Picture of Scott surrounded by curious and interested students at the Sound Design Clinic.
On the evening of March 28th, 2019, the AES Chapter at The Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences held an after hours event on the topic of Sound Design in our Live Sound Venue. The event began at 8 PM and was hosted by CRAS Instructor and one of many student favorites, Scott Murray. Scott is highly skilled with analog synthesizers and sound design techniques, as he teaches curriculum for both, and showed the students how to get creative with a minimal amount of inexpensive gear.
The event began with Scott bringing the audience out of their seats and to his workstation at the front of the room, which included hardware such as a live mixer which Scott then ran into things such as a distortion pedal, vintage frequency analyzer, tremolo pedal, ring modulator, and 2 different delay and reverb pedals. Also at his workstation, Scott had an assortment of unassuming items that he used as "instruments" and worked his way through the event with them to create textural sound effects.
Scott began the event by using his voice ran through a Shure SM58 and his various assortment of gear to create "extraterrestrial-esque" sounds before moving on to other items such as a piezo mic on his live mixer, a homemade metal box filled with pebbles with a 1/4" TRS input complete with two metal springs on top, and also the simple idea of his fingertip on a 1/4" TRS cable tip. However, the more interesting 'instrument' Scott Murray had to demo to the students was his avant-garde use of controlled feedback loops. Several students had heard of Scott's likeness to feedback loops, and he was excited to explain how a controlled rise in levels with a feedback loop can then be processed to create interesting textural sound effects.
Scott spent about 15 minutes with each different instrument he brought and then concluded with questions from the student audience. He explained that sound design is an everyday hobby, and he did a wonderful job inspiring the students to become even more interested in sound design.
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