vintage sci-fi retro sounds

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Vintage laserHey again. More from the Lost Track archives! As my last contribution focussed on the huge NZL14 Yacht, I thought what better than to continue where I left off…

This sound is not an original discovery, but it certainly feels satisfying one you know where it came from – I’ve heard many techniques on getting this sort of sound, including striking telegraph poles. In this instance, it came from a large steel mainstay cable which was very thick and under several tonnes of pressure. After being struck, they started to move metal rings up and down, giving a raspy sound. I’ve got hours of this stuff!

Sci Fi retro laser gun sound!

Warbled Delay Trails on Korg MS2000

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I came across this sample from a performance on July 13, 2006. It is a delayed synthesizer line that I played and captured as a clip in Ableton Live during the show. What’s interesting to me about this clip is the obvious modulation in pitch on the delay trails. This is not something that I programmed into the patch and I suspect is actually caused by a bug in the Korg MS2000. It’s possible to recreate this bug by enabling tempo delay then sending external sync to the instrument. I rarely experience this glitch anymore because rather than using the delay on the Korg, I usually run it through tempo delay in the software. However, I kind of like the ghostly quality it creates in this short passage.

Warbled Synth Delay

Reverberated Metal Scraping

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Today has been a busy day on ACB with new contributor Tom Player’s lovely yacht recording and Nils Westdal’s Christopher Willits remix. So, all I have for you is a quick sound to fulfill my One Sound Every Day duties. I created this diffused noise montage by pitching down a metal wheel scraping sound and then running it through a very long reverb.

Reverberated Metal Scraping

 

Colors Shifting Remix by ten72

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A few years back I decided to enter a remix contest presented by ccMixter and XLR8R Magazine. The track to be remixed was “Colors Shifting” by Ghostly International recording artist Christopher Willits. Of course the contest was almost over when I started so I was really just doing it for shear creativity. I used only a small amount of samples that were available which included a string section, voice and guitar sound I think. One of my favorite sections of this remix was created by sampling my own bass harmonics and then programing them into a pretty melodic pattern. I had a couple email conversations with Chris himself letting him know that I couldn’t finish it in time. He was nice enough to let me know he would consider a late submission but I ended up working on it for another month and kept it to myself until now. 

colors-shifting-ten72-shift

Listen to the original version of Colors Shifting.

Creaks ‘n Groans

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Hey Audio Cookbookers,

I’m Tom Player and have been a reader of ACB for a while, and a sound recordist for a long time. I run a website lostrack.co.uk where I store some commercial and personal work. I’ve got a huge archive of great recordings, some of which I plan to unleash here soon!

About this time last year I was in New Zealand, exploring and recording everywhere I went. I was fortunate enough to meet one of the captains of the NZL14 racing yacht who invited me on board with their crew, to record the sounds of them all in action. What I didn’t expect was the sound of the boat to be so fascinating!

A bit about the yacht, it’s a work of engineering excellence. The sail is one piece Kevlar, the hull carbon fibre, and the keel is 16 tons of lead. It’s formula 1 on the water – she makes beautiful groaning, creaking noises, like nothing you’ve ever heard before.

Gear: Fostex FR2-LE with matched stereo pair rode NT5 mics.