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It can sometimes feel impossible to bridge the gulf between knowing what it is you want to do, and having the knowledge and technical skills to actually do it. While some experience comes from learning on the job, there are a wealth of educational resources available to help you turn up to your first audio gig armed with key prior knowledge and skills. Audio is ever-present in the entertainment industry and beyond, from primarily aural media like music, radio and podcasts, to theatre, film, and video games, where sound design performs an essential role in storytelling and worldbuilding. Elsewhere, audio roles can be found in marketing, product design, restoration, and education; there are a wealth of careers out there, constantly innovating in an increasingly digitised world. This selection of freely-accessible chapters from our new Sound Design collection is designed to give you an insight into the audio industry today, and help you discover where you might fit in within it.
In the 20th Century, rapid growth in the entertainment industries created new career paths constructing sound for films, television and video games, while new audio roles developed in wider industries including education and manufacturing. With the dawning of the 21st Century, and the internet along with it, the record industry began to give way to streaming services, and audio equipment and education became more accessible than ever, shifting the industry from being localised in-house to a world of freelancing and home studios. This new period, beginning around the 2010s, marks what April Tucker refers to as the ‘modern audio industry’. In this chapter, Tucker tracks how the industry has evolved, and describes the key skills necessary to break into it today. Supported by interviews from a range of different industry professionals, Tucker gives a strong introduction to the audio industry, providing the perfect starting point for thinking about a career in audio.
Explore further by reading the chapter “Industry Introduction" in Finding Your Career in the Modern Audio Industry" by April Tucker.
There are a number of different audio roles in the film and TV industry: you could be a composer, a sound designer, a Foley artist, or a re-recording mixer, to name a few. Regardless of your title, working on sound for screen requires a constant awareness of how sound produces meaning for an audience, whether that’s communicating a key piece of narrative information through an overheard phone conversation or a car pulling out of the driveway, or eliciting a specific emotional response through an eerie underlying drone or a dramatic swell in the score. In this chapter from Sound for Moving Pictures, Neil Hillman discusses the ‘Four Sound Areas’: his framework for the components that make up a film soundtrack, inspired by his work as a re-recording mixer. Breaking the soundtrack down into what he terms the Narrative, Abstract, Temporal and Spatial, Hillman’s framework is designed to help sound designers achieve maximum emotional impact through their work, and likewise to help audiences interrogate the complex interplay of different sound types at work within a successful film soundtrack.
Explore further by reading the chapter “The Four Sound Areas” in Sound for Moving Pictures: The Four Sound Areas by Neil Hillman
In this chapter from Game Audio Fundamentals Keith Zizza gives an accessible but comprehensive tour of the video game audio world. Zizza takes you through the key departments in a games company, noting how each might interact with the audio department, and then dives deeper into specific roles in game audio, from Audio Directors to Dialogue Coordinators. The chapter models the kind of schedule you might have when working for a game studio, beginning with communicating with the design team to plan the soundscape and building your audio asset list, through to crunch time. Zizza gives an enthusiastic first-hand perspective of life working in game audio, and a clear outline of the different roles available in this part of the industry.
Explore further by reading the chapter “Production and Development” from Game Audio Fundamentals: An Introduction to the Theory, Planning and Practice of Soundscape Creation for Games by Keith Zizza.
In Audio Mastering, JP Braddock explains the vital role played by the mastering process in taking up the reins from the artistic stage of sound creation and perfecting it for the final cut. As the consumer, Braddock encourages you to listen critically in order to begin developing a mastering ear, and introduces some key areas in audio mastering, including dealing with loudness and quality loss.
In recent years, there has been a sharp increase in freelance work in the audio world, meaning it is now often necessary for professionals to set up their own home studios. This chapter on Audio Hardware from Andrew Maz’s Music Technology Essentials gives a perfect overview of some of the hardware you are likely to encounter in the industry, and how to ensure you are getting yourself the right kit, whether you’re just starting out or preparing your own studio.
Explore further by reading the chapters "Audio Hardware" from Music Technology Essentials: A Home Studio Guide by Andrew Maz, and "Enabling Analysis" from Audio Mastering: Separating the Science from Fiction by JP Braddock.
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