Post Train Gravel Foot Stomp

As the sound of the freight train faded off into the distance and the railroad crossing bells came into view, I continued recording while deliberately walking on top of the large gravel that surrounded the train tracks. I particularly like the course crunching sound my footsteps made on the large gravel in contrast to the the softer sound of the finer gravel path leading away from the tracks. The wind screen helped but you can still hear some of it on the diaphragm giving the recording some lackluster, non-technical characteristics.

Post Train Gravel Foot Stomp

 

Electric Drill Sounds

Here are the original electric drill sounds from the Power Tool Percussion post, which I am presenting without any processing by request. The recording was made with a Shure VP88 stereo condenser microphone. I ran the drill at several different speeds while holding it still, and moving it around the mic to simulation motion.

Toward the end you can hear the stress on the motor as I drilled a few holes in a piece of wood. Although I have done lots of strange things to produce sound in my past, for some reason it felt really weird drilling holes in wood for no reason other than capturing the sound it made.

Electric Drill Recording

 

Down Pitched Wood Floor Creaks

To make this 4:15 minutes long recording I found a creaky spot on the wooden floors of my house, rocked back and forth in place and pointed a stereo mic at my feet. I remember doing this years ago, but thought I’d give it another go using a faster sampling rate and bit depth so the quality is not reduced as much when pitched down. Before making the recording I set the sampling rate and bit depth to 96kHz and 24 bit. I pitched it down two octaves and then normalized the results before rendering the final output.

I’ve suggested this technique on several occasions to students and sound designers to manufacture a realistic simulation of a creaking ship. It’s sounds as if I added reverb, but it’s just the natural sound of the room itself. I was not particularly careful about recording in a quiet environment. I heard a car go by outdoors at one point, but it’s not too noticeable after the down pitching.

Down Pitched Wood Floor Creaks

Sound of the Economy Flushed Down a Million Electric Toilets

To create this sound I took the bubbles sound from yesterday and programmed it into a simple sampling VST. I built a pattern of chords in a MIDI clip that covered a wide range of frequencies for the sample simultaneously. This created a sort of spectrum of pitches. The next step was to spread that spectrum of pitches by resampling the output in a processor called Fragulator that effectively chops up the sample into fragments that can then be automatically looped at different frequencies.

I automated the speed and size of the samples so that I could go from a high-frequency-electronic-stock-market-crash effect to a fragmented-toilet-gurgle-of-lost-revenue sound in a fraction of a second with a controller. I hope you will enjoy listening to this sound more that watching your savings evaporate.

Pitch Spectrum

 

Bubbles

Ever get yelled at by your parents for blowing bubbles through your straw? Well, now it’s my job to blow bubbles through a straw. For this recording I blew bubbles in a glass of water (not Guinness as the photo suggests) while recording the results. I used this sound to create the underwater atmosphere for Aaron Dabelow’s 3D animated short, “Drown”. You can hear the pitched and processed version in the post, Water Atmosphere. There’s also a link to the movie in the post.

Bubbles