Your Sound Design Questions Answered

    I haven't been writing much lately as I've been busy with sound design, band, day jobs, etc.  However, I did write a little something during some rehearsal downtime.  It started out as something like "letters to a young sound designer" but I thought it might be interesting to those who don't really know what I mean when I say sound designer.
    A sound designer finds, creates, or otherwise wrangles sound effects and music together for a performance, and makes sure those sounds are played at the right time for the right length of time and at the right volume.  Beyond that, the definition get's sticky.  In a larger theater you might have a music director, a composer, a sound designer, a sound technician, and a sound board operator.  In smaller "store front" theaters, a sound designer might (frequently) have to do all the above jobs.  Sound Design doesn't require a standardized technical knowledge, just enough proficiency to justify getting paid for it.  The vague job requirements and varying job description will lead to a lot of ass busting to learn to do something you have no previous experience doing or (more likely) lead to a lot of embarrassing moments where you have to tell a director that either his expectations are unreasonable or totally reasonable but he hired the wrong guy, so, sorry about that.
    What the job always requires is the ability to think and learn quickly, to be articulate and specific about a very abstract and temporal phenomenon in more or less plain language, and of course, the ability to be creative in a collaborative setting, all of which require trial and error.
    If I could offer some on the job advice to anyone starting out in Sound Design, it would go something like this:

Equipment matters more than you ever want it to.  This pretty much runs against every bit of punk ethos left in me but it's unavoidable.  The purpose of a sound design is to help transport the audience into the world of the play, either the physical (diegetic) world or the emotional/psychological (non-diegetic) world, and to do that, you don't want a shitty lofi system coloring and distorting that sound unless the play is in a shitty lofi world.  Those plays sadly don't exist.  Learn what equipment is meant to do, what it can do, and what it will never do. 

Yes you can do it, but do you have time?  The quicker you learn this lesson, the better.  It's always tempting to say yes to complex and time consuming design choices during the beginning stages of a production when you have weeks to get everything done.  But when you run out of time and fall short of your grand promises, you're going to look like a lazy flake.  On that note, be organized, save everything twice and create more than one draft for each big moment.

You can say no to the director, and you definitely should learn when and how, which is never in front of actors and extremely delicately.  Also, never use the word "no."

Music is universal, musical tastes aren't.  This is without a doubt the most frustrating aspect of the job. 

Listen to hip hop.  Reason 1, hip hop producers largely use the same tools as you.  Reason 2, hip hop producers (and sample based musicians in general) tend to think of what a sound as a mutable material, they listen for what it can be rather than what it is.  Being able to make completely new music out of say, two or three records requires a clever ear and deft technical proficiency, both of which are paramount to sound design.  Reason 3, nothing sounds better after being stuck inside a theater all fucking day.

Be a geek, or at least be comfortable being called a geek.  You're working in theater after all. 
If you think you're too cool for the job, you're right, so don't do it.

Have a personal creative outlet, realize that this job is not that.  Remember that scene in Charlie Brown Christmas where Lucy asks Schroeder to play Jingle Bells over and over again until he frustrated plunks it out note by note?  It's gonna be like that sometimes.

Think about how the sound feels.  If the design is good, no one will be paying attention to it but they'll be subtly affected by it.  One director said it best, "With gunshots, it's not about how real they sound, it's about the emotional impact of the shot."

Unlike other design elements (staging, scenic, lighting), when you make a mistake it will be big and obvious and it will piss people off.  Don't take it personally.

Always shroud your techniques in secrecy.  So you spent a whole week figuring out how to power a remote speaker in the back of the house so that marching band effect can sound like it's slowly coming closer and filling the space?  No one fucking cares.  Not to say it wasn't a good choice, but no one is going to pat you on the back for an effect that could have been adequately accomplished by clever fading and panning.  But when a director wants something to sound like it's underwater and all you do is put a tremolo and reverb on it (which takes 15 seconds) and she looks at you like your a wizard, just let her be mystified.  

Have a huge collection of music, listen to it all the time.  Always good to have jazz, classical, and ambient on hand (anything "moody" or textural and or rhythmic, without words). 

Have the cast send you their favorite party jams and play them during preshow warmups.  You will be their hero forever.

Pitch in to help someone else when you have some downtime.  Again, everyone will love you.

Avoid Tom Waits, run, fly, flee.  Delete it from your hard drive.  When directors mention his name (trust me, this happens with staggering frequency) feign ignorance and change the subject.

At the end of the day, realize that you're working behind the scenes and there's not a lot of credit or awards being handed out.  Sometimes the only way to tell you've done a good job is when no one complains and you get asked to do it again.