Category Archives: Sound Design

Sound design examples

Wobbling a Plastic Cutting Mat

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I have yet to use this recording for anything. I made it about a year ago when I was working on the sound design for a 3D animated short. It was one of many sounds that didn’t make the cut, but still has an interesting characteristic or two. We’re all familiar with the sheet metal wobble. The plastic mat wobble is similar, but with less racket and a sort of low frequency rubbery quality. I must have been holding my breath during the recording because you can hear me breathe in deeply at the end.

Wobbling a Plastic Cutting Mat

ACB August 2008 Sample Pack

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Today, freesound.org approved the ACB August 2008 sample pack. This sample pack is comprised of sounds found on AudioCookbook.org that were posted during the month of August, 2008 in the Share Remix Adapt category. My goal is to package these sample packs on freesound.org once a month so you have access to high quality versions of the sounds on ACB.

Each sound is uncompressed and available through freesound.org in it’s original .wav format for free download and use in non-commercial works (I will most often grant permission for commercial use if you contact me in advance). If you make use of these samples please consider donating to ACB using the paypal link in the sidebar.

MUTO by BLU

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A friend sent me this link to an animated piece done on public walls in Buenos Aires and it was just too good not to post here. Fortunately, the piece is fitting for this venue due to the quality of the audio involved.

The animation is amazing, but one of the things I like especially about this piece is the sound design and music. It’s starts deceptively with typical city ambiance, but when the animation begins it quickly changes into a combination of experimental music and clever sound design carefully synchronized to the visuals.

More information about the artist and examples of their work can be found at blublu.org. The animation is by BLU assisted by Sibe, and the music / sound design is by Andrea Martignoni.

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Hummingbird Morse Code

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One of the things I do frequently, either for the sake of experimentation or for inspiration, is to apply multiple levels of processing with the intent of significantly manipulating an otherwise mundane sound. With a myriad of audio effects available to us this is also a good exercise in learning how certain kinds of processing impacts audio.

I started with a loop of hand drums going through Fragulator (Pluggo). Fragulator fragments the input signal into chunks, similar to grain-table synthesis. The chunks are looped at varying speeds to create a broad variety of effects. It was already drastically different from the original, so I chose to add only one more device. Harmonic Filter (Pluggo again) controls twenty-five filters with a cellular automata algorithm. I used its filter sweep mechanism to spread the stereo spectrum and provide tonal variety over the 1:25 minute recording.

Humming Bird Morse Code

Robot Conspiracy

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I can’t seem to get enough robot action these days. Robots have lots of personality. Much more than politicians who convene in St. Paul. I used a similar technique to get this sound as I did for Robot Music. This time, however, I did a bit of processing after the fact, including pitching the recording down thirteen steps. Why thirteen? Because thirteen is a cool number. It’s subversive and pagan and not a floor in lots of buildings. I also added some standard reverberation and automated up some delay at the end to please my sense of aural space.

Robot Conspiracy