Peter Darmi

Peter DarmiPeter Darmi wears many hats – Sound Designer, Recording Engineer/Producer, Musician; sometimes all at once. He got his start as a record artist signed to Playboy Records along with his partner, Matthew Wilder who went on to have the mega-hit “Nobody’s Gonna Break My Stride” in the mid eighties.

After the duo split, Darmi returned to the world of the studio, this time on the other side of the glass as a producer-engineer. There he racked up an impressive discography including engineering three Grammy Award winning albums for George Benson, Natalie Cole, and B.B. King.

His touch helped create Gold and Platinum Records for artists diverse as Busta Rhymes, and Dionne Warwick; and Grammy Nominations for Mose Allison, Lou Rawls, and Gonzalo Rubalcaba.

After helping so many artists realize their dreams he received the honor of his own Grammy nomination for Best Engineer, 1999.

For the last several years Darmi has increasingly turned his considerable talents to the area of Sound Design, starting with work he did for immensely popular rap artists Biggie Smalls and Busta Rhymes, creating the effects for their record “Interludes”--the mini-stories between songs.

From there he diversified into radio and television commercials, creating many of the special audio effects for several hugely successful ad campaigns such as the Sprite “anti-commercials” for Lowe-Lintas, and the currently running Duracell campaign for Ogilvy & Mather.

Darmi defines Sound Design as, “The creation and use of real and imaginary sounds as scoring elements, often used in conjunction with the musical Cloudcap Productions, Inc.

Sound Design & Engineering/Production for Commercials, Film, Records underscore to enhance the emotional impact of a scene in television, radio spot, or a movies.”

What is the sound of emptiness? This was the challenge recently for a Pepsi spot for Uniworld. Or how do you convey comedy without resorting to cliché cartoon effects? as was the assignment for Comedy Central’s “The Man Show” promos. These are the daily challenges of the sound designer. Now Darmi is extending his purview to movies, having recently completed the Sound Design on two feature films for video release: “Faithless” for Tribeca Films, staring Ryan O’Neal, Cher, Chaz Palmetari and Robert Dinero, directed by Paul Mizurski.

And what does the future hold? Darmi thinks the advent of broadband on the Internet will open vast opportunities for websites enhanced with sound design. “Websites are at the stage silent movies were at the beginning of the century. As soon as people discovered the ‘talkies’, silent films became a thing of the past. There are already sites using creative sound design such as Boeing Aircraft’s home page. They have a signature sound to underscore their logo, and this is just the beginning.”

Wherever Sound Design evolves to in this century, you can be sure Peter Darmi will be helping shape that future.