Michael Turner

Sound Designer, Audio Engineer, Blaster-Beam Technician

Sound Design Demo Reel

Portfolio

Sound Re-Designs

Recorded Music

Pathing and Deiopea by Alissa Voth
(Recording, Editing, Mixing, Mastering)

Ballade, Kaija Saariaho performed by Zaira Castillo
(Recording, Mixing, Mastering, Filming/Video Editing)

Bio

Michael Turner (he/him), is a Sound Designer, Audio Engineer, IT Consultant, Blaster Beam Technician, and Low Brass Instrumentalist based in Chicago, IL. He started off getting his degree in Bass Trombone performance from the Eastman School of Music, and a minor in Recording and Sound Design from the University of Rochester. During undergrad, he discovered my true calling to merge his love of technology and sound together into a lifelong career! That discovery led to enrolling in the Sound Arts and Industries program at Northwestern University. During his time at Northwestern, he did a foley internship at Skywalker Sound on a film Called Ghostlight, served as a TA for the Video Game Sound Class, and participated in the inagural Northwestern Game Jam as a Sound Designer.

As a trombonist, he performed with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Brass Section in 2015 in their annual Christmas Concert, the Scottish Youth National Choir, and with Solange Knowles at the Pitchfork Music Festival in 2017. He has also performed a production of Les Miserables with Terry Barber.

Resume

Blaster Beam!

Here is a slideshow detailing my journey with the Blaster Beam! I have worked on this for a year and counting at this point, this shows off various steps in the process, along with all of the components that came with it.A bit of history: This instrument has lived in Northwestern’s Hobson and Lucas SoundStage where it remained for 5+ years. It came to Northwestern through a referral. Sam Fishkin of the Mix Kitchen contacted one of our academic advisors and said that a local composer in the Evanston area by the name of Terry Fryer was clearing some stuff out of his studio. My advisors saw it and immediately asked about it. The composer described it as “The Blaster Beam by Craig Huxley” and it was swiftly loaded onto a U-Haul and taken to the soundstage. It was covered by moving blankets, and occasionally used some one off sound design projects here and there, but no one looked further than that.During the start of our graduate orientation, one of my professors relayed this story to the cohort, and mentioned that no one had ever attempted to fix this instrument before.I took that as a challenge! There is so much that I can go into, but long story short: all of the strings were rusted, 1/3 strings were missing, one string wasn't tied correctly which made it dangle everywhere. On top of that, the existing preamp was very noisy and didn't pick up the beam signal very well at all.I have a colleague who is a piano tuner at the Bienen School of Music and when I brought the idea of fixing this instrument up to him, he was very enthusiastic and said that he would love to take a look. After spending 15 minutes looking at the instrument, he diagnosed everything wrong with it, told me that I could fix it, and that he would give me every tool I need in order to fix it. He even made me practice tools just to make it easier for me!As of October of 2024, I have replaced every single string, ordered a cover for it, ordered a custom bow for it, and currently designing and building a brand new preamp for this instrument.Here is a sample of how it sounds with the preamp:

Let me know if you have any questions about this! This section could be an entire website dedicated to what I have done, so I've paraphased a lot.