I have had this sound so long that it’s difficult to trace where it came from and how is was originally processed. I think it dates back to early in the year 2000. So, how does one deduce what the sound is and how it’s processed just by listening? Let me start by forgoing paranormal techniques. Although it sounds “creepy”, I’m guessing that I didn’t accidentally record ghosts eight years ago.
First of all it is obvious to me that the sound is another example of reversed audio. It’s also likely that the sound was processed through a delay before it was reversed due to the repetitive nature of the fade in at the beginning. It also sounds like it includes a vocal element, but there are other textures and percussive layers to the sound suggesting that it it is made up of several tracks. I could investigate it further, but everyone loves a mystery.
Creepy
hey, it’s no so hard to make creepy sounds.
In h**p://deathball.net/notpron/stuff/mus1.mp3 (A internet game), the author tell us that he did that sound reversing an slowing an elvis sample!
Anyway, it’d be good to have some kind of recipe to develop fast a complete range of creepy, horrible sounds.
Love the site,
Haj.-
Wow, amazing site! Found it through CDM. Inspiring. I’m going to record something today and put you on my RSS feed.
Congratulations on a very productive and useful blog. I’m digging through the older posts now. Just wanted to let you know; like Dr. Frasier Crane said: ‘I’m Listening’.
IMHO your sample has 3 important elements to be termed ‘creepy’.
a) The most obvious one is surely the vocal part near the end which sounds like a child or woman – whose voice ascends and slopes, kinda being surprised, almost painfully – reminds me to shouts from a rollercoaster.
b) The vocal part (including its reverberation) seems to be reversed, which can be detected in the end, when the voice ends rather abruptly – without having reverb there. As we know, things played backwards tend to sound quite unnatural and strange.
c) The leading 5 seconds are dominated by a low frequency machine-like sound of about 9 Hertz (perceivable by our awareness). A closer look via wav editor reveals ‘shadow-peaks’ between the 9 Hz peaks (presumably due to an applied reverb effect), which sums to an 18 Hz signal (perceivable at least by our subconscious). This infrasonic frequency range of 16…20 Hz is known as not only being displeasing for many people (e.g. me) but also as mystical range in old cultures and even contemporary paranormal science: accordingly such oscillations promote apparition or ghost phenomenons.
The truth is probably our inherent fear of seismic dangers such as landslides or earthquakes.