Design Thinking in Music for Media III
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Design Thinking in Music for Media III

By June 7, 2021 June 13th, 2021 No Comments

So originally I was going to write about how Design Thinking has – directly or indirectly – influenced some of the great art and classics we love. Music for film, video games, theatre and audio dramas, have a ton of examples of how, even if they do not actively implement Design Thinking, some of its steps were implemented.

But then I thought… wouldn’t it be better to showcase the concepts with projects I have been involved in? So I started to look back at those projects and at how, in one way or another, Design Thinking has slowly been growing in my method of finding the best solutions for projects.

Slowly I and the IB Aural team refined our process, and now we just simply use it for everything! I’ll start by talking about a horror audio drama called It’s Here and then to a theatre play, then turned to audio drama, called The Singularity. Both projects were very important in terms of building the method we now use.

First off, let’s remember the steps to carry out Design Thinking

Chart by Tofas Academy 

It's Here

Audio Drama - Design Thinking

We will begin by talking about It’s Here, a horror audio drama by writer and creator Adrian Weston of Pandora Fables. This was a very special project, because I personally love horror media. And Adrian did a wonderful job at writing the script. I don’t want to spoil a lot of it, but let’s say that sound , specifically radio static, is key to the story.

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1. Emphatize

At first we only knew Adrian wanted sound design. So we read the script and listened to the dialogues – which had some initial ideas for sound effects – and we listened to the rest of the audio drama the author had already recorded. Besides a couple of emails, there was not a lot of communication with the author at this step, as he gave us a lot of freedom to create. At this stage we also noted the script didn’t include music, which we thought could elevate the audio drama.
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2. Define

Back then we didn’t formally write creative proposals, but we shared a cue list with Adrian and exposed how we thought music would be a great addition. For music, we came up with this fun idea that bowing guitar strings gave the music a “scratchiness” that went very well with the concept of radio static, which was very important to the story (you can hear that very clearly in the main theme). He gave us green light with both cues and music and started to generate ideas.
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3. Ideate

Edgar and I (audio engineer and sound designer at IB Aural) started brainstorming and came up with very good ideas exclusively for episode one. We composed the main theme and filled the chapter with sound. We exported the audio and went to show the prototype to Adrian. We were very efficient because I fully trust Edgar as sound designer, and he trusts me as a composer. Specialization is a great thing about working in teams!
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4. Prototype

We showed Adrian the music and sound design for the first chapter. Fortunately he loved them. So we just went back to ideate, and worked on the rest of the chapters. That way we could show the complete run to Adrian. This could be done, because the audio drama is limited to seven episodes, and is not a recurring show. All projects will work differently and one must be able to adjust. Because he loved our ideas, instead of prototyping again, we just finished all the episodes with music and sound design, without much input from Adrian. Then we went directly to test everything together.
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5. Test

Because Adrian loved our first prototype of episode one, we continued with a similar path in terms of tone, sound effects and music. With some general corrections, like changing some sound effects, we went for a little while back to ideating, and delivered the episodes.

Overall it was a very fluid project because the creator gave us complete freedom to do our work, so the process was quite streamlined, even if not consciously using Design Thinking. But no two projects are the same...

The Singularity

Audio Drama - Design Thinking

This is one of the most interesting projects I’ve collaborated in, since some of the music was written even before the script was thought of. This was because it all began as a music collaboration between me and musician/writer Rachel Lucille Woodworth, which then became a script by her, and finally into a fully fledged play that was performed at the Scranton Fringe Festival 2019. Quite a run.

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1. Emphatize

We had quite a lot of music writing sessions and talked about the play, all while experimenting with the type of music we wanted. One hears about composers being invited quite early on, but this was very unique. The story was written as we explored chord progressions, lyrics, riffs and sounds, so in a way we were merging the first three steps, empathizing, defining and ideating.
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2. Define

Rachel was very specific about what she wanted as we co-wrote the music, which allowed the process of ideation and prototyping quite easy. We decided on a number of tracks, some key parts where the script needed sound design for the live performance and we went on to write and produce the music.
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3. Ideate

This consisted of recording demos and brainstorming ideas for the songs. We used sampled instruments which would later be recorded in an actual studio. As we worked together in all the music, feedback was not done in sessions, but continuously while writing the music.
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4. Prototype

We recorded live instruments like drums, guitar, bass and voice, and did sound design on the parts previously planned. Now it came to the true test, which were live rehearsals of the play, when all came together.
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5. Test

So after months of work, it came the time to rehearse everything together: lights, props, actors and, of course, music and sound design. And it was crazy! When you start theatre rehearsals everything moves so quick. This is when craft comes useful, because you have to be able to make changes fast. I remember editing and exporting cues from my laptop to the mixing engineer at the play, as times, sounds and others were adjusted to the space. So basically a quick run of all the whole Design Thinking process, in the space of a rehearsal. This is when craft comes in useful.

Fortunately, everything went quite nicely on the premiere day, our implementation of all the music and sound we had been working on. We were ready to see where the play took us too. And that’s when COVID happened and we could not present our work anymore. But Rachel had this amazing idea to turn it into an audio drama! So back to step one of Design Thinking...

As you can see, streaming your process into these steps can be very useful. After plenty of experience working in all sorts of media forms, now we have processes implemented, like writing creative proposals, calendars and other geeky stuff, to make Design Thinking more prominent and as streamlined as possible.

Of course at the beginning we didn’t do it this way, but being able to organize this creative process into steps has made a huge difference, which has led us to carry out bigger and bigger projects. So don’t be afraid of trying new things, as you structure your creative process.

If anything, Design Thinking helps get those creative juices flowing, within a method. 

FIRST PART

Learn the basics of Design Thinking

Read now
SECOND PART

How, directly or indirectly, Design Thinking has led to very unique interesting results in the world of film and video games.

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