HOW DO WE DO?

We chart story arcs and user experiences

We roll our own samples and sound effects

We don’t suppose creativity is a battle royale

We respect convention but invite surprise

We like building up, not tearing down

Foot-tappin’ and head-bobbing

Nose-tooting and eye-drying

Truth-telling and mind-bending

ANTIPHON is a music composition and sound design studio based in Singapore.

DANIEL Y.

I am a recovering self-loather of my audio interests. Some days, I still envy the objective permanence of other work. Ceramics, farming, spycraft, surgery, space exploration, childcare. Just about everything else.

I wish I weren’t just dealing with agitated air.

Yet the more I work with audio, the more I admire its phantom nature. It does its job unnoticed. A sci-fi pistol’s throaty chirp reveals its nature, size and bite. Wind moans, gusts or whistles. It can signal loneliness, freedom, glory, or danger.

Draw sound into patterns — of pitch, timbre and time — and you get music. Music to lull or awaken, foreshadow or conclude, unnerve or soothe.

If sight is “prince of senses” then hearing is a goodly shadow minister, suggesting, colouring, whispering.

The best thing about making audio is discovery. How can we make a slow, ominous door creak without evoking a sense of the supernatural? What do we layer with jazz drums to give them a Thai or Inuit tinge?

I have no clue, but sure like to find out.