During the final mix for Disney’s Treasure Buddies, director Robert Vince asked sound designers Pat Haskill and Jean-Edouard Miclot to morph the voice of a puppy named Mudbud (voiced by Ty Panitz) from a human voice to the howl of a real puppy.  After a frantic and ultimately unsuccessful search of their sound libraries for a domestic puppy howl, the sound designers finally located a recording of a wolf pup that sounded close to Mudbud’s speaking voice, and they cross-faded from the actor to the wolf howl.  Unfortunately, the result still sounded like two independent layers. That’s when Jean-Edouard had the idea to load the two samples into Kyma’s Time Alignment Utility (TAU) where he could experiment with morphing using a tablet until he got the smooth transition he wanted. Re-recording mixers Gord Hillier and Samuel Lehmer mixed the sound in and, according to Jean-Edouard, “everybody in the studio loved how natural the transition from human to animal was made.” You can hear the morph in the scene starting about 36″ into the following clip:
Month: January 2012
Kyma International Sound Symposium 2012
The Kyma International Sound Symposium is  four inspiring days and nights filled with sound design, ideas, discussions, and music, and it offers a wide range of opportunities to increase your Kyma mastery: from introductory master classes, to hands-on question-and-answer sessions; from thought-provoking presentations, to inspiring concerts and after-hours discussions with new-found friends and colleagues.
This year’s symposium KISS2012 will be on banks of the mighty Mississippi River, September 13-16, organized by St. Cloud State University School of the Arts and Symbolic Sound. The KISS2012 theme, reel time || real time, puts the spotlight on reel time (sound for picture), real time (live performance), and all timescales between, including sound design for games, live cinema, live improvisation ensembles, live performances from a score, sound design for live theatre, live signal generation for speech and hearing research, interactive data sonification, interactive sound art, and more!
A force of pure imagination
Electronica: Zlatko Tanodi, the new album of Croatian composer Zlatko Tanodi‘s highly imaginative electo-acoustic music has just been released under the Cantus label. Tanodi is a true musical eclectic; as adept at writing orchestral and chamber music as jazz and pop arrangements and scoring films, he tours internationally, performing keyboards with his jazz ensemble Opus X and also serves as the Head of the Department of Composition and Theory at the Zagreb Academy of Music. All of these experiences are evident in the music on this disc which slips easily from the classical avant-garde to a cinematic dramaturgy worthy of a Hollywood space fantasy and even includes brief snatches of DnB. Throughout, Tanodi has woven a surprising and delightful thread of pure sound design and a fascination with the human voice (both speaking and singing). Even more impressive than Tanodi’s masterful command of an astonishing variety of musical styles, though, is the force of his unspoiled, almost child-like imagination. Sounds transform themselves in a seemingly inevitable way from operatic diva to demonic baby; string quartets, frogs, and abstract sine wave modulations receive equal amounts of loving attention to detail and craftsmanship.
For a little foretaste of the sonic delights you’ll enjoy in the full album, check out Tanodi’s introduction to his contributions to the Recombinant Art compilation, produced by Edmund Eagan. Electronica is a must-hear for anyone who enjoys the pure physical pleasure of being immersed in sound and music and is eager to be transported to another world, at least for the duration of this CD. You can order the full album from the Cantus web site (100 HRK is approximately USD17).