MorrowSound is a sound design company that specializes in x, y, and z.

Let’s Talk About Listening…

The ear doesn’t simply hear sounds from left to right, or front to back. Your ear works in concert with your whole body - from the bottoms of your feet to the top of your head - and your brain synthesizes sound from all directions. All of the sounds you hear (and feel) combine to form a picture in the mind of where you are… in other words, listening contributes to our understanding of place.  

MorrowSound is sound design for people who design spaces. Effective spaces need affective design - and affective sound design takes how we listen into account. MorrowSound designs are coherent, compelling, and omnidirectional - heard on multiple planes, from multiple points, both above and below listening height. We think that by designing the way a space will sound, we can affect the way a space might feel. A space might want to feel helpful or interesting. Some areas should feel safe, and others mysterious. And some places want to feel constant one day, and emotionally dynamic the next.

Affective Atmospheres

Spatial sound design can be dramatic or architectural. Maybe we’re directing the listener’s attention to something helpful, like an exit or a water fountain. Or maybe we want to show them something exciting, like a hanging sculpture or the entrance to a ride. Maybe instead, we’re setting the tone before a meeting, or making a hallway feel taller… Different spaces have different needs. With MorrowSound, the first question is: "What do you want this space to do?”

Sound Design

First, we listen. Moving and talking, beeps and buzzes, elevators, air systems, airplanes…  Daily life is already a soundscape - and design is an intervention. What do we want to happen here? What are the key elements? Is there a story? This stage of the design is about putting together affective goals. For narrative designs, we work out these questions on storyboards. We assemble music samples, sound effects, and build a timeline. We then work on the spatial story. Where are these sounds coming from? Up there or over here? Do we hear them moving? After making the final mix in the studio, we take it into the space for the last edits and mastering. For our environmental work, even our most imaginative designs start with research and specificity. Where exactly are we? What time of year? What time of day? We start with air, breezes, winds, and then foliage, birds - working our way from the background to the foreground until a world comes together. If there is anything missing, we find it. If we can’t find something, we record the sound ourselves. Once the scenes are working, we use our custom players to re-compose the material algorithmically, and listen to how the scenes feel over long durations, running as they would on-site.

Design Scope

Sound design from MorrowSound isn’t just a concern for what, or how sounds will play, but why. Since the why of a project is site-specific and almost always dynamic, MorrowSound uses playback systems that are custom configured and custom programmed - and can really do anything you could want sound to do. The same systems we use to build single room activations can be expanded and combined for vast soundscapes that are coordinated in multiple areas and multiple locations.

Multiple Sites

We use sound design to create coherent, affective atmospheres. When distributed across several locations, atmospheres work together to build the sound-world for a brand.

Multiple Layers

Our designs work like an ecosystem, where every actor affects the next. Activity from one part of a building is shared with other parts, and compositional gestures are coordinated across multiple floors.

Multiple Zones

The needs of a space change depending on how they’re being used. If we look at any one section of a floorplan, each usage zone is a composition and needs its own rules for responding to triggers and controls.

Multiple Dimensions

Area controls and interface options can include settings for personalized listening. Where the design calls for it, users can take control of individual environments without affecting what’s happening in shared spaces.

Designed Interactions

Spaces are always changing, so the success of installed design often depends on the system’s capacity to respond and adapt. In MorrowSound installations, project-specific programming allows the same system to produce different results over time - coordinating content selection and audio mixing with touchscreens, controllers, triggers, messages, and more. In other words, just about anything could be part of the composition.

For spaces that have reliable cadences (busy mornings, relaxed afternoons, quiet weekends) MorrowSound designs can respond to timing triggers. Volume, scene selection, mix, and tuning can be scheduled seasonally, daily, or to-the-minute, to reflect and shape the energy in a space.

MorrowSound designs are adaptive and can respond to the changing needs of a space. Ambient noise and light levels, room density, whether it’s raining - all of these affect our sense of place. Our designs can listen for these data-drivers and accordingly adjust design parameters like volume, scene selection, mix, and tuning in real-time.

For areas that need user interactions like scene selection, input switching, or manual level control, MorrowSound designs can have interaction points with a look and feel that’s tailored to the space.  Room controls can include any number of widgets (dials, buttons, and screens) or inputs for users to connect their own devices.

To synchronize with other systems - like video players, media servers, or upstream AV processors - system messages can be shared over the internet and LAN.  MorrowSound systems can be designed to either be the hub or a spoke of any ecosystem.

How We’ll Work Together

Charles Morrow Productions (CMP) and Park Boulevard Productions (PBP) partner to offer MorrowSound® - unique, award-winning, multi-dimensional audio experiences for any space you can think of. CMP offers breathtaking content, patented audio methods, and a design philosophy that’s been realized in installations around the globe.  PBP, expert event makers, integrators, and systems designers will install and commision the work. While keeping an eye (and ear) on aesthetics, PBP ensures every MorrowSound installation meets the highest standards.

Meet

Design

Review

Install

Listen

Enjoy

What’s the space? What’s the story? Our designers want to meet you and learn about your project.

We bring in concept designs - things to listen to, things to look at. Prototypes, software ideas, interface… these all get developed here.

Contracts, signatures, workflows, deliverables… Looks good, time to build it.

Hanging speakers, crimping cables, hardware setup. When everything is up and running, our technicians tune the space.

Walk the space, check sound color, and give a critical listen in context. Training anyone who might use the system happens here.

Ongoing maintenance, measurement, support, updates… Our technical staff supports the lifecycle of the project

Designing for the Future

To keep your space feeling fresh and vibrant, MorrowSound subscriptions regularly update and manage installed content. Our certified technicians can remotely monitor system health, receive alerts from system components, and push changes to our networked installations. 

  • new audio scenes

  • updates to schedules

  • regular content evaluations

  • regular room tunings

  • scheduled user training

  • regular support and upgrades

Our Team

Charlie Morrow  Artistic Director

Passionate about using sound and music to inspire, entertain and heal, Charlie Morrow is an acclaimed multimedia artist, producer and composer. He is a leading figure in branded sound and advocate for the use of sound for well-being. His work is expansive, much of it written to be performed outside the concert hall and includes music played underwater, compositions for “herds” of musicians, and vast multi-performer happenings. Charlie has made a career of bringing experimental sound and music to a wider audience. 

Charlie’s notable commercial credits include a Cannes Award-winning campaign for Diet Coke, jingles for Hefty trash bags (“Hefty, hefty, hefty! Wimpy, wimpy, wimpy!”), and feature film soundtracks for Moonwalk 1 and Altered States. In 2000, he founded Charles Morrow Productions, a design firm that produces audio installations and audio tours. Clients include the Kennedy Space Center, Empire State Building and the Torino Winter Olympics. Continuing his research in spatial sound, community, and audio wellness, Charlie developed MorrowSound in 2010 patenting its key concepts. MorrowSound enlivens hospitals, workplaces, and planetariums around the globe.

William David Fastenow  Strategic Director

An arts technology entrepreneur based in Los Angeles and Brooklyn, Willie is principal and owner of Park Boulevard Productions. He is a faculty member and Director of Performance Technology at The Juilliard School and lecturer in the Tonmeister Honors Track at NYU Steinhardt. In 2003, Willie formed Park Boulevard Productions in NYC, adding an office in LA in 2015. Long-time friends and collaborators Willie and Charlie partnered in 2017 on all aspects of the MorrowSound business: design, research and development, systems integration, and product development.

Jeff Aaron Bryant  Creative Lead

Jeff is a composer/performer, sound designer, and theater maker based in Brooklyn. He studied philosophy at the University of New Mexico, 2006 and composition at Cornish College of the Arts, 2010. From 2010-2012, Jeff was studio assistant to Trimpin - a kinetic sculptor working in sound - and completed his MFA in music technology at CalArts, 2013. Jeff has worked with Charlie since 2013 as CMP’s lead designer and programmer. He joined the team with PBP in 2017.

Kevin DeYoe  Technical Lead

Kevin is an AV designer, engineer, and games composer. A graduate of New York University’s Music Technology program, he has a deep fascination with making complex things work and loves exploring how people interact with technology. Kevin started with Park Boulevard in 2010, directs special project initiatives and leads the company’s research and development.

We can’t wait to hear about your project