Ultra-realistic sound design often aims at the equivalent of photographic detail: every footstep, every reflection, every ambient layer present and correct. The result can be accurate but strangely inert—because our actual experience of sound is selective, biased, emotional, and incomplete.
An impressionistic approach to sound design asks a different question:
What does this moment feel like to hear?
Not “What would a microphone record?”
There lots of sound designers who have approached their work this way, at least on certain films, and I think this is the sound style that the best directors often prefer.
The sound designer that jumps to mind is Alan Splet. One of the best designers of sonic atmospheres ever. His style was not about details and completeness.
It was about impression.
John Singer Sargent as a model for sound design …
Sargent is especially interesting here because he sits between realism and impressionism.
- His brushwork is loose, economical, and gestural.
- Up close, many of his paintings dissolve into abstract marks.
- From a distance, they snap into uncanny presence.
Crucially, Sargent knew which details to omit. He painted convincing people, not complete people. The same for his landscapes.
Translated into sound design:
- A Sargent-like sound design uses fewer elements, but each one is perfectly placed.
- Instead of layering every environmental sound, you choose the sound that defines the moment.
- Detail appears where attention lands; elsewhere, suggestion takes over.
This is very close to what great sound designers already do instinctively—but often feel pressure to hide under “realism.”
The fallacy of total realism in sound
There’s a paradox here:
The more “complete” a soundscape becomes, the less room there is for the listener.
Human hearing doesn’t work like a surround-sound recorder:
- We filter aggressively.
- We exaggerate emotionally significant sounds.
- We blur, suppress, or even invent sound based on expectation.
Hyper-realistic sound design can actually contradict lived experience by flattening hierarchy. Everything becomes equally present, equally loud, equally “true.”
Impressionistic sound design restores:
- Hierarchy (this matters; that doesn’t),
- Subjectivity (whose ears are we hearing through?),
- Interpretation rather than transcription.
Sound as brushstroke, not surface texture
One useful way to think about this is to treat sounds as brushstrokes, not textures.
In painting:
- A brushstroke is expressive, directional, and intentional.
- It implies form without fully describing it.
In sound:
- A single sound can stand in for a whole environment.
- A filtered, exaggerated, or simplified sound can imply scale, distance, or emotion more effectively than literal reproduction.
For example:
- A city at night doesn’t need traffic, sirens, HVAC, footsteps, wind, and voices.
- It might need one distant engine tone, pitched just wrong, slowly modulating.
- The rest happens in the listener’s head. That’s Impressionism.
Sound design as memory, not presence
Impressionist painting often feels like memory rather than observation.
Sound works the same way:
- We remember sounds inaccurately but meaningfully.
- Memory compresses time, emphasizes emotion, and edits out clutter.
Stylized sound design can lean into:
- repetition,
- abstraction,
- tonal color,
- rhythmic suggestion.
Why this approach can feel “truer”
An impressionistic approach to sound design:
- Invites the audience to collaborate.
- Activates imagination rather than overwhelming it.
- Mirrors how perception actually works under stress, emotion, or focus.
In other words, it doesn’t say:
“This is what the world sounds like.”
It says:
“This is how it feels to be here.”
That’s exactly what Sargent, Monet, and Degas were doing visually, and what Alan Splet did with sound.
Acoustic realism versus Perceptual realism
The latter is where impressionistic sound design lives—and where sound can do things music and image can’t do alone. Check out Eraserhead or Blue Velvet. Amazing.