The Poetry of Sound (Or: My Morning at the Sound Studio)

Sometimes (increasingly often) my client work collides with my writing/photography life, and yesterday this very thing happened in the form of a trip taken to that fantastic Philadelphia sound studio, Audio Post. I was there to record a fresh voice over for a photo essay I posted not long ago on this blog—to make the sound right in an echo-free room with an expert's help. Behind a pair of double doors, I stood—my script on a music stand before me, headphones snug on my head, my leather jacket thrown across a nearby chair for leather, I learned, is disrespectful of sound. Scott Waz, the studio president, was unaccountably near and out of sight.

I write, as I have often said, to a certain music in my head. I seek to generate, on the page or screen, a pattern of aural meaning, a choreography of sound—which words should fall, which should rise, which should patter together, which should be held as a long, clear note. Hush or snap. Sigh or declare. But standing before a microphone that has entertained the likes of Jennifer Lopez could have been a tad intimidating, especially as I had only heretofore recorded my vlogs into the Mac microphone that sits on my glass desk, in a window-wrapped room, at the front of a house where the door slams freely all day long. (Oh, and the phone rings and the emails go ding.)

Except for this: Scott Waz is extraordinarily good at what he does. Not just a sound engineer, but a poet of sound, a guy who knows how to generate power, how to keep something still, how to tell a story with sound alone. "Try not to oversell that word," he'd tell me through those ear phones, just his voice, no threat in it. "See if you can give that phrase more time." "When you get to that P, turn your head to the right and that way you won't pop it." And on and on, the quietest possible instruction. Two hours for five minutes of sound.

I read everything I write out loud—many times. I'll read going forward with a new gauge in my head. An even deeper appreciation for the poetry of sound. And soon I'll repost that vlog of mine and you'll see just what a difference Scott makes.