue (Damaged) - Tyler Quinn
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After the matinee falls apart and George drunkenly falls off stage into the orchestra pit, injuring himself, the scene changes out with the same recording, but it has been mangled to humorously underscore the utter pandemonium that has just befallen the performance.
Throughout Moon Over Buffalo, the company has been preparing for their matinee, a production of Private Lives, but George, who gets drunker and drunker as the play progresses, mistakenly gets ready for Cyrano, which takes place multiple centuries before Private Lives. When George eventually emerges in the wrong costume, he sticks out like a sore thumb.
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Slapstick
Moon Over Buffalo - Suitcase Hit - Tyler Quinn
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George tries to hide from his wife that he has cheated on her and impregnated a younger actress in the company. She eventually finds out and packs her bags, about to leave him. As he trails after her, she lands a sure hit to him with her packed suitcase.
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To ensure that this sound came off as both funny, I paid careful attention to the layering of multiple sounds I used to bring it to life. This included a heavy whoosh to lead it in, the sound of a book dropping for impact, the slamming of a ceramic toilet seat to add in a cartoonish quality and a bit of gorey squishing to add a painful component.
Moon Over Buffalo - George Falls Into Orchestra Pit - Tyler Quinn
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The disastrous matinee closes when George, drunk off his mind, recites a soliloquy from Cyrano (in a performance from Private Lives). He eventually topples into the unoccupied orchestra pit and falls in AGAIN on his way out of it.
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This sound layers in the expected sounds in such an event, like a cymbal crashing and several bits of brass clanging, but I also added in the sound of a bowling strike to add in the farcical element.
If Only The Lonely Were Home
The Playhouse at White Lake, August 2021
If Only the Lonely
Directed by Cindy Beth Davis - Dykema
Performed by the White Lake Youth Theater
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The second of two youth theater programs produced for the Playhouse at White Lake's 2021 Summer Season. Finegan Kruckemeyer's If Only the Lonely Were Home is told from the perspective of Penny, a girl who endeavors to help her classmate, a boy known only as "The Lonely". The Lonely is isolated and depressed as a result of crippling shyness and absent parents, and sinks into reclusiveness after a series of misfortunes lead him to believe he is becoming "invisible". Penny altruistically endeavors to boost the Lonely's confidence by attempting to prove to him that he is visible.
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If Only the Lonely Were Home presents its story in a manner more poetic than narratively straight, and utilizes a tone that is highly evocative of a picture book. I approached the sound design with these qualities in mind, creating cues that emphasize the gently fantastical environment of the story and sonically illustrate abstract ideas associated with the character of The Lonely. About 90% of the real-world sound effects heard below (e. woodwork, bike crash) are original recordings that I captured in my backyard, as they required a specific performance and ambience that I would have otherwise proved difficult to find in a pre-existing sound library.
If Only The Lonely Were Home opens with the a description of the historical origin of Penny and the Lonely's hometown. The events described are illustrated with construction foley to paint an aural picture of an unsettled pasture growing into a community.
The narrative turning point of this play occurs when a boy crashes his bike and breaks his leg. Petty gossip amongst the villagers lead to this moment spiraling into a rumor that pushes the Lonely to isolating himself. Because of this moment being a source of such interest for the townsfolk, it has a very over the top quality. I performed the crash by picking up my childhood bike, throwing it against my backyard patio and layering the most clamorous moments together from several separate takes.
The Lonely, in his stupor, tries to deflect Penny's efforts by scaring her away with feelings that make him sad, which he verbally visualizes.
The "echo no one answers" is pre-recorded phrase that performed by the actor, that I processed to linger endlessly until Penny dissipates the feeling.
The "long scary shadow" is a couple of disparate recordings that have been heavily pitched down and reversed to give them a scary quality. A heavy sigh is played at a very slow rate to give them impression of a stifling darkness.
The most sonically abstract moment in the play occurs when Penny opens a cellar of happy memories that The Lonely keeps locked.
I gave the memories a twinkling quality by playing sampled crotales that I ran through a granular echo effect. Lots of the background memories (the ones not described by the actors onstage) are sourced from candid videos that I captured around my hometown when I was a teenager. They were selected based off of the universality of their content, consistency with the story's setting and consistency with the young age of the characters.
If Only the Lonely Were Home includes two musical numbers. This production features original composition by Renee Carpenter. The actors sung live onstage, but because of Renee's busy schedule, her piano performance was pre-recorded by me and played back with in the theater with QLAB. Pre-recording the accompaniment of the two songs also proved beneficial by giving the actors a demo that they could practice along with in rehearsals and outside of them.
Summer Shorts
The Playhouse at White Lake, August 2021
Summer Shorts
Directed by Jason Bertoia and Debra Freeberg
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For the Playhouse at White Lake's annual anthology of short plays, two directors focused on two distinct acts of this program. Jason Bertoia helmed the comedically based first act, while Debra Freeberg directed the more serious and dramatic second half.
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With each of these small plays, sound served a purpose that was different from the others, but part of my design was also to weave a connecting thread through all of them with a music cue. These cues effectively faded out the previous narratives with lyrical, compositional or historical content relating to it's story.
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Photos 1-4 by Aidan Lynn Smith, Photo 5 by Cindy Beth Davis-Dykema, Photo 6 by Tyler Quinn
Alexa - Perfect Harmony - Tyler Quinn
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Perfect Harmony
The first play sees a couple meeting shortly before seeing a show and idling away time jovially by listening to music, played from an Amazon Echo. The couple's divergent tastes are humorously illustrated when they verbally command the device to stop playing the other person's music.
In this short, the Alexa is treated as a third character, and even has scripted dialogue. To fully immerse the audience in this situation, I used Amazon's Polly service to procure text to speech files of the scripted lines, so that they could be spoken by the very recognizable Alexa voice. The provided sound clip demonstrates the most humorously chunky bit of dialogue given to it.
Kids Voiceover - Bookstore - Tyler Quinn
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The Bookstore
This short uses it's unconventional characters (literally sentient books) to explore themes of mortality, identity and purpose. After a YA bestseller is made nervous by about the potential life they will lead by an envious tome of poetry, they are confronted by their destiny in the form of a horde of kids, excitedly picking them off the shelf.
The kids in question are not seen, but are present as a loud voiceover played back over speakers in the theater to give them an imposing, larger than life quality with which the bestseller sees them as having. For these voiceovers, I enlisted the help of some of the youth theater performers to ad-lib these lines based off of my direction. They were recorded by the onstage mics during downtime of a rehearsal for the previous show.
Wind, Reverb and Whale - Pequod Meets the Ocean Steward - Tyler Quinn
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Huge Storm - Pequod Meets the Ocean Stewarad - Tyler Quinn
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The Pequod Meets the ocean Steward
In this play, Captain Ahab is in the thick of his destructive obsession for revenge against the whale that took his leg. During the chase, he comes face to face with Stevens, an anti-whaling activist. An argument ensues between the two, which sheds lights on past traumas of both Ahab and Stevens that have proved destructively prophetic in both of their lives. In the end, both parties switch alignments, with Ahab renouncing his destructive obsession and Stevens seeking symbolic revenge against the tormentors of his past, using the white whale as a composite of these figures.
This play is underscored by still sea soundscape. I decided to forgo using wave and ship sounds and instead use only the sound of an ominous, droning wind. This gives the ambience a limbo-like quality that supports both characters asocial, objective driven existences. While mixing live, I boosted the reverb on Ahab's voice while he was giving monologues, to give it more gravitas.
The short ends with the sound of an enormous storm. Whereas the still-ocean wind illustrates the exterior world of the characters, the storm represents the inner world of their psyches. It's chaotic, angry and hellish. To create it, I layered over a dozen discreet sounds together to achieve the right feel. Several different recordings of crashing waves are layered together and distorted to make them heavier. Very detailed deluge sounds are made from recordings of myself pouring a watering can of liquid into a plastic basin outside. I also layered in the chiming vintage ship bell owned and performed by my grandmother.
TWO One-Acts
The Playhouse at White Lake, July 2021
Directed by Cindy Beth Davis - Dykema
Performed by the White Lake Youth Theater
I. Paper or Plastic
Paper or Plastic
The more light-hearted first half of the 2 One-Act youth theater shows for the Playhouse at White Lake's 2021 Summer Season is about a girl's stressful first job as a cashier at her local grocery store. She gets an illuminating glimpse of the ugly side of the real-world through unruly customers, apathetic management and exhausting work routines.
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At the time of my work on this production, I was working a day job at a grocery store, and used my experience there as influence for the sound design. For instance, the preshow music was comprised of the ubiquitous, inoffensive pop songs from the years of 1996 - 2013 that I heard over the PA shift after shift.
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Photos by Cindy Beth Davis-Dykema
Paper or Plastic is comprised of numerous vignettes where Sarah, the heroine of this story, is faced with a different customer, each offering their own challenge. These vignettes segue between amusing interludes, where a voice advertises products in absurd, comical ways over the PA.
These voiceovers were performed live in the theater by one of the actors, who spoke into a handheld microphone. I had this audio feed running through a harshly bandlimited equalizer to give the effect of aged intercom technology. The clangy sounding reverb was carefully constructed in the board to mimic the rather unattractive effect of sound reflecting off of the densely arranged surfaces of a large grocery store.
Store Announcements - Paper or Plastic - Tyler Quinn
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Drum music played a significant role in the narrative of this production. Before Sarah decides to throw in the towel and quit her job, she meets Angus, a long-time employee of the store who reveals to her the secret of maintaining his sanity, despite the drawbacks of the jobs; meditation, specifically in the form of listening to loud music (pictured right). The curtain call (pictured below) happens right after this episode, so the director and I decided together to run with the idea of using music, and used a Purdy Shuffle drum solo because it had a dryly playful quality that complimented the overall tone of the show.
Angus's drum music was recycled from drum tracks I recorded for a past project. The curtain call music is an unused original recording that I set up to test a microphone configuration for a studio recording project.
Drum Music - Paper or Plastic
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II. Our Place
Our Place
The more heavy-hearted second half of the 2 One-Act youth theater shows gives glimpses of the lives of several characters over multiple time periods who are united only by their connection to well-worn swampland dock.
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My overall design concept for supporting this play with sound was to create rich, detailed ambiences that immersed both the audience and the actors in the titular place, as it is the very nucleus of this story. All of the vignettes of this play have a different tonal nature, ranging from romantic to wistful, to humorous to carefree to tragic and the ambiences reflect these emotional tones.
In this first Vignette, Jake and Holly meet on the dock in what Jake intends to be a romantic date. His attempts at wooing Holly take the form of spouting impressive anecdotes about himself ad nauseum. When Jake's ex girlfriend, Anne, unexpectedly shows up on a date of her own, Jake's anecdotes quickly become exposed as falsehoods.
I designed this ambience to have a romantic, almost fantasy-like quality to evoke a sense of warm nostalgia that would compliment the nocturnally idyllic nature of this vignette. I recorded the crickets and waves at a fishing bridge near my house after midnight and the higher pitched insects in my front yard.
Nighttime Ambience - Our Place - Tyler Quinn
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Still Ambience - Our Place - Tyler Quinn
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Fishing Cast - Paper or Plastic - Tyler Quinn
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This piece shows Beth attempting to comfort her father, Jonathan, by taking him to the dock for a morning of fishing, as he suffers with the late-term effects of Alzheimers. Beth desperately uses the familiar environment and activity to jog her Father's memory and despairs after failing to remember the fishing cast technique that Jonathan had taught her. However, shortly after giving up, a breakthrough is made and Jonathan once more demonstrates to his daughter the fishing cast.
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For this vignette, I used an ambience that would fit this more elegiac story. I pulled an ambient recording from my own library of the early morning stillness from the shore near a lakeside cottage in Michigan that my family has vacationed at for decades.
I briefly immerse the audience in Jonathan's Alzheimers with sound. Beth recounts an incident where Jonathan believes he is trying to pick his daughter up from preschool. In doing so, Jonathan subconsciously reaches for his keys. I supported this moment with a brief soundscape of raucous voices of young children, and processed it to sound distant and hazy to reflect Jonathan's fading memories.
The fishing cast was given a special sound effect to accent it as a moment of great significance in the story. The actors flicked a fishing pole prop onstage that would produce a brisk whooshing sound that was audible to the whole audience. When the cast was unsuccessfully, all that would be heard was the flick, but when the cast was successful, I would follow it with the sound of the fishing reel jettisoning the line into the distance, and the plop of the lure hitting the water after a brief pause.
Vacation Ambience - Our Place - Tyler Quinn
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Face Hit - Our Place - Unknown Artist
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This piece of Our Place gives a bit of levity to the heavy vignettes before and after it. It tells a far more comedic story with two parents, Al and Brenda, taking their two kids, Nicky and Sherry on a family vacation to the lake. Although Al is possessed by an unbridled optimism, the rest of his family has mixed feelings about the rustic surroundings, and the ramshackle appearance of the dock and canoe. The hijinks reach a head, literally, when Al asks his daughter to hand him the oar, and she smacks him in the face with it, sending him reeling into the lake, as a result of her overexcitement.
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I designed the ambience of this part to be as animated as possible, and to give it a quality that suggested a muggy, uncomfortable quality. I used the sound of cicadas to give this ambience the hot feeling it needed.
The sound of Al being hit in the face with the oar combines the sounds of multiple wood impacts and the sound of flesh being struck. But the secret ingredient I used to give this moment a bit of extra impact and comedic oomph was the slamming of a particularly resonant toilet seat I recorded in my basement. This sound is somewhat reminiscent of the Hanna-Barbara stock sound effects associated with their cartoons, and also prevents the sound from being too realistic.
The final vignette of our Place tells the heartbreaking story of Stanley and Sidney. Stanley struggles with behavior problems and doesn't see eye to eye with his mother and stepfather, so he runs away to the dock. Unbeknownst to him, his stepsister, Sidney has tracked him to the dock. The young girl enthusiastically badgers him for a winter swim in the lake, leading Stanley to angrily drown out her voice by listening to heavy music on his headphones. He doesn't hear when she slips off the dock and falls to her death, drowning in the icy winter lake.
The script of Our Place calls for the soundscape to be dominated by loud music when Stanley puts his headphones on. The director and I were initially hesitant to include this element because of how cinematic of a technique it seemed, and we weren't sure if would emotionally resonate or would be distracting. To our surprise, the moment worked best when we included this technique. The piece of music I used was programmed in QLAB to play from the top of the vignette as Stanley put his headphones on, and fade out abruptly when he removed them, and was replaced by the nighttime ambience, and could be switched back and forth with the press of a button based off of what the actor did with the headphones.
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