Sound Design for Into the Shimmer Heat

Musical Sound Design for Contemporary Opera from taalnaan on Vimeo.

I recently created the Sound Design for the Contemporary Opera Into the Shimmer Heat. For more info on the Opera itself, please check out my previous post 'Taal Naan goes to the Opera'.

For all live sound/sample triggering work, I like using Ableton Live for its flexibility and musicality. For the Opera I created a soundscape in surround that followed the narrative of the Opera, that I could trigger live from the orchestra pit as part of my cues as a musician in the band. The main problem that needed solving was using Ableton for multi-channel surround audio, which it isn't designed natively to do.

For all you Ableton folks out there who are interested, I'm going to post a tutorial video very soon on some of the workarounds I created to solve this problem, using a little bit of Max for Live and some custom send automation. For now, there's a little bit of a highlights clip above.

Taal Naan Goes to the Opera

Steve and I were recently involved in the Contemporary Opera Into the Shimmer Heat, with music by David Pye and Lee Buddle and a libretto by Phil Thompson. It also featured, amongst a whole bevy of delicious artistes, the beautiful Divas (and keen Taal Naan fans) Sara Macliver and Fiona Campbell. You can see and read more about the full production at shimmerheat.com.au, otherwise check out the pics from the rehearsal and production process below.