How can you use audio production and mixing to tell a story?

Why would I want to contribute to a AI generated story that tries to generalise what I have learned through hard work, mistakes, and knowledge throughout more than 27 years of labour? Idiotic. If you want my help, then contact me directly. There is no easy fix!

Watch a video without any audio what so ever and see what it does to you. Do that for an extended period of time. Then explain to me…audio is not critically important with the use of video or any visual to express any kind of emotion.

Sound design creates place. Use sound effects to transport your audience to a different time and place. Music evokes emotion. Choose music that matches the tone and mood of your story. Narration and dialogue reveal character and advance the plot. Write clear and concise dialogue. Use narration to provide context and insight.

In my 16+ year career in radio, utilizing natural sound in my packages was a technique to help transport my listeners into the story. Ambient sound rings reality into a story, weaving truth behind the spoken word and helping listeners visualize place and time. It is a simple and low/no cost way to add depth to any audio piece. Play around with it. Does the natural sound contribute to the mood or tone intended, or detract from the message you are trying to deliver? Listen critically and determine how best to incorporate natural sound to the story. You can incorporate it as part of your storytelling style.

I've narrated and edited my horror podcast about true scary stories. I recommend anyone to go listen to old BBC Radio Dramas online, including something like Lord of the Rings. It will teach and show you how important ambient noises are to setting a scene. You can close your eyes and be transported to characters walking by a river if you can hear that river. Birds chirping. Then, layer it with the appropriate emotional music. You aim to build a visual scene in someone's head with more than words. However, you also don't want overdo it. Too many sound layers can muddy it. You want to pick a few key elements that bring the scene alive. In terms of technically mixing it, you don't want sound effects to overpower dialogue.

AI is helping to make editing simpler. Adobe’s Enhance feature (now available in Audition Beta) uses hundreds of thousand of hours in machine learning to help make your audio sound great no matter the environment. The fundamentals are important but the tools are getting incredibly strong and accessible.

I'd recommend a channel strip of you do home recording. It is a device that will allow you to provide some EQ from the mic to your system. If live in a noisy environment, some have noise gates which are great for eliminating hums or low level sounds from your environments. You can also use low and high pass filters to eliminate boomy or tinny sounds. You can also add some compression to your voice if you are speaking many low and loud parts. You will still need to EQ the sound once recorded, but for me it just helps me capture a higher quality sound the first time through. You can also build your own sound booth for cheap. You can use PVC pipe to create a square structure with moving blankets.

Every audio engineer has told me to "trust my ears". You can get caught up with something sounding perfect or not. Learn simple phrases with frequencies like boomy, bassy, tinny, nasally, hollow, harsh, sibilant... learn the frequencies that these belong to. You open your EQ, find an area you think is problematic, then Boost that area or run the boost through different frequencies. When the problem stands out the most, you use a bell curve and cut that frequency area to what sounds good to you.

Do your best to simulate how the consumer might experience your content. Though it may not feel ideal, check your mixes on consumer electronics, (television speakers, iPad, mobile phones, and soundbars) This will give you some perspective on your mix and allow you to make any global adjustments necessary to ensure your content is well balanced for all playback environments.

Checking your mix at a low volume can achieve a few different things throughout your process. 1. Give your ears a much needed break! 2. Help you identify any wildly dynamic moments that you'd prefer to have more balance with. 3. Provide a new perspective after listening back at your normal reference levels.

Organize your content. I easily have thousands of SFX, ambient music, recordings. There are some good naming schemes out there and learn to use them. Try to organize your music tracks when you start. Try to organize them from a top to bottom left to right to make it easier on yourself. Organize your work into well named folders. When I first started I was quick to use things. I would just download or unzip it and throw it in a folder called sfx. Soon I had to search through hundreds of poorly named sound effects. So take time to organize your content.