Over the years I have been found guilty of what some might consider very strange behaviour. Like the time my wife called up the stairs . . . 
"Whatever are you doing in the toilet dear, you've been in there for hours, why do you keep flushing it?" 
I shouted back . . .  "I'm alright. I'm just working on the Panto soundtrack; I need to flush a small child down the loo!".

 

Then there was the time not so long ago, when the script simply read "sound of temporary scaffolding platform collapsing onto cub scouts with marching band playing Monty Python theme tune in a heavy thunderstorm". As I am sure you will agree, this is not a sound that you come across everyday of the week! Eventually, after much thought, I was to be found in the garden of the Black Horse pub in Standlake, busy recording the sound of hollow, 2-inch diameter metal marquee poles being dropped onto the concrete�the perfect sound for the temporary stage collapsing in a heap. There I was, armed to the teeth with all of my recording equipment, microphone stretched out in one hand (and a pint in the other, of course), asking Adam the Landlord, who was very busy working with his son trying to take down the marquee at the end of the summer season, if he would please drop the marquee poles once again . . . and again . . . and again, because I needed a much longer recording of this most unusual and very hard-to-come-by sound! Finally, back in the studio I added the marching Monty Python band and then the kids shouting. I mixed in a bit of thunder, some dogs barking, and ambulance sirens wailing, and eventually I had the finished soundtrack for the grand finale of The Standlake Players' performance of 'Gosforth's Fete'.

 

Sound as an art form within a theatre environment can be used in various ways. It can guide the telling and pace of a story; it can create an illusion of danger where there is none; it can add humour and pathos, light and shade, beginning and end, and it can even create a vital subconscious emotional connection to the audience, amongst many other possibilities.

 

I believe that sound production, or sound engineering, could perhaps be best referred to as an "invisible art". Invisible, because when it is well conceived, well rehearsed and seamlessly delivered, the members of the audience should become so engaged with the overall production, that they are not consciously aware of my work. Ask yourself how often you are actually consciously aware of the soundtrack running in the background of a film. The answer is probably "rarely", because although it is there running in the background for most of the time, if correctly delivered it usually remains invisible on any conscious level. But try muting the sound on your TV and notice how flat and dull just the mere acting alone becomes, turn the sound back on and hey presto, the whole thing comes back to life!

 

In practical terms sound production at its most basic level is the art, technique, and technical practice of assembling various unconnected sounds into a coherent whole. I produce my work via the process of firstly reading the script, then watching the rehearsals, including holding discussions with the director and individual cast members, and then I'm off to a dark room to start "imagining" the various sounds, or musical elements that might best suit the piece. This is followed by the extremely lengthy process of sourcing all of the appropriate individual noises and separate musical elements, prior to finally starting to assemble the whole package in a multi-track recording studio environment. As was the case in the Gosforth's Fete production, I often have to overlay sound upon sound, track upon track, to create the individual sections required; sometimes up to eight, or even ten tracks will overlay each other.