Watch That Sound

 

This easy-to-use software takes children, step by step, along the path to the magical world of sound design. With no musical training, children can easily create, test, and then record all the sound, effects and music themselves.

Now any child can compose by creating soundtracks.

Paint all your sound and music ideas into one magical sound canvas and record.
 

The step-by-step approach of the program follows those taken by real sound designers and film composers: Video > Scenes > Tension Arc > Visual score > Audio edit > Example > Mixdown

You can make a soundtrack in any way that suits you. You can jump straight in at the audio edit stage and make a live recording. Or you can take a more structured approach. Drama and tension come from structuring the scenes.

The Scene section helps you mark the key dramatic moments from where you can build your sound story. The Tension Line helps you see how the tension will rise and fall between the scenes that you marked.

In the Visual score dashboard, you can give your sound idea a shape with lines and dots (for example, lots of dots for people talking, or a long line for a fly traveling across a room). You place these in the visual timeline where you want to record. This helps guide you along the timeline and tells you what goes where in a visual way.

This visual approach provides a simple way to help you to quickly communi- cate your ideas to others in the recording. It also helps to perfect your ideas. Of course, you can use it for a quick one-off session to capture an idea. The real power comes, though, from its ability to provide multiple sessions.

Free for every user, the Watch That Sound Tool is a co-production between Watch That Sound and V2_Lab. The software has been tested in many children’s workshops in Rotterdam (LantarenVenster), Amsterdam (Cinekid) and The Hague (Filmhuis).