Micro-Narratives in Sound Design: Context, Character, and Caricature in Waveform Manipulation

This paper reviews sound design techniques used in professional audio for music and theater and proposes a conceptual approach to the construction of audio based in narrative structure. The sound designer does not attempt to replicate "real" sounds; the task is rather to create the impression of a real sound in a listener's mind. In this attempt to create a sound in the listener's mind, the sound designer is aided by user expectations based upon cultural experience as well as physical experience. Practical sound manipulation techniques are discussed in view of their usefulness in matching a listener's mental model of a sound. Narrative aspects of audio design in computational environments are also delineated. Some keywords involved in this paper are sound design, auditory display, multimodal interaction, interface design, narrative, sonic narrative, micro-narrative, and audio.