Category Archives: Sound Design

Sound design examples

GMS Probability Distributions

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The most recent addition I have made to the GMS is probability distributions for note pitches and durations. The way this works is that the user adjusts sliders from zero to one-hundred for each note in the twelve tone (chromatic) scale.

When note probability distributions are enabled, the randomness is weighted so that notes set to zero will never play while at one-hundred the note has the maximum probability of playing. This way the user can setup any sequence of notes in a scale or chord, then toss in a small (or large) possibility for an altered or dissonant note.

The same is true for duration probabilities except that I have the dotted durations as a separate possibility that is applied to the duration determined by the weighted random function. Here’s an example of the note and duration probability distributions in action with the settings as shown in the image.

GMS Probability Distributions

Freesound.org Loop

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One thing I often do when illustrating to my students the breadth of sounds available on Freesound.org is to start looping multiple sounds simultaneously to instantly create a new sound piece. I never really bother capturing these, but recently I routed the output to Pro Tools as the loops were going in Freesound and got this result. The sounds used can be found here.

Lovely Loop

Mendota Springs Sparkling Water Can Being Opened

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Hi, my name is Graham O’Brien and I’m a drummer, audio engineer, and composer living in St. Paul, MN.  I play in some really fun bands around town (including Keston & Westdal!) and specialize in drumming and writing for sequenced music.  And having gotten a recording degree, I do some work recording and mixing radio commercials at Marketing Architects ad agency in Mineeapolis.  I also am building a drum recording studio in my basement that’s coming along really well and I’ll be posting plenty of really cool stuff from there.  Now, for my first post to Audio Cookbook.

This is a short but pristine recording of me opening a can of Mendota Springs Sparkling Water (Lemon flavor).  I recorded it at the radio production studio I work at, and the recording chain is amazing.  First we tuned and sound-proofed the recording booth down to -32dB of isolation.  Here’s the recording chain:

Neumann U87a  (cardiod pattern, hi pass off)> Great River Electronics MP-2NV Mercenary Edition Class A Mic Pre > Langevin Electro/Optical Compressor/limiter > Pro Tools HD via 192 i/o interface

This recording was done at 44.1Khz, 16bit.  The only processing I used is the Massey L2007 Limiter to make it louder: mendota-springs-can-loud

Earlier Freesound.org Loop

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Here’s an earlier example of a loop from Freesound.org that I produced for my class in the same fashion as the example that I described in Freesound.org Loop. I’d love to hear other examples of these, so if you have them, please post them in a comment.

Earlier Freesound Loop

Octave Pedal Bass Harmonics

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I don’t really have much to explain about this recording. I was trying to get some dirty warbled sounds by playing my bass through an octave pedal. This is an example of harmonics using just the single lower octave setting. The result is a really fun nasally percussive sound. Perhaps this could be the catalyst for a new Keston and Westdal piece.

Octave Pedal Bass Harmonics