Conor O’Sullivan, Sound Design Lead at Google, talks about his holistic process of creating sounds for the Google Pixel, influenced by UX and haptic design. Arkadiusz Reikowski shares how he created the beautiful music for the horror sequel Layers of Fear 2. Ecophon, a Swedish-based acoustics company, covers the psychological and physiological effect of sound treatment on people. Rachel Sim joins Matt and Gord as a co-host of the Beards, Cats, and Indie Game Audio Podcast. A newly-featured podcast, 99% Invisible, talks about sounds of hospitals and how they effect health care workers and patients. A classic episode of Radiolab: hear about how our brains process sound and learn about the language of music with UC San Diego Professor Diana Deutsch. And on The Six Figure Home Studio Podcast, learn how to approach the business side of sound by honing in on your clients’ needs and focusing on large profitable projects.
Episode outline: ‘In this episode, Aidan Simpson interviews Google Sound Design Lead Conor O’Sullivan about the nuances of crafting product sounds and the choices that shape everything from notification pings to haptic feedback. The conversation also covers the elements that make up Google’s sonic branding, including resolving G chords and piano music. A few highlights:
On the value of sonic subtlety, 9:31
“I do think your goal as a sound designer is to provide feedback that doesn’t jump out too much. It sounds very counterintuitive—you’re designing sound that you don’t want to be heard—but in a lot of cases, it makes sense.”
On working with a multidisciplinary team, 15:57
“We have a team of writers—the UX content team—and they’re absolutely awesome at naming our ringtones. They really capture the feeling of the sound. Our default notification sound is called Popcorn. It’s such an awesome name for that sound. If you’re to imagine what popcorn sounded like musically, you’d pick something like that.”
On using sound to build a brand, 10:22
“I really think about creating sound as creating a soundscape. You want to be able to tell a story from end to end.”
Conor O’Sullivan is a sound designer and composer originally from Ireland, now based in San Francisco, CA. Conor is best known for his work in the emerging field of sound design for consumer products, including interface sounds for the Google Pixel phone.’
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Episode outline: ‘Polish composer Arkadiusz (Arek) Reikowski did an outstanding job with the music for Layers of Fear 2.
I’m always wary of horror scores; they can get repetitive, they’re often noisy and dissonant with sounds designed to make you uncomfortable on listening.
Arek’s score is so…. pretty. It’s heavy, but it’s heavy in a beautiful way. I really was deeply impressed by this music, and I hope you enjoy our conversation.’
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Episode outline: ‘A Sound Effect on People [not related to A Sound Effect] explores how we’re all affected by sound, or to use a technical term, by acoustics. We’ll investigate how poor acoustics can be disruptive, even harmful, while good acoustics can help us learn, work productively, even heal. We’ll discover that our responses to sound are both psychological as well as physiological, and we’ll learn that people with different personalities react in different ways to the same sounds. A Sound Effect on People is produced by Room 7540 in partnership with Saint-Gobain Ecophon, a manufacturer that specialises in developing and producing materials that improve room acoustics.’
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Episode outline: ‘With this episode we welcome our new co-host, Rachel Sim. Rachel will be filling in at times so Gord can take a break. This time around we talk about how Rachel came into the industry, mentorships, community support and as always answer some questions.’
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Episode outline: ‘Sound can have serious impacts on our health and wellbeing. And there’s no better place to think about health than hospitals.
According to Joel Beckerman, sound designer and composer at Man Made Music: “Hospitals are horrible places to get better.” Hospitals can be bad for your health because hospitals sound terrible. But sound designers and health care workers are looking to change that.
This is part two in a two-part series supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation about how sound can be designed to reduce harm and even improve wellbeing.’
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Episode outline: ‘In this hour of Radiolab, we examine the line between language and music.
What is music? Why does it move us? How does the brain process sound, and why are some people better at it than others?
We re-imagine the disastrous debut of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring in 1913 through the lens of modern neurology, and we meet a composer who uses computers to capture the musical DNA of dead composers in order to create new work.’
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Episode outline: ‘Do artists constantly turn you down due to price?
Are you losing projects to other competitors that are simply undercutting your rates?
If so, this episode will walk you through how you can charge 10x more than your competition and STILL win the project.
In this episode you’ll discover:
• What results you could see by switching to a project-based pricing model
• Why business is about helping people, not stealing their money
• How understanding your clients’ needs lets you add more value to the project and charge more than your competitors
• How using this method can remove any competition from the playing field
• Why comparing yourself to other businesses doesn’t work; you need to follow your own path
• Why taking fewer, larger projects is typically more profitable than many small projects
• How Chris killed his dreams of a successful comedy career during this episode
• What changing your services from a commodity to a high-value service can do for your business’
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