Creativity& Sound—Sono Sanctus
Wesley Slover is the founder and lead musician/sound designer behind Sono Sanctus, a sound design and music production studio based in Grand Rapids, MI. He has a way of using sound and music to tell a dynamic and compelling story, across all sorts of mediums—from animated films to interactive games to 62-foot-wide installations. He spoke with us about his creative process and the complexity of ‘sound’ in his work.
Talk about your journey to becoming the creative you are today — and how the journey has influenced your work.
I grew up as a band geek. And I played music whenever and wherever I could — at 6:30 am for high school jazz band; trumpet in the concert band; I was in the hand drum club for a bit; and I had a terrible pop punk band that introduced me to recording.
I really liked playing music, but I found myself getting more excited about making things than becoming a trumpet-playing virtuoso. From there, I went to school for recording, and I discovered that sound itself was interesting. That’s when I started working on all kinds of different projects.
What is a favorite project you’ve worked on?
I’m fortunate to work on a lot of projects I enjoy, but my favorite is probably an art installation piece I worked on recently for Dolby, called ‘Cityscape.’ I created a soundtrack that consisted of surround-sound music, sound design, and two distinct radio dramas—all of which accompanied a 62-foot-wide visual screen.
Since a lot of my work is creating sound and music for video animation, I really enjoy projects that involve out-of-the-box thinking, where sound is being used in an unusual way. Beyond the interesting design parameters, I also loved the subject matter — it was a futuristic, sci-fi city, and the studio directing the project does a lot of incredibly cool, geeky work.
How do you think about the purpose of sound in your work? Are there times when it matters less? Is it ever a game-changer?
There are definitely times when sound is less important. When there is a voiceover, for example, voice intelligibility is key, and every decision I make (whether it’s with the music, sound design, or mix) needs to support it. Or, if I’m working on an iPhone app, we have to assume the user has the sound turned off or is in a noisy space, in which case sound cannot be crucial and is merely supporting the experience.
Occasionally, however, there are projects that put sound and music at the forefront — which allows the sound to communicate an idea or feeling in a different, more powerful way. With interactive projects, for instance, there is an opportunity to use sound in lieu of a visual solution and clean up the overall design. (This is constantly on my mind with game sound design, where there is a lot of visual input competing for the user’s attention.)
Sound and music also have a strong emotional resonance, which means I can create something that communicates the emotional weight of a scene without relying on much visual information.
How do you decide what something should sound like?
I usually work with the director of a project to establish what our goals or requirements are. Then I run with my intuition.
Sometimes the absence of sound can be just as (if not more) powerful in evoking emotion than when it is overwhelmingly present. How do you think about the interplay of sound and silence? Do you ever mix the two strategically in your work?
Pure silence is pretty rare in my work, but dynamicity is super important. Earlier in my career, I was interested in creating busy soundtracks, but now I like to let my work breathe. These days I’ll often mix lots of sounds, but at a quieter level, so that the viewer feels the piece more than they hear it — it is complex, but not distracting.
Tell us about your creative process. How do you approach a new project? Are there any constraints you like to work within?
For animation projects, I like to start working on music early on in the process — this gives me time to establish the overall feeling and pacing of the piece, while animation is still being refined. Once there is a bit of animation ready, I’ll begin with 15 seconds or so of sound design and try to establish a sound palette for the rest of the film. And when the film is almost finished, I’ll finalize the sound design, music, and mix.
Are there things you think sound can do that image alone cannot?Personally, I like when sound can be used to remove visual clutter. Humans are so visually oriented that most of our design is ocular, and as a result, there can be a lot of things competing for the attention of our eyes. Sound design is one tool we have to simplify a visual interface by either replacing what would otherwise be a graphic, or drawing attention to a graphic that is more subtle. For example, a phone notification — an audio notification is far more effective in capturing someone’s attention than a visual one.
And I think people know this from film scores and soundtracks, but sound has incredible emotional power when used in storytelling.
Creativity& is an Open Book Communications project. It is a space to showcase artists/entrepreneurs/creative-people as real humans. We hope to show that it doesn’t just take creativity to make you a great creative; it takes a whole host of other things. And there are things that often go along with creativity that are rarely seen or talked about. We hope to draw that out from creatives — to inspire, generate conversations, and get their fans (and themselves) thinking about their creative process.
