Heardrum Audio is the home of Award winning Sound Designer and Composer Martin Carrillo. In 2004, Martin Carrillo founded Heardrum to meet the growing needs he felt in the Los Angeles Area Theater community for quality audio support, design and equipment specification. In the small theaters Martin worked in, too often a system wasn’t serving the needs of the company, or project. Quickly, Heardrum widened its offered services to Film and Television, Arts and Dance Communities, and Themed Entertainment. Now, the works that Heardrum touches have been or continue to be heard all over the world with audiences in the millions and across four continents. Our clientele continues to serve challenging art on small stages, but it also serves challenging art and entertainment on the world stage. At Heardrum, we understand the importance of public address, and meeting the technical and artistic challenges that intelligibility of speech and music pose. Effectively telling the story Directors. Producers and Music makers want heard in whatever way an audience comes to hear it is what we strive for here. We look forward to helping you tell your story too.
Martin Carrillo began making music at age 7 with the piano lessons many of us remember. By age 13 Martin had picked up guitar to play some of the Rock and Heavy Metal music some of us are trying to forget. In his parents’ country of origin, Chile, Martin experienced something that is common for far too many people around the world. A concert he was going to go see with family that featured musicians and artists that had political ideas in their songs was canceled and the protesting fans were hosed down by police protecting the military dictatorship in that country. This experience crystallized the real importance of Audio and Music to people who share a common dream of any kind. Martin began singing some of the Nueva Cancion music that came from Chile, and some folk music from other countries in Latin America, and also became interested in how ideas were conveyed through other media; Theater, Art and Sociology.
At Swarthmore college Martin studied Theater and Sociology; specifically Directing, Design, and Social Theory, but an experience composing music for his final directing workshop posed a problem that Martin had never considered. Why, does the music I write and record in the studio, sound different in the venue… and then the other questions… what does a speaker actually do? What is the science behind sound? How do we hear? What constitutes “good” sound in a venue?
In Philadelphia, Mumm Puppettheatre’s production of Gelbart’s Mastergate, Sarah Caldwell, and Tom White’s The Black Swan, Cafeteria, and Tragedy of Joan of Arc, by Pig Iron Theater (Best Original Music, and Best Sound Design Barrymore nominations).
In Los Angeles, J.O.B. the Hip Hopera, (LA Ovation Award Nomination), Romeo and Juliet: Antebellum New Orleans 1836 (LA Ovation Winner Best Sound Design Intimate Theater), Baby It’s You, (NAACP Theater Award Winner Best Sound Equity), Paradise Lost: Shadow’s and Wings (LA Ovation Winner Best Sound Design Intimate Theater/Garland Award Best Sound Design), Gulls by Maury McIntyre and Nick Salamone, Heavier Than by Steve Yockey, Bill Graham Presents (Sound Mixer),
In Japan, Tokyo DisneySea various venues (LCS Matrix 3 Surround Programmer THEA award), An Eastern Odyssey Huis Ten Bosch (ProTools Engineer, Audio Designer)
In China, Festival of the Lion King Theatre in the Wild, and The Golden Mickeys Story Book Theatre Hong Kong Disneyland (Audio Designer, LCS Matrix 3 Surround Programmer)