Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 2009 - 70

book

reviews
arnold wengrow

editor

Sound Designer's Companion
by bill Raoul; louisville, broadway Press, Inc., 2008. 416pp.
Paper, $25.00.
Reviewed by Rick Malone
designer bill Raoul is probably
best known for his Stock Scenery Construction Handbook.
Perhaps less known is his passion for music and recorded
sound. As a longtime host of
classical music programs for
public radio station KUFM in
Missoula, Montana, where he
taught at the University of Montana, he is eminently qualified
to write about classical music,
but he is well versed in the popular side also.
Raoul's new book, The Sound Designer's Companion,
is meant to be a resource for the designer in selecting music
for theatre productions. It is divided into three sections: Sound
design and Recorded Music, Classical Music, and Popular Music. Sound design and Recorded Music is a brief description
of sound design and a brief but rich history of recorded sound
and recording media. Next we find a two-part glossary of music
and dance terms that may be of interest to the sound designer.
Classical Music is a chronological listing by composer's birth
date beginning with Hildegard of bingen in 1098 and concluding with John Adams in 1947. Popular Music includes a discussion of the origins of popular music and a chronological listing
of popular songs by year beginning in 1868 and concluding in
1954. There is also an alphabetical section of band leaders and
band singers. The book concludes with a bibliography for the
three sections.

Different way to look at sound
This book does not tell us how to design. However, it presents
us with a different way to look at sound design and music in
terms of the elements of design: line, shape, texture, color and
value. I had never thought of sound design in concepts usually
reserved for the visual arts. Following the elements is a section
on "isms" and the arts. Some of the isms, for example, realism,
naturalism, or expressionism, are easy to relate to sound and
music. Others, such as pointillism or cubism, require a bit of
a stretch.

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The description of the history of recorded sound and the
evolution of sound are more detailed than almost any modern
book on sound design. The coverage of early media, cylinders
and early discs especially, should be of interest to the young
designer or student. However, the usefulness of this knowledge is limited unless one is designing an effect to simulate
the old reproduction techniques. For me, it was almost like
asking what the time is and being told how to build the watch.
The media types are confined to those on which commercial
recordings were released. The only digital media discussed
are the Compact disc and the dvd. The information about
Internet resources is somewhat buried after the section on
copyright. The four sources listed are excellent, but it would
have been helpful to the designer to have a more comprehensive list. The glossaries of music and dance terms are excellent references. Nice to have all those terms in one place.
There are more than 100 pages of entries on classical
composers averaging five entries per page. Composers are
listed with a short bio and notes on their most important
works. Perhaps listing the definitive recording (in Mr. Raoul's
opinion) of each work would save the designer some research time. For example, for Shostokovich's Symphony No.
10, Amazon Music lists more than three dozen recordings.
Of course if a paragraph does not give you all the information you want, you can always search the Internet and find
more information than you ever wanted. but for a concise,
handy place, this book is a good start. There are also several
paragraphs in the classical section that are, for all practical
purposes, sidebars. These paragraphs detail significant happenings during a particular period, such as "Music of the
20th Century" and "Concentration Camp Music."
The Popular Music section begins with a detailed analysis
of the origins of popular song and the social influences that
shaped early popular music. Raoul analyzes a typical popular
song in terms of its structure. He discusses the various styles
of popular music in the first half of the twentieth century. The
meat of the section is the chronological listing of the most
popular songs from 1866 to 1954. The songs listed are those
which were published as sheet music and/or audio recordings. The listings are extensive, but in the author's words, not
all-inclusive. I did an Internet search for one year and found
that Raoul's list was right on target with very few omissions.
My biggest problem is that the list stops in 1954. This is the
year that, according to Raoul, Tin Pan Alley died. It was the
year that bill Haley and the Comets recorded "Rock Around
the Clock," considered by many as the beginning of the Rock
'n' Roll era. I really wanted the listings to go forward and

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 2009