“UP” Sound for Film Profile from Michael Coleman on Vimeo.

Miguel Isaza has created a must-read new blog for anyone interested in sound design, and much to our delight has put it on noisepages. He’s being incredibly prolific with posts, covering creative projects to get your ideas flowing, terrific overviews of leading people in the field with links to interviews and resources for learning about their work, and tons of links for learning your craft technologically and artistically.

http://designingsound.noisepages.com/

Naturally, Pixar figures prominently, with some of the best sound design on the silver screen in recent years. I’m looking forward to finally seeing UP; Michael Coleman offers the video above. See Miguel’s site for more links and interviews and an overview of the all-star team that did sound for Pixar’s latest.

Thanks for this great resource, Miguel; I’ll certainly be reading daily.

We’ve heard lots of ideas for alternative musical distribution in the digital age, but this has to be a less popular idea:

How about “releasing” your album as a blank, recordable CD-R?

If you think about it, it’s the natural evolution of CDs. After all, in the age of widespread digital download stores and file sharing, if you bother to buy a physical CD, aren’t you really buying it just for that jewel box and liner notes and packaging, for that satisfying snap as the disc hits the plastic spindle? Aren’t you just doing it to flirt with the CD shop girl … erm, or to look into the morose, cynical eyes of that guy who knows way more than you do?

In this case, though, the blank CD has a simple function: it’s the only way to get around legal troubles with record label EMI.

New Danger Mouse CD Released As A Blank CD-R Due To Legal Fight With EMI [techdirt, via atariboy on Twitter]

Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse unveil new album – a blank CD-R! [guardian.co.uk]

Danger Mouse has flirted with legal troubles before, with the landmark Jay-Z – Beatles Black Album / White Album mash-up, and has flirted with success as Gnarls Barkley with Cee-Lo Green. The new album is a departure, an audiovisual experience that adds photography by David Lynch inspired by the music. Yes, that’s the David Lynch, he of Twin Peaks and Blue Velvet and Eraserhead.  Danger Mouse works with Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse and a host of guest vocalists.

Update: Whoops. Danger Mouse just isn’t as ground-breaking as The Residents, who tried Internet distribution with accompanying blank CDRs way back in 2006 on “The River of Crime! Episodes 1-5.” (And I imagine there may be other cases of this, too.) Of course, The Residents were just being creative – they didn’t have an unspecified legal battle with EMI. From Discogs:

This 2-CDR set was released as blank media, to be burned as eventual hard copies and packaging for the River Of Crime tracks, that were distributed via the internet, in a subscription series, each “CrimeCast” episode being released every two weeks, over a 10-week period. These subscription downloads also included exclusive material, including scripts, icons and CRT wallpaper, as well as unrelated bonus tracks. The track marked * was not released on the “standard” release (CDL38).

Thanks to B.C. Thunderthud for the tip (and I see a Boing Boing reader caught the same thing).

The news came over our Twitter feed via Jaymis, which also prompted a discussion of how to get and decompress the tracks.

Composer, musician, and sound designer W. Brent Latta knows something about sound design, currently working professionally on sound for games with Amaze Entertainment. As an enthusiast of what it takes to craft sound, he’s put together a list for us of where to go to learn more and hone your abilities, from fundamentals to the specifics required by film/video and games. -Ed.

Sound design is a fundamental aspect of nearly every form of digital media, from music production to games to commercial radio. Sometimes seen as a ‘dark art’, sound design can also be viewed as difficult and mysterious, often deterring would-be creators. Here are 15 sound design resources to help rookies and veterans alike.

Fundamentals

The fundamentals of sound design rest firmly on the core fundamentals of audio engineering. Without a working knowledge of basic audio engineering, your road to becoming a sound designer could be a long one. Here are some resources to help get you off on the right foot.

1. AudioTuts.com is a great place to start learning basic and advanced techniques for audio production. Even if you have no interest in producing music, taking the time to work through both sound design and music production tutorials will quickly give you practical, hands-on experience with the techniques you’ll need to get your sound design career moving.

2. Sound On Sound has a voluminous archive of audio, music and production tutorials. These range from the most fundamental techniques of sound synthesis, all the way up to specific techniques using outboard effects processors.

3. Digital Pro Sound has a nice archive of tutorials and articles covering a range of applications, plug-ins, and general techniques.

From musician Jeremy Linzee and Ethan Vogt comes this lovely fusion of re-cut educational film with music. Ethan and Jeremy work together live, with Ethan recutting the video on the fly. It’s a really terrific way for this filmmaker and musician to work together. Normally we run this sort of thing over on Create Digital Motion, but since it’s by definition a 50/50 collaboration, I thought I’d spread the love and kick off the weekend with a moody reinterpretation of human biology. (Warning: mild, biology-class nudity appears briefly.)

Hopefully we’ll have Jeremy and Ethan together for one of our future events here in New York soon.