Category Archives: Sound Design

Sound design examples

Power Tool Percussion

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Today I decided to record my electric drill. It was on a list of “things i need to record”. Power tools make some great sounds with all sorts of textures and frequencies. I captured the sound of the drill in stereo at a variety of speeds. I also got the sound of switching the drill from forward to reverse. Afterward I chopped it up into a percussive loop and ran it through beat repeat to get a nice mechanical loop going.

Beat repeat has pitch decay setting that incrementally lowers the pitch of repeated slices, which you can hear in the piece. I also maximized the chance settings to increase the likelihood of repeats happening and the variation setting to vary the length of the slices used in the repetition.

Power Tool Percussion

Around the Fire

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Last Friday I posted sounds created by rowers on the Mississippi river. Sadly, weak batteries prevented me from capturing much more, but I gave them a rest and had another go a bit later in the evening. This time my aim was to record the sound of the fire crackling. I wasn’t bothered about the general ambiance of the site, or the noise my mates were making as I made the recording.

What you hear is the fire crackling, a plane flying overhead, someone breaking sticks for the fire, someone crushing a can (we only bring cans and pack them all out when we leave, often including other cans that were there before we arrived), and a couple of my friends chatting about meteorites before the batteries gave out again. Before we left we made sure that the fire was completely out and no stray cans were left behind.

Around the Fire

Pigs on Horses

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The Mississippi River is where my mates and I like to retreat to for fun and mischief. The other day
I was poorly documenting John Keston making some field recordings of a passing rowing team with my cell phone camera. I took the audio from the footage and made a little ambient piece using loads of processing. If I explained the treatment that I used on this short little low bit number I would have to write a book. So I’ll keep it short. I’m also posting the video so you can catch a glimpse of our late afternoon shenanigans. Now do you understand how I got the title for this ditty?

Pigs on Horses

 

 

University of Minnesota Row Team

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One of the things I like to do with a few friends is ride bikes to a spot along the Mississippi river, light a fire, and have a few beers. It’s the best happy hour in town. At this particular spot it is not uncommon to catch the University of Minnesota row team practicing. Anticipating this possibility I decided to put a field recorder and microphone in my bag.

Unfortunately I did not have the foresight to bring extra batteries so all I was able to capture was this short section of a four man team going by followed by their coach in a motor boat with a megaphone. At this time of the evening the river is like glass, so shortly afterward you can hear their wake splashing on the beach.

Forgetting the batteries was not the only mistake I made. I also set the levels too low and although I was using a wind screen the recording was dominated by a low frequency wind rumble that would not have been there had I enabled the bass roll-off on the mic. I did my best to fix it by boosting the levels and running it through a high pass filter.

Row Team

 

Ominous Synth Drone

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I programmed a couple of parameters in a VST synth to a controller, set a single note (C1) to play for three minutes and eleven seconds, then recorded the automation. The parameters I was manipulating in real time were the shape of the waveform and the frequency. After recording the automation I added a bit of compression, a nice slow chorus to give it a left to right sweep, and a short delay with a lot of feedback for some added atmosphere. The image is just a snapshot from my photos and has nothing to do with the sound, but you’ve gotta love stick figure warning messages.

Ominous Synth Drone