When we started on the sound for Vrijheidskwartier in Wageningen, the first conversation wasn't about what it should sound like. It was about what it must never sound like.
Some context. Vrijheidskwartier grew up around Hotel de Wereld, where the German surrender was signed in 1945. Today it's a place for education, art and film, and for the history of the building itself. School groups come through too. So the sound had to respect what happened there and still feel open and alive.
The list
We wrote it down together. No military drums. No mournful strings. Nothing that sounds like the music you hear under remembrance footage on television.
That list took about half an hour. And I'm fairly sure it saved us two rounds of revisions.
Why the "never" list works so well
Asking people what they want something to sound like is hard. Most people don't have the words, and you end up with a mood board full of adjectives that everyone reads differently. "Respectful" means one thing to a historian and something else to a marketing manager.
Asking what it must never sound like is easier. People know straight away. And because the answers are concrete (an instrument, a tempo, a style) there's no room for interpretation. Nobody argues about what "no military drums" means.
It also gets the sensitive stuff on the table early. On heritage and remembrance work there's always a line you really don't want to cross, and it's much better to find it in the first meeting than in the third demo.
What was left
Once the "never" list was done, what remained was a palette of acoustic textures: wood, breath, space. Sounds that point to the era without trying to imitate it, warm enough that a class of twelve-year-olds doesn't feel like they've walked into a funeral.
I use this on almost every brief now, not just the serious ones. Even for a consumer brand, ten minutes on "this is not us" saves a lot of guessing later. Try it at the start of your next project. You'll be surprised how quickly the room agrees.