These seminars are open and free to all students and tutors, as well as all members of the ASD. You can register for any (or all) of the seminars individually using the links below.

ASD members may benefit from our travel assistance scheme and receive money towards the cost of travelling to this event.

Legendary sound designer John Leonard goes through some of the tools and techniques to record sound effects for theatre, focusing on the practical problems of recording in the real world. As well as looking at conventional stereo techniques, John will demo parabolic microphones, ambisonics and surround sound recording techniques.

John Leonard started work in theatre sound almost 40 years ago, during which time he has provided soundtracks for theatres all over the world. He has written an acclaimed guide to theatre sound and is the recipient of Drama Desk and LDI Sound Designer Of The Year awards and is a Fellow of The Guildhall School of Music & Drama and an Honorary Fellow of The Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts. 

Donato Wharton explains the theatrical uses of this software.

Foley artist Tom Espiner shows some of the tips of the trade, from simple solutions to create naturalistic effects, to more abstract foley techniques. He will be joined by sound designer Gareth Fry to examine best methods of recording, amplifying and processing live and recorded fx.

Shure’s Tuomo Tolonen leads a seminar on how to achieve the best performance from your wireless microphones by understanding the technologies behind them:

- Overview and update on the current regulatory situation in the UK/EU.
- Basics of RF; what system is right for me? Intermods- what are they?
- Co-ordination - how to best setup your radio system from initial scans to antenna setup.

Zoe Milton leads a practical demonstration of wireless mic dressing - how to hide them, dress them, colour them. 

Maintaining a good relationship with the performers is key to success, particularly on a musical. A panel of experts discuss their approaches to Vocal Foldback and the everyday politics of keeping an ensemble performing at their best. On the panel: sound designers Paul Groothuis and Gareth Fry, Wicked's sound HOD Hyder Khalil and radio mic expert Zoe Milton.

Duran Audio's Nick Screen leads this seminar introducing principals of room acoustics such as reflectivity, reverberation and inteligibility - looking at why two similar looking rooms can sound very different. The seminar will then look at how a single speaker's dispersion pattern effects how it will sound in a space - and the three key variables that define how good that speaker will sound. This seminar is perfect if you're an acoustics newbie!

Using a range of experiments and examples, Steve Jones, from d&b audiotechnik will demystify the principles of line arrays, leaving the attendee better equipped to use and deploy line arrays to their full potential.

Having chosen and installed a sound system, the next step is to make it sound good. Meyer Sound's Miguel Lourtie demonstrates techniques on optimising a sound system’s performance using delay, EQ... to get the most gain before feedback and optimal imaging.

Outboard's Robin Whittaker and Dave Haydon will explain and demonstrate the principles of SOR vocal localisation using the TiMax SoundHub delay-matrix and TiMax Tracker performer tracking system. Also outlined and demoed will be the system's TimeLine and PanSpace graphical sound effects and dynamic spatialisation programming interfaces and their integration with other showcontrol systems.

1 - 2pm Lunch

4.15 - 6pm Audio Networking

10am - 12pm Music: Rights, Wrongs and Wherefores

12- 1.15pm DJ techniques

2 - 4pm Sound Education

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