Steve Francis: Music Laboratory
Sydney, Australia: As a music producer, composer and sound designer, Steve Francis has worked with numerous high profile musicians, theatre groups and ballet companies. Among them, Sir Bob Geldof, David Gulpilil and The Australian Ballet. His list of credentials also includes having produced and co-composed music for Awakenings, the Indigenous section of the Sydney Olympic Games Opening Ceremony as well as compositions for the AFI Award-winning short film Box.
The Logic Pro music laboratory
While he is more than prepared to lend his musical talents to a wide variety of interesting projects, Francis regards live theatre as the area in which he can let free his experimental nature; and it’s the Mac-based Logic Pro music creation and audio production application that’s his music laboratory.
“It’s important to appreciate that a great deal of digitally produced sound effects are actually the results of manipulating original recordings of other sounds,” Francis explains. “Given that, the flexibility to manipulate sounds in Logic Pro is actually key to achieving the perfect sound that’s needed in a production.”Among the Logic Pro tools that Francis uses regularly to achieve the best possible sounds and music is Space Designer, a reverb plug-in that applies a sampled reverb effect to audio files. This particular feature plays a crucial role in the engineering of individual sounds and soundtracks to suit the particular acoustic characteristics of a theatre.
But given Francis’ love of experimenting, Space Designer reverbs are used extensively in the creation of unique sounds that bear little resemblance to their recorded origins. He explains: “Quite often I’ll use Logic Pro to record something I’ll play on an electric guitar, add in various delays then use Space Designer to apply some really interesting sample reverbs. Ultimately, it sounds nothing like the original guitar but you end up with a great sound that has the right impact when it’s played during a theatre production.”
“When I’m composing sounds and music for a production, I’ll often sit down with the director and play music ideas through Logic Pro on my MacBook,” Francis says. “The beauty of the product is that if the director puts forward a suggested change, whether it’s applying a certain effect to a sound or rearranging parts of the musical score, I can do it without having to go back to my studio.”
