Tag Archives: Sound Design

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

Up the Apples and Pears

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This recording was made with a Shure VP88 stereo condenser mic on a Fostex FR-2LE field recorder as I was leaving work this evening. I usually exit out of a back stairwell with cement steps and brick walls. In other words, loads of natural sound reverberation.

The audio starts as I open the door to the stairwell. First I ascended two flights, turned around and descended four. I then opened the door to the outside alley and parking lot, where I was greeted with post-rainfall, nighttime, city ambiance. I crossed the street to my bike where two workers packed up their tools in their van. Then I pressed stop, packed up my gear and rode home.

While recording I enabled the bass roll-off on the mic. Then I ran the 48kHz 24bit digital recording through a compressor at 4:1 to reduce some of the transient peaks and bring out some of the background noises. I also normalized it during the render to maximize the volume.

Up the Apples and Pears

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.

Living Room Ambiance

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This sound was captured accidentally in my living room as I fiddled about getting ready to record my piano. The hardwood floors created some serious low frequencies up the mic stand as I was moving around.

If you listen carefully, you can really hear the shape and temperature or the room. I added a significant amount of gain to get this into an audible range. Otherwise, it’s really just an example of a recording that I never intended to make.

Living Room Ambiance

 

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.