Thinking In Sound: Absorbing the World around You with Mike Bamford
Mike Bamford is a founding partner at String and Tins. He's also a record collector, northerner, synthesiser buff and cyclist. With an encyclopaedic knowledge of music and 20+ years in audio-post, Mike’s special interest lies at the intersection of sound and music, when ordered noise becomes rhythmical and tuned sounds become harmonious.
LBB> When you’re working on a new brief or project, what’s your typical starting point? How do you break it down and how do you like to generate your ideas or response?
Mike> It's easy to get carried away with details of what sounds or music you might use but we always start each project by interrogating the story that's being told. What message needs to be communicated and how can we support or embellish it with sound and music. Once that is understood we allow ourselves to get excited!
LBB> Music and sound are in some ways the most collaborative and interactive forms of creativity - what are your thoughts on this? Do you prefer to work solo or with a gang - and what are some of your most memorable professional collaborations?
Mike> I love working and sharing ideas within a team. Fresh ears bring new perspectives and some of our best executions have come from collaboration. Our sound work on the 25 x films that make up the Channel 4 rebrand with the teams at 4creative, Art Practice, Time Based Arts, Love Song, Optical Arts, The Line and all the Directors, was probably the ultimate collab. Ideas were bounced around everywhere but still fit together as one coherent piece.
LBB> What’s the most satisfying part of your job and why?
Mike> The best bit about my job is the people I work with. I love being around a crack-team of sound and music enthusiasts to keep up with the latest audio plugins / films / music / microphones / sound-installations / synths.
LBB> As the advertising industry changes, how do you think the role of music and sound is changing with it?
Mike> Client expectations of quality and speed are going up and up but so is the standard of the work in creative industries and the power of technology available to us. String and Tins recently sound designed, scored and mixed The Little Mermaid audiobook in Dolby Atmos, whereas 10 years ago this would be a flatter and simpler production. We can use the advances in tech to speed up some of the more mundane audio tasks which leaves more time for the fun part, audio experimentation.
Being able to reach for sound particle generators, voice manglers, reverb modelling software and other sonic toys gives loads of creative freedom.
LBB> Who are your musical or audio heroes and why?
Mike> Stevie Wonder, Björk, Delia Derbyshire, Aphex Twin, Art Of Noise. Incredible musical talents who all pushed the boundaries of sound creation.
LBB> And when it comes to your particular field, whether sound design or composing, are there any particular ideas or pioneers that you go back to frequently or who really influence your thinking about the work you do?
Mike> Björk always gives 10000% to her projects. I'm in awe of the way she builds a world of sounds and then composes an album within it. For Vespertine Björk had custom music boxes made to play her melodies. The Utopia album in collaboration with Arca used hand carved wooden flutes to imitate bird sounds. The 2016 digital show at Somerset house still stands up as some of the most creative immersive / VR work I've seen, which included the 360-video for Mouth Mantra, shot entirely from a camera inside her mouth(!)
LBB> When you’re working on something that isn’t directly sound design or music (lets say going through client briefs or answering emails) - are you the sort of person who needs music and noise in the background or is that completely distracting to you? What are your thoughts on ‘background’ sound and music as you work?
Mike> I work best in silence. Brian Eno describes ambient soundtracks as the musical equivalent of a painting or architecture, something that just exists that you can decide to engage with or ignore. However, I find unless music is completely atonal and rhythmless, my brain starts to tune in and work grinds to a halt.
LBB> I guess the quality of the listening experience and the context that audiences listen to music/sound in has changed over the years. There’s the switch from analogue to digital and now we seem to be divided between bad-ass surround-sound immersive experiences and on-the-go, low quality sound (often the audio is competing with a million other distractions) - how does that factor into how you approach your work?
Mike> It's incredible to listen to full range music in one of String and Tins' Atmos enabled studios but a great song will sound good on any speaker. If I've time at home I'll put on a record, sit down and pay attention to it. If I'm doing other stuff I'll stream music to a speaker. If I'm mixing a project, I need to be in one of our studios to be confident it will translate properly. All of these new ways of experiencing music makes it more accessible, which can only be a good thing.
LBB> On a typical day, what does your ‘listening diet’ look like?
Mike> Anything is game. I like to be as aware of the latest pop hit, as the latest banging electronic release. I tee up playlists of tracks to work through when i'm on the train / tube / car and then save any nuggets. I will buy vinyl of the very best tracks.
LBB> Do you have a collection of music/sounds and what shape does it take (are you a vinyl nerd, do you have hard drives full of random bird sounds, are you a hyper-organised spotify-er…)?
Mike> All of above. I'm a sound klepto with a 3000+ vinyl collection, embarrassingly organised Spotify folders and access to the String and Tins sound design vault.
LBB> Outside of the music and sound world, what sort of art or topics really excite you and do you ever relate that back to music (e.g. history buffs who love music that can help you travel through time, gamers who love interactive sound design… I mean it really could be anything!!)
Mike> All creative people absorb the world around them to create something new. I really enjoyed the recent Stills project where staff at String and Tins each wrote a piece of music in response to an artwork at the Tate Britain. We've just started our next one called Patterns; a sonic exploration of patterns in nature.
LBB> Let’s talk travel! It’s often cited as one of the most creatively inspiring things you can do - I’d love to know what are the most exciting or inspiring experiences you’ve had when it comes to sound and music on your travels?
Mike> I went to a nature reserve at Tring to try and record the sounds of a murmuration of starlings. I'd researched the location on a UK Starling appreciation group online and went armed with a load of recording gear much to the amusement of everyone else there. To cut a long story short the birds arrived 2 hours later than expected, flocked to a reservoir about two miles away but I chased them down and got about three minutes of usable audio before they landed for the evening.
I have so much respect for nature recordists! Seeing the birds dancing in the sky and catching small bursts of sound as they swooped around was incredibly inspiring and my mind is now racing with ideas for my piece of music for the Patterns project.
LBB> As we age, our ears change physically and our tastes evolve too, and life changes mean we don’t get to engage in our passions in the same intensity as in our youth - how has your relationship with sound and music changed over the years?
Mike> I would say my sonic tastes have broadened, rather than changed, which has only increased the amount of music I'd like to listen to. I also appreciate that as life gets busier you have to work hard to make space for your passions to prevent creative burnout. I feel very lucky being able to effectively earn a living doing my hobbies and want to continue to consume as much new music and sound as possible.
