Sound and Silence

Every piece of music is also a composition of silences. The pauses, the held breath before a note lands — these are not absences but active presences.

I learned this when I started recording in rooms that were too quiet. Suddenly the silence had texture. It pressed against the microphone in a way that changed everything around it.

Good sound design is largely about knowing what to leave out. The ear fills gaps eagerly, and often fills them better than anything you could explicitly provide.