About

Andy Hansen is a composer and sound designer for theatre, based in Chicago. He has written one feature film score for a film you will never see.

Composing for theater is about writing in miniature – the cues are typically 15 seconds long. A minute long would be “epic”. Two minutes or more generally means the scene change is complicated.

No protractors or t-squares are involved in the designing of sound. Generally, it’s a lot of listening to online sound effects libraries until it becomes clear that the options are terrible, then you setup a microphone and do it yourself. This can be difficult with things like explosions or plane crashes – usually you have to edit together several mediocre sounds to make something that does the job well.

Andy is self taught. This was not intentional. He was a film student, and the teaching was a mixed bag. There was no “film scoring” curriculum so he bought a giant expensive text book. He has never studied “sound design” for theater, again this was not intentional because he never thought he would be a theatrical sound designer.

He has been nominated for 32 Jeff Awards. You’ll probably have to Google that to determine whether or not you should be impressed.

Andy wrote this himself and is wondering why he chose to do it in the third person. Oh well, too late now.