Looking at the art of sound with sound designer Ryan Ingebritsen

text: Emily Liebtag

When you listen to a great piece of new music, you often appreciate the composer, whose notes came flying out of their head and onto the page.  Or perhaps you think of the talented musicians who breathed life into the piece.  But what about the person sitting behind the mixing board – the one who perfected the sounds and brought all of the aspects together?

Enter Ryan Ingebritsen.  With an Undergrad degree in composition from St. Olaf College, and a Masters from the University of Cincinnati as well as being a musician himself, Ryan added another job title to his resume when he started working as a Sound Designer in 2002.

“I prefer the title Sound Designer [over Sound Engineer] because I see my role to be a creative and aesthetic one, rather than just a technical one.”

To Ryan, being a Sound Designer is more than just mixing and amplifying a concert.  In the New Music genre, his job is more about broadening the dynamic range and mixing what you hear through speakers as well as in the venue so that overall, the music is experienced in a different way.  It’s also about collaboration.  Musicians and conductors will always interpret a composer’s piece.  In a way, Ryan needs to similarly understand and interpret the music.

“It’s about working with the Composer.  Giving your suggestions as well as respecting their work so that in the end we’re on the same page.  It’s also about understanding the musician’s wants.  Some have a specific idea on how they want to sound, a musician’s playing will evolve through a piece and I have to evolve with them.”

This summer, Ryan will be back at Chicago’s Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park.  Pritzker Pavilion is a venue like no other.  In fact, there is no other permanent venue in the world that has the same capabilities.

One of the features that makes this venue so special from a sound perspective is that it is possible to have all 128 speakers in the venue hooked up to a different source.  What that means is that essentially, you could have 128 completely different sounds playing simultaneously, a feat far beyond the capacity of a traditional concert hall.  It was also designed so that no matter where you are sitting in the football-shaped lawn, you will hear the same surround sound experience with no delay.

On June 28th, Ryan will be at Pritzker with Chicago’s own eighth blackbird for Millennium Park’s Loops and Variations series.  They will be performing pieces by Philip Glass, Steve Reich, and Jacob TV, among others.  Ryan says that he will be using the sound system in a different way for each composer’s work, attempting to utilize the technology to fully surround the audience with music.

“For many of the works, I will explore the shifts in register in each individual instrument so not only will each instrument be heard from a different part of the space, but the instruments themselves will appear to move in space as they play higher and lower.”

One of the most important lessons Ryan has learned as an engineer is that you can’t escape the space you’re in.  If you can accept the space, you can use it’s strengths as well as weaknesses in your favor.  That is exactly what Ryan plans on doing this summer at Pritzker.

“With these concerts at Pritzker, I am exploring using the sound system as an instrument.”

You can catch Ryan’s concert with eighth blackbird on Monday June 28th at 6:30 PM as part of the Loops and Variations series at Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago’s Millennium Park.