ABSTRACT
Just as a painter formulates a mental image when facing the canvas so, too, does a sound designer need to have an aural “ vision. ” If you can’t hear the sound in your head, you’ll have a hard time determining what to create and how to create it. Allowing yourself as an artist to aurally daydream will open your imagination. Imagining sounds in the context of a production is the fi rst step in designing sound for the theatre. You must hear sound not as a single entity, but as an interaction of parts making up a whole. Many individual sounds may comprise one effect; many effects used together constitute a design. The sound designer is asked to produce a whole from the parts, so the separate sounds that make up the whole are the essence of your design.
