I really enjoyed our session on spatial sound, as it was an interest of mine prior to starting the course and something I would like to explore in much further depth in the future – both through spatialising sound in theatre spaces, and designing site-specific spatial sound installations.

In theatre contexts, which I often work in, having an array of speakers means that you are essentially working spatially, and having speakers placed in certain places could make sounds appear as though they are coming from somewhere else in the space. In Qlab, when working with an array of speakers you will typically use the audio patching bay to plot each audio cue to the speakers which you want it to output to. You can also then use fade cues to move the sound to different speakers and around the 3D theatre space.

Working with spatial sound in a DAW is quite similar, involving patching the outputs of audio channels to the numbered input which corresponds to the output of the desired speaker for that particular channel.

Spatial sound for headphones can be achieved by plugins like the Dear Reality plugins which they made freely available in April 2025. This plugin moves a stereo input around a virtual 3D space, manipulating the perceived distance from the listener in relation to the stereo output.

Beyond these technical processes, spatial sound can illuminate a sound design and bring it to life. By bringing it into the ‘real world’ the 3D space and beyond the ‘flat’ 2-dimensional world, the design is enhanced and becomes something much more animate and exciting.

We don’t necessarily need to always work spatially, however, and I think this is a trap that a lot of designers fall into – wanting to use ambisonic and binaural sound as an easy way to make their designs more interesting without thinking critically about whether it is really necessary to achieve the aims of the design, and whether there are other ways to add interest to their design.

In the world of spatial sound installations, I really enjoyed learning about Alice Boyd’s process of creating ‘The Sounds of King’s Cross’ in April 2025.

She really eloquently described her process of making a spatial sound installation, and described both the technical processes that went into it as well as the creative parts of gathering the field recordings – and the considerations that went into whether to capture the recordings with an ambisonic microphone or not, and how a sound with multiple channels would work on a d&b system.

She describes the final product having a feeling of “slightly heightened reality, where one minute you can be right next to a train and hear it screech past, then the sound of a bike or a pedestrian – and you move through these spaces almost like going through a dream.

This was the effect I wanted to create with my piece for headphones, a heightened reality where you experience uncanny sounds in contexts that feel dreamlike and surreal.
You can have a listen to an excerpt of how I used spatial sound in my piece here.

Console automation came into use to automate changes to faders on mixing consoles. Since then, software like Ableton Live has integrated automation and controllers to keep changes in parameters that are performed during recording.

Controllerism allows a sound artist to remotely change a sound either during live performance or during the process of pre-production sound design.

Midi and OSC are key components of controllerism, and are what devices like a Midi keyboard or software like TouchOSC use to remotely control parameters during performance.

In artistic practice, controllerism is an interesting way to perform live. It could be used to make changes during live performance, to respond live to improvised dance/movement, or to play instruments within a DAW for sound design/composition.

Sound artist Esther Kehinde-Ajayi takes into consideration what it means to use or own a system. Controller mapping is a system, so what does it mean for us to use this system? It is interesting to consider as we exist with oppressive systems, and the liberatory potential for those of us who exist outside of normative forms within these systems to own our own systems is interesting to think about.

In Sonic Cyberfeminisms, the article ‘Don’t Touch My MIDI Cables’ addresses the “embodied, sensorial and live technological–human relationship that is recursively iterated through sonic and visual outputs based on what we argue are kinship relations between and through bodies and technology”

Networks of controllers and mapping technologies have an interesting image and connotation for a glitch feminist. To own a system, made up potentially of midi cables, or OSC, potentially a laptop or a DJ controller has not long been a space that those who were not cis white men could occupy. This speaks to a male-dominance within audio technology and related fields. In this context, ‘Don’t Touch My MIDI Cables’ becomes a refrain against mansplaining and misogyny in live audio spaces.

Controllerism can be understood as a system of ‘networked interdependencies’ (Kafer, 2019, p. 6) and taken beyond the literal into a system by which we understood how our bodies are also all part of systems, and what that means for us to consider as sound artists when we work with consoles and controllers.

Our session with Salomé involved first thinking about our world as having a sonic design, and then looking at how we can think about the sound environments we design as spaces themselves.

Elison and I went to the Imperial War Museum in Elephant and Castle to record our sonic environment. We recorded lots of material and then came back and composed them into a 3 minute audio of the room.

As I was walking around the museum I was thinking about the sound these objects once contained: the death and destruction they once incurred. And, the difference between the violence then and the silence now – how have we removed the sound so completely from these objects which are so far from silent?
Recording a silent room here, then, feels impossible. Not only because of the human activity, the footsteps and chatter, but because those sounds are still happening, and can’t be removed by freezing an object in time in a colonial museum – where we see but don’t hear these weapons of destruction.

Composing a soundscape of a room containing only the sound of people in the museum, the echoes through its huge atrium, footsteps and voices became a prompt to think about how this space wasn’t really silent. Through listening to that silence and listening to that particular space, we discover echoes of things that aren’t included – and are therefore present by omission within a critical decolonial listening practice.

Hearing footsteps and voices echo around the cavernous space of a building likely built on colonialism prompted me consider what went into building a space like this. Through listening, we get to grips with the kind of space we are in and what it means to be there and to benefit from it.

Have a listen to an extract of the composed recording here:

Granular Synthesis involves splitting audio into small slices or ‘grains’ of sound, and resynthesizing them to create a new sound. It is great for achieving glitchy, detailed, textured and abstracted sounds.

“Grains can be derived from an audio sample, or extracted in real time from a track in your DAW or an incoming live audio signal. As such, granular tools often fall into two broad categories: synths, which are playable via MIDI, and processors that are essentially effects for your DAW, guitar pedalboard or Eurorack case.” (Sound on Sound)

“At high Densities dozens or hundreds of copies begin to overlap and the sound becomes smooth, blurred, and smeared. This, for many, is pretty much the main draw of granular synthesis: a source of rich, complex, somehow timeless textures that are well suited to textural backdrops, atmospheres and slow, playable pads.” (Sound on Sound)

In the piece, ‘Riverrun’, Barry Truax uses a granular synth to create an interesting, fluid and evolving piece of ambient music. I really like this piece, and the way it creates a sense of seeming randomness while evolving compellingly over its duration. I really like how the sounds morph and change, creating different experiences for the listener.

I love how it makes reference to the ever-changing sounds of rivers, simulating this through granular sound. This is something Annea Lockwood was interested in with her river recordings, and it’s interesting to see a parallel in something much more electronic. In these early days, Barry had to make his own software (called the GSX) – manually inputting numbered data into the instrument to change the frequency and playback speed. It created loads of chunks of sound (grains) usually from sine waves, combining them together to create very rich sounds.

I love this explanation of granular synthesis, with an interview from Barry Truax himself.

Another helpful resource is the granular synthesis article on Sound on Sound, found here: https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/granular-synthesis-practical-introduction

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How could I use this myself?

I really love the soft, dreamy and ethereal sounds that granular synthesis is able to create and would love to use it more in my folk music practice. It would be good for creating any sort of texture which is slightly otherworldy, for example in an otherworldly sound design for a theatre or radio show. In my ambient music practice, too, I am inspired by Barry Truax’s work and would love to creating experimental and evolving sounds which are floaty and almost cloud-like.

On a show I worked on as sound designer in 2024, I Joan by Charlie Josephine (with a full student cast restaging), I sampled ‘365’ by Charli XCX, as well as other camp/fun queer pop songs for transition music and underscore. You can have a listen to an excerpt of how I did this above.

As a sound designer, I think that sampling pre-existing or popular music can be really useful. It can create a sense of recognisability to the audience to use a piece of music which they might have already heard elsewhere.

Often, a director or collaborator will have specific song choices in mind. As a sound designer, sometimes part of how you approach a script and collaboration with a director is about how you will work with this pre-existing material. For example, sampling parts of a pre-existing song but redesigning it or remixing it in a creative way is a creative sound design choice that can enhance your designs.

Also, you can stretch a sample a long way – with audio effects, pitch shifting, slicing, looping and filtering.

A lot of this possibility is contained within Ableton’s Simpler, a very powerful sound design tool.

Similarly, Logic’s Sample Alchemy can stretch a sound very far, and is powerful for creating a wide range of sounds.

Glitch is remix

“Queer people, people of color, and female-identifying people have an enduring and historical relationship to the notion of “remix.” To remix is to rearrange, to add to, an original recording. The spirit of remixing is about finding ways to innovate with what’s been given, creating something new from something already there.” _ Glitch Feminism_ Legacy Russell_

Through the chapter of Legacy Russell’s book ‘Glitch Feminism’ called ‘Glitch is Remix’, we can understand the remix as an emancipatory tool. “If we see culture, society, and, by extension, gender as material to remix, we can acknowledge these things as “original recordings” that were not created to liberate us. Still, they are materials that can be reclaimed, rearranged, repurposed, and rebirthed toward an emancipatory enterprise,
creating new “records” through radical action. Remixing is an act of self- determination; it is a technology of survival.”

Russell is talking about a political remixing, but this is something I find showing up in my sound practice as a trans woman, as a glitch feminist. I want to take these ideas and apply them to my sonic practice, remixing the world into new emancipatory possibilities.

Subtractive synthesis.

A piece of music made using subtractive synthesis techniques!

Subtractive synthesis involves taking away frequencies from a ‘complex’ wave (like a saw or square wave) through filtering to create our musical sound.

The piece which you can have a listen to above was made on a Korg Minologue, using the Minologue’s sequencer with a patch that I designed, as well as modulating aspects of the sound throughout like pitch and noise.

FM Synthesis

FM (frequency modulation) synthesis is a process in which a signal (called a carrier) is affected by several modulators. Unlike subtractive synthesis, in FM synthesis we typically start with a ‘simple’ waveform (sine wave) and shape it with various modulators.

I like how with this piece/remix I was able to use sine waves to create sounds that were more noisy and abrasive. This really did show me the power of FM synthesis, starting form a simple waveform which can be turned into so many complex and interesting sounds which are very different to the original sine wave.

Additive Synthesis

A piece of music made using additive synthesis techniques!

Additive synthesis is a process more similar to FM synthesis, but it involves adding sine waves together at different frequencies to create harmonically rich sounds.

I made this piece using the ARP Odyssey as a starting point, as well as using the Korg Minilogue for the melody and the intro you hear at the start.

I made a patch which sounded like birdsong with the Odyssey. I messed around with this patch by turning knobs almost at random to control the modulation, frequency width etc.

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Making these three sound sketches, which sound so different from one another even though they all start from an oscillator, showed me how powerful all these different forms of synthesis can be.