Working so much on virtual worlds lately, it was refreshing to team up with Childish Gambino and Google to build this duo of physical light+sound installations at Coachella. My role was as the sound designer and multichannel audio mixer.

Each room presented unique surround interpretations of Childish Gambino’s sound. One featured five large clear acrylic panels fitted with transducers to become speakers, placed around guests in addition to four traditional overhead speakers. Another room had an 8.1 speaker array with an audio-reactive laser shooting into a pool of black liquid.

I wanted to fully embrace these bespoke sound installations, so it was very rewarding to not just mix stereo content into multichannel, but to use tools that could natively generate multichannel audio in these custom formats. I hope to talk more about this process someday. The build was pulled off amazingly by VT Pro Design, with audio system and onsite support by Canopy LA.

For now, here’s a little video teaser of what Coachella visitors got to experience: