Matt Ozer

Inspired by composer David Tudor’s Rainforest sound installation, I attached a contact microphone to the side of a fish bowl to capture the resonating sounds of a small marble spinning. I then processed this signal using a reverb, grain delay, and a resonator plugin. For interactivity, I mapped select parameters on the plugins using Osculator and TouchOSC applications. I then created a minimalist composition using these recordings and additional synthesized sounds. 

About a year ago, I worked on a sound design for Anton Chekhov’s play; The Seagull (premiered 1896). This is a seminal work in Russian theatre, and deals with themes of jealousy, curiosity, love and sickness. The Seagull is a character driven story. Instead of starting with an action scene, the location, time and characters are introduced at the beginning of the story in detail. The thoughts and the feelings of these characters drive the plot. What people think about other people drives the story line.

In my sound design, rather than creating a motif for each of the four main characters, I chose to keep one main motif that transforms into other shapes and timbres between the acts in order to create continuity for the entire play.

In the player above, there are four cues.

1)      0”- 1’15” In order to set the scene for Act I, this cue contains elements of river, construction, horses and seagull sounds. I focused on dark timbres in order to achieve a sense of existential crisis.

2)      1’18” - 2’33” This cue prepares the audience to transition to Act 2 where new characters are introduced. I combined sounds of the river and people talking in the background with intense low frequency tones in order to set the mood for jealousy and introduce the love triangle.

3)      2’36” - 4’11” Act III starts in the kitchen with people eating. In this act, the story is full of changes. I focused on making this cue faster in order to explain the conflicting quick decisions.

 4)      4’14” - 5’41” – In this final cue, I mash up elements of the previous cues and trigger them in reverse in order to explain the passing of years before Act 4 begins.  

These cues were created with a sense of heightened naturalism and surrealism in mind, and were designed to dive right into the plot – overlapping the three dimensions of subjective reality: Symbolism, Imagination and Reality. I believe this approach helped to create a third dimension for the entire play.

Technically, most of my material came from synthesis and various libraries. I initially envisioned this being projected over a basic two-channel system, in order to remain accessible for lower-budget theatres, but a four-channel (quad) system would also be effective, with the rears delayed slightly to accentuate the reverb and surreal effects.

I recently recorded Everything You Need is Here Right Now in Your Sphere of Reality by The ElectroSonic Chamber, a four-piece band conceived and born in the San Francisco Bay Area. The track above is a selection of this pre-album song.

For more information about The ElectroSonic Chamber visit: facebook.com/theelectrosonicchamber

Here is my most recent block diagram of a studio setup that has 32 channel inputs from the live room. The machine room has an Apple Mac Pro which hosts a Pro Tools HD system, Universal Audio Card and SSL Duende. The control room consists of a digital mixer and three different monitoring sources.

The graph above represents a recent test on a large diaphragm tube condenser microphone that I built a few months ago. The result was taken from the comparison of a calibration microphone to the condenser microphone by measuring the frequency response at a distance of 1 foot from a Yamaha HS80M speaker. 

Mariachi Mi Terra Linda

1.Vals De Alejandra 3min 53sec

2. Sabor A Mi 4min 6sec

3. El Fuereno 3min

To record a Mariachi Band, I chose to use two Neumann U 87 large diaphragm condenser microphones in a figure 8 polar pattern and construct a Blumlein 360 technique in the middle of the live room. My goal was to make the band play together and at the same time capture a sense of space. The trumpets and the vocals were placed on opposite ends of the Blumlein. The guitar and the violin players were also on opposite sides.  In order to have the option of extra bass in the mix, I miked the Guitarron player with a Royer R122 vacuum tube ribbon microphone. This way I will have the maximum side rejection for the bass signal which is going to be the mono component in the mix. On the right hand side, I placed the string instruments, the Mariachi guitar and the high guitar, miking them with a Royer R121 ribbon microphone that works well with these types of instruments.  Royer 121 is a must for guitars in order to be able to bring them up in the mix. The violins were closed miked with Neumann KM 184 small diaphragm condensers to get the extra bow sound. In case these picked up really bright sounds, I also miked them together with a Beyer dynamic M160 double ribbon microphone that is also bi-directional to allow for the most amount of side rejection. Since Trumpets are the loudest instruments, I chose not to close mike them. Finally, one of the Trumpet players was also the main vocalist. I placed a Bock U 195 large diaphragm condenser microphone for him to perform his vocals. Additionally, I used two Crown PZM 30D placed left and right in the live room to capture the room’s acoustics.

Schwarzen Raum (Original Composition)

5m15sec

A psychologically dark musical composition written for the closing scene of 2001:A Space Odyssey. This original score combines trumpets, horns, piano, chimes, string ensemble and chorus. The quiet passages include sounds that I created from a handmade instrument made of kitchen knives, which harmonizes with additional feedback effects.