Monday 28 February 2011

Sound-A-Day 28.02.2011

Here we are then, last sound of February. 2 months in an I think Ive been doing alright. Been a little bit slack the last week or so, but the thoughts of moving house and starting a new job have been keeping me very preoccupied.

Ah well, here's today's sound. This one is an attempt at making some nice sci fi space ship effects. I'm pretty into Star Trek, not a Trekkie as such, but I enjoy watching it when it's on. One of the things I really like is the cloaking devices for making these hug ships invisible, really great idea, and an unusual thing to approach from a sound design perspective, so I thought I'd have a go.

The tricky thing I think is trying to maintain a sense of scale, after all these ships are supposed to be big enough to carry hundreds or thousands of people, yet the idea of invisibility or translucency suggests delicacy. A weird combo to imagine.

CLOAKING DEVICE by Noisy Neighbour Sound

Here's my effort, aside from a little bit of post editing in Soundforge, it's all just a Massive patch I made. I think it's not a bad effort. I'm finding it really helpful to try and imagine the thing I'm making a sound for, being more contextual rather than conceptual if that makes sense. It's definitely harder, but more satisfying when the result comes out ok. 

Weekend Photos

So at the moment Lucy and I are starting to plan a move out of Brighton. If all goes according to plan that may be within the next couple months. Really really excited!! All depends on a job I'm waiting for a reply from, which if I'm successful will mean a dream job in my favourite city. Fingers crossed everyone.

So, since we may be leaving Brighton soon, we thought we may as well make the most of it, and go for a photography trip around our area, see if we can get any nice shots. Here are some of the ones I took.


























Sound-A-Day 25.02.2011

Well, I did it again!

As I may have mentioned previously, I am currently unemployed having quit my last job. One of the wonderful things about being unemployed is the amount of free time you get to working on the things you love. One of the downsides is it's all to easy to loose track of where in the week you are. I thought that Friday was Saturday, and therefore not a sound-a-day day... oh well.

So as way of apology, I hope you'll accept a nice track instead of just a sound. After all, a track is made up of many sounds, talk about value for money!!

This is a track from an EP I released late last year as a free MP3 download. Just a fun little side project I had been busy with. One way I find really nice to write music is just to get a few synths running together and jam about with things. The EP was a few of those jams, edited and arranged into more coherent tracks. Not my usual style of output, but I still really love these tracks, and so I hope you enjoy it!

ROT13 TRACK4 by Noisy Neighbour Sound

If you fancy checking out the rest of the EP, you can download it for free HERE


























As I said, it's all ideas that started from jams, so expect drifting tuning, rough mixing and all the rest, but I like that aspect, bit of the charm for me, especially considering how particular I normally get with tracks.  

Thursday 24 February 2011

Sound-A-Day 24.02.2011

Ok, here's another sound along the same ideas as the previous one. But very different sounding still, same mood though I think.

This one, to be honest, started out as a bit of messing about with Carbon 2. Just making some classic snarly bass sounds. Was playing with the Band reject filter cutoff and found this sort of sweet spot where the synth just let out this awesome growl type of sound. Not especially musical, but really cool effect.

I recorded the output, and opened it up in Soundforge. Did a bit of EQ to hopefully accent the growl a bit more. Next I put that into Absynth, in one of the granular channels. Made an envelope for controlling the Grain Speed and size, a bit of pitch modulation and a bit of amplitude modulation.

That's more or less it, nothing too fancy I guess, but I really like the result!

DIGI-GROWL by Noisy Neighbour Sound

Sound-A-Day 23.02.2011

Phew, playing catch up once again! Dear oh dear..

Truth be told I've been feeling pretty dry the last couple days. I've just recently finished creating and compiling a huge amount of sounds into a portfolio for a couple job applications. Its really taken it out of me, trying to keep thinking of new ideas to try for 3 days solid. Yesterday I just didn't even want to look at a computer screen!

Today, however, is different! Well and truly back on it. Had an idea of something I wanted to try, or rather a mood I wanted to create, and all of a sudden the ideas started coming. Wanted to try and make some really dark, modern, abstract noises. Hopefully to build up into some ambient tracks. I have a pretty clear image in my head of what I'm after which would be a little difficult to describe, but hopefully the sounds will help.

The first one was an attempts at combining a couple different things. I think the 2 things that jump out in my head first when I think about dark ambient sounds are clangorous gong type noises, and dissonant plucked string chords. Both can be really effective and I thought it would be fun to try and combine them. I built a little patch which is based around a couple different synth ideas. The first being a bank of sine oscillators which are all running through ring modulation, to make the gong part. The other is a comb filter with various different colours of noise to excite it. Then a couple envelopes to control the amplitude of each section, and some LFO's routed to various places to give it some movement.

The result sounded pretty cool, maybe a bit more metallic than strings, but not bad. I recorded myself playing a few random chords, chucked the whole lot through a big reverb, and pitched the whole lot down by a few semi tones to size it up.

METAL HORROR HITS by Noisy Neighbour Sound

I think the result is pretty cool, definitely dark and ambient. I could probably do with experimenting a bit more with the chords I'm playing as some sound considerably better than others. I think the 3rd is probably my favourite. 

Tuesday 22 February 2011

Sound-A-Day 22.02.2011

After scrolling back through posts, having a look at all the sounds I've uploaded so far, I realised that thinks have been getting a bit too music-y and less sound effect-y.

So in an effort to establish a more even balance, here is a big fat atonal sound!

I was trying to make an effect similar to what you might here when a spaceship generator fails and shuts down. I wanted to not only create the general impression of something powerful shutting down, but also try and include the sound of all the nano-circuits and discrete functions that would make up a large piece of equipment. Maybe adding a bit more character to the sound.

SHUT DOWN by Noisy Neighbour Sound

The sound started off as a patch in the Carbon 2 Reaktor instrument. I recorded a couple different versions with different filter settings to try and accent different aspects of the output. These got merged together in Soundforge where I applied a bit more processing and EQ to try and add the futuristic gloss you might expect from such a sound.

I have still to add a bit of reverb in order to give the sound a context so to speak, but I am undecided as to what that should be. Maybe all over the ship (like it is in Star Trek) or more localised, for example in the "engine room"

Still, I am happy with this one so far, came out more or less as I had in my mind, and that's always a satisfying feeling.

Sound-A-Day 21.02.2011

Well, I think in all fairness I've been really lucky so far. Without a doubt, my home Internet connection is the worst service I have ever encountered. Connection is intermittent to put it mildly.

Last night was one of those days when connection doesn't stay up for even a minute. Will upload the sound from yesterday today.

So continuing with where I was at last week, making sounds with NI Massive, here's another nice one I thought I would share.

It's still a relatively complex patch but quite different from the previous one. It's using the performer channels to move through wave table positions which creates the chord sequence. Another performer channel controlling the filter cutoff which creates some nice movement in the filter. The noise generator is also running through the filter and gives a little bit of dustiness to the overall timbre.

FOND MEMORY by Noisy Neighbour Sound

The reason I like this one is a bit different from usual I guess. As I said, it's not an especially complex patch or some esoteric production method. But to me it sounds really evocative, although of what I'm not quite sure! I love those moments when you find a synth patch or odd little sound that has enough character that a track almost writes itself around it. I really like when that happens, it's like being a producer and a musician all at once!

Thursday 17 February 2011

Sound-A-Day 17.02.2011

Oh well, it happened again. I heard the birds singing outside my windows, realised it's nearly morning and I still haven't uploaded a sound!

Spent most of the day today making some patches in Massive. It's an incredibly powerful synth, and absolutely great sound. You can get pretty good analogue-ish sounds, and even pretty decent string modelling out of it. But really it excels in making super clean digital goodness.




















Probably my favourite thing about it is the performer modulation channels. With all the different curves you can choose from, its possible to get some really complex sequences going. There are a couple things that niggle me about it, especially concerning the LFO's and envelopes, but really it sounds mega!

Here's a little looper I made earlier today. It's just a stand alone patch, recorded straight out of the box. The screen shot above should give a pretty good idea of whats going on, better than my usual terrible explanations anyway!

MASSIVE COMB LOOP by Noisy Neighbour Sound

I'm in the middle of making some large sound banks, including some for Massive. I'll be sure to put em up online when they're done for anyone who is interested.

Wednesday 16 February 2011

Sound-A-Day 16.02.2011

Yawn!!

Wow, I should really get into the habit of doing this earlier in the day. But I always get so involved in things I'm working on, that before I know it, it's 3 in the morning and I haven't uploaded anything yet!

Oh well, I'm sticking to my rule that the day hasn't ended for me until Ive gone to sleep, so it's still the 15th!

Today's sound was a first attempt at something that has been going in my head for a while. I'm really into exploring old broken down buildings. It's fascinating to see how the building decays without people inside it, taking care of it. What I love most of all is the ambiance of it, the unusual and often sinister environment is very compelling, especially in the early hours. Ir's amazing how responsive your ears get in that situation, the slightest unexpected sound can really put you on edge. While the most I ever encountered was a cat, I've often wondered how I would feel walking through an old empty hospital for example, and hearing the most terrifying noise echo through the halls.

SINISTER HALLS by Noisy Neighbour Sound

Here's my first attempt at making that type of sound. I think maybe its a bit overkill. But still in the right ball park. It started off with me making "creepy" noises into a microphone. The classic ghostly WwwwOOOOooos and so on. Once I'd got a few I was happy with, I started to apply some pretty heavy filter effects to adjust the timbre of my voice. Next these where run through a Spectral Delay type patch in Reaktor. I played around with this for a while, trying to get a fairly subtle effect out of it, recording the output as I went. This recording I opened in Soundforge, a touch of time stretch, and a small amount of editing to just smooth everything a bit. Then finally into logic for a bit of EQing and a healthy dose of Lexicon Reverb.

Would like to have my monitors to reference this on. Needs just the right amount of low end, which I suspect is lacking at the moment. Will have another go at this one I think, since I have a pretty clear idea of the noise I'm after, and this isn't quite it.

Still, I do like it a lot and is certainly on the sinister side of things.

Tuesday 15 February 2011

Sound-A-Day 15.02.2011

Wow, what a tiring day!
Been working really hard on a couple things since I got up, and my ears are warn out! But I feel quite accomplished. Made a lot of progress in a track I'm currently midway through and made a lot of headway in debugging another Reaktor patch I'm planning to put up here.

It started out as an idea a friend and I had for a grid style sequenced synth, for fast live improvisation. Similar to a monome interface, and a TB303 in tone. It works out really well, but I decided to ramp it up a couple notches. Have built in some resonant MS20 style filters, and some very gnarly FM too. Just been busy today working on control lanes for all the parameters. I did start this patch a while ago, but ran into some issues I just couldn't get my head around. Sometimes a bit of a break can really help, made a lot of progress today.

The interface is still a little bland perhaps, but here are some pics of it so far,

View A:

























View B:

























It's pretty nifty so far, a lot of fun to use and surprisingly versatile. The pics don't give away too much, so here's a little loop from it.

GRID-LOOP-1 by Noisy Neighbour Sound

It can sound far more straight up, and less twangy/bendy/weird, but I like the idea of having the possibilities to really mess with the sound contained within the instrument itself. Far easier to navigate. Anyway, should be up and downloadable in a day or so! 

Monday 14 February 2011

Sound-A-Day 14.02.2011

So, another week, another post.

This ones something a bit different, and a nice thing to try. I've found on of the most fun ways of learning your way round a piece of kit or software is to make a track using nothing else. It's an excellent method of discovering each things strengths and weaknesses.

A while back I got myself a copy of the Arturia ARP2600 emulation, and although I've used it a few times, and really enjoyed it, I haven't really had the time to get deep into it, which is certainly something it deserves. So this evening I figured I'd see what I could get out of it.















One of the really nice things about it is the built in sequencer, means that you can open it up in standalone and get a nice riff looping. And of course, because it's software, you can open more that one instance at a time. So I thought rather than loading it into a host program, why not just open it a load of times in standalone mode?

I managed to built a pretty cool looping pattern of drums and bass line, although it did take a fair few efforts to get everything really tightly synced. Once it was all running nicely though it was brilliant fun to jam about.

Once I'd got all the parts ticking along nicely, I recorded each part and arranged them into a structure in Logic. There's very little else going on, all sounds are from the ARP, with only an additional reverb on the high melody part, and a touch of overall compression.

ARTURIA-ACID by Noisy Neighbour Sound

So hopefully the mix isn't too terrible, still having to rely exclusively on headphones!

I really like this plugin, it has an awesome sound, and really fun to use, relatively CPU light to boot. One thing I think would make a great addition would be, rather than each instance opening separately, that they open within the same program. You would then be able to patch between multiple ARPs, which to be honest, would be amazing!!!

Incidentally, if anyone is interested in remixing the parts, or just fancies playing with the patches, let me know and I will bundle up the patch files for download. Alternatively, if you don't have this particular plugin, I can make a folder of the individual parts in WAV format.

Friday 11 February 2011

Sound-A-Day 10.02.2011

Well ok, so it's not really the 10th. Still playing catch up from earlier this week. Probably will have to break my golden rule of not posting on the weekends. Ah well, my bed, I'll lay in it!

Well, here's a new sound for the 10th anyway. I'll be honest, I had no real goal when I started out on this, just a few things I wanted to try.

First off, Lucy bought herself a very swanky new lens while we where in London. It's a macro lens which is designed for very close up detailed shots. It looks absolutely stunning. I don't think she was best pleased with my first response when she demonstrated it though. The motors in it are really noisy, so straight away I asked if I could record it.

The next thing I wanted to try is also based on a photography idea. You may have noticed from the pics I upload that I'm really into HDR stuff. For those who aren't familiar with the technique, essentially it involves taking several shots of the same thing with different exposure settings. When you combine them together the result is an image with an exaggerated dynamic quality, hence HDR (High Dynamic Range) I thought it might be interesting to try the same thing with audio.

I used a clip-on contact microphone, and recorded the lens doing a failed focus. I did about 20 different recordings, each time with the mic on a different part of the lens and camera body, hoping that the amount of stuff between the mic and motor would create a nice range of filtering.

Then I spent quite a while trimming all the different samples exactly to size, before opening them into Logic for Merging together. The result was actually better than I expected, because the recordings gave such a wide frequency spectrum, you can get really aggressive with filtering and EQ. The only downside of course is the exaggeration of line hum etc.

Still, I didn't really want to just upload a nice recording of a servo, that's a bit dull. So next up I decided to just go to town on the sound inside Soundforge, making particular use of the Plugin Chainer. Something I've been getting into more and more since starting this blog.

TWISTING MOTORS by Noisy Neighbour Sound

There is a lot of editing done to this, more that is worth going into detail over. Most notable however is probably the time stretch, can never have enough time stretch!

Thursday 10 February 2011

Sound-A-Day 09.02.2011

Coffee is pretty much the life bringer in this house. We get through so much it's probably not healthy, but how else are you supposed to survive on 4 hours sleep a day?!

The only downside is when you've drunk a bit too much and not slept enough, and get that strange dizzy sensation. Very odd feeling indeed. So I decided I'd make a sound that is supposed to represent that feeling.

Suitably enough, it started out as a recording of a filter coffee machine. We attached some contact mics to it and recorded while it was brewing, lots of nice spitting and squirting noises. The other thing about contact mics is that they'll pic up ambient noises in an odd way too. The recording has a few cars driving past which, when heard as resonance through a coffee maker, sounded rather cool as well.

So I took the recording, and edited out my favourite parts, then made them into a sample map and loaded it into Metaphysical Function in Reaktor. As well as it's built in modulation, I also patched in a couple extra LFO's to control sample selection and so on. Dialed up an interesting patch and recorded the output.

Next that got loaded back into Soundforge. I used a very slight frequency shifter, and a slight auto pan effect, just to warp the sound a little further. Finally I used the time stretching function to enhance the sense of disorientation I was aiming for.

DIZZY-CAFFEINE-HEAD-SPIN by Noisy Neighbour Sound

Really pleased with this one, not far off the sound I was going for at all. Sounds extra effective through headphones.

Incidental, I got my new headphones for while my monitors are being fixed. Ended up getting some Beyer Dynamic DT990s. Absolutely love them! Comfy and crystal clear, highly recommend them to anyone looking for a pair of good open backed cans, here's a pic I took, super HDR, because that's how they sound compared to my last pair!

Mid-Week Photos

So the other reason I've been a bit slack with keeping up on the blog, is that Yesterday I had to go into Moorefields Eye Hospital for an appointment. I've had Corneal Transplants in both eyes, one quite a few years ago, the other pretty recently. Was due in to get the stitches removed, and take my word for it, it's a pretty intense procedure, feeling someone picking at microscopic threads on your eyeballs is not at the top of my favourite things ever!

Still, Lucy had the day off too, and so we decided to make a day out of it. Especially wanted to get some pictures around Canary Wharf. It's pretty cool around there, though the security are a bit tetchy about people wandering round with tripods and bags of lenses. Still, we managed to get some pretty cool shots.

Here are some of mine:
















































































And here are some of Lucy's:






















































































It's a really nice place for photography, I didn't find any of the architecture that interesting, the overall impression of the place is quite striking, We're definitely going back there, didn't get nearly enough this time round, and hopefully I'll get my white balance settings a bit better next time.

I have to say, looking at them side to side, just shows me I still have a lot to learn! I think my favourite is the second one of Lucy's, really cool!

Sound-A-Day 08.02.2011

Finally!!!

Wow what a tiring last few days, really annoyed at myself for having missed a few days. To be honest I figured it would be somewhat inevitable that I might not manage a sound a day every day. That's the way life goes I suppose.

So, FINALLY got my PC back on its feet. Ended up buying a new Hard Drive, and starting a complete reinstall of everything, backing up everything onto a spare drive, and then moving it all back to the right place. With near enough a Terra Byte of things to keep track of, it took a while!

Kept myself amused in the mean time by drawing on my IPad. I got myself Sketchpad Pro, its really good! Slightly cumbersome interface but you get into it after a while. Here's a doodle I was doing while everything was copying across.

























Anyway, I've got some catching up to do, so here's a sound! As I mentioned above, my Ipad has been keeping me busy while my computer recovers, and aside from doodling, I've also been playing with Reactable. It's growing on me I have to say. The oscillators have some nice functions especially. The can each supply 3 different voices, with  independent control for waveform, volume, and tuning. Nice way to thicken things up, so long as you keep everything relative. This was an attempt at using this function to make a nice full pad sound. I did at first use the Reactable Reverb as well, but to be honest, it sounds rubbish. Instead I ran the patch dry into Reaktor and used the Space Master verb, and Duel Sync Delay Instruments.  

REAKTOR-ABLE-PAD by Noisy Neighbour Sound


I think it sounds not half bad! Although the Space Master is one of my favourite sounding reverbs, Reactable still has a pretty decent quality coming out of it. And to be fair, reverb is a CPU intensive effect, so there's no surprise that the Reactable one is a bit crappy sounding.




















There are still a few bugs that I'd love to see ironed out. You get some weird glitches when muting event data, and I wish there was more modules over all. Also I get frustrated when not all parameters can be modulated. But still, Reactable is definitely a cool way of noodling out some ideas when there isn't a functional PC nearby!

Monday 7 February 2011

Sound-A-Day 07.02.2011

Pffff, unbelievably stressed out today!

So following on from Friday, as I mentioned one of my monitors decided it was time to die, and did so. I managed to arrange someone to repair it for me thanks goodness, and bought myself a lovely new pair of headphones to keep me going in the mean time.

Get home and get back into a couple projects I've been working on. Just getting into it when wooop, PC crashes.. ah bugger. No worries, saved not so long ago, can redo the things Ive just done. Restart, reload project, 5 minutes later booof, down she goes again. Repeat this process for the entire duration of yesterday and today.

Trying to make anything in 5 minute stints is pretty much impossible, it's driving me round the bend, not to mention the sheer amount Ive got on at the moment. So much work I need to be doing! STRESSSSssss..

Well, I'm certain that a complete back up and reformat/reinstall is on the cards for tomorrow, that'll be fun!

Anyway, not wanting to be a sore bod all day, I've still managed to get something together for sharing which feels somewhat appropriate.

It's a short little fun track I made a using more or less no computer at all, only running a couple sequences. All sound sources are analogue, and with the exception of the compression, all processing is external too.

Since a few people who check this blog are folks from www.watmm.com, I thought I'd put something together especially for them, something with more than a little Aphex influence...

ZEBRA-CUSTARD by Noisy Neighbour Sound

Well, hope you enjoy it. In all honesty it is really fun to have a break from a computer and make music on outboard kit, I hope to be back on the DSP tomorrow, wish me luck!

Friday 4 February 2011

Sound-A-Day 04.02.2011

Finally Friday evening. Been a long week, still a bit sore about my speakers but what can you do, I guess these things happen. Gonna go looking for some new headphones tomorrow which will ease the pain I think, and then spend the rest of the weekend experimenting with sending OSC to Isadora, and taking a few more HDR, weather permitting, Should be fun!

In the mean time, here's the last sound of the week. Not quite sure where to being trying to explain this one... Started out as a bit of a mess around really. I built a kinda generative patch in Reaktor which responds to Frequency and amplitude of an input and controls the routing, and numerous parameters of a bunch of simple effect macros.

Next I gathered up a collection of metallic objects, springs, gardening tools, tea tray, a medium sized gamelan gong etc. I put these into a large sturdy box and put a condenser and a couple contact microphones in with them. I ran the mics through a small mixer and into Reaktor. Then, I beat the living crap out of them with a crowbar, and recorded the result.

It was... interesting, if somewhat distorted in places =D

I got about 5 mins worth and edited out the best bits, made them into a sample map and loaded that into Metaphysical Function, played about with that for about an hour, again recording the results before editing out the best bits. One sound in particular I really liked, had something that really reminded me of a Cylon from Battlestar Galactica. Like a Mechanoid idling noise. So I took that as the basis for developing the sound a bit further.

Loaded that along with a few more of the sounds into Logic and made a bit of a montage with them. I've also used a few recordings I made of a VHS loading mechanism, a DSLR auto focus, one of the coffee machines at work, an old flatbed scanner, and a broken HDD. Then just a couple subby sin waves to move the air a bit, and it's kinda done!

MECH-MONTAGE by Noisy Neighbour Sound

Really love making these montage type things, a nice way to give the sounds a bit more life and context. Might have to do this more in the future. The thing I find pretty difficult with them though, is keeping them arrhythmic, guess just turn the grid off and use the ears!

(Edit: again soundcloud is being weird and doing it's transcoding nonsense. Hope this one finishes uploading ok, will check back tomorrow)

Thursday 3 February 2011

Sound-A-Day 03.02.2011

So I'm always interested in trying to make robotic and mechanical sounding music, and one of the things I like to do is use recordings of servos and other types of electrical motors. No exaggeration, I have folders full!

This sound started out as an attempt to synthesize the same type of sound, although I ended up getting quite sidetracked.

The sound started off as something resembling a servo, but I decided to try playing about with it in Absynth, I've really fallen in love with the Granular sampling features it has.

I thought it might be fun to try and turn the servo noise into something a little more atmospheric, and Absynth is always great for that type of thing. The servo noise got time stretched with an envelope changing the time parameter. That then runs through a Low Pass filter with a very fast LFO modulating the cut off frequency slightly, to give a bit of colour to the sound. Next it's going through a frequency shifter set very low, which is what causes the gating, and finally through a panning delay effect.

GATED FREQ SHIFT SERVO by Noisy Neighbour Sound

It's not quite what I had in mind when I started, but I guess that's just how it goes sometimes. Still came out with a pretty nice sound, more musical than atmospheric perhaps, but that's maybe not such a bad thing!

Sound-A-Day 02.02.2011

AAggghhhh!! Disaster!!!

Sat down to make some music and stuff last night, switched on my monitors and "Bbbbbbbbbrrrrrrrrrrrrrrap.. Crack!"

"Bollocks...."

So I think the Amp in the right one has gone, really annoying. Spent the rest of the night trying to get it working but to no avail. Gave up and went to bed. Still, hopefully get it fixed on the weekend.

In the mean time, I have some passives which I wired up this morning. They're not great and I don't really trust them, but at least it means I can make some noise for the moment.

So back to the matter at hand. Last entry I posted a kinda glitched out circuit bent robot sound I made with a little Reaktor patch I built. I discovered that it was a cool way of making some WALL E sounds as well, a bit like this:

WALL E TEST by Noisy Neighbour Sound

Just finished polishing it up a bit, making it look all pretty for you all to enjoy, so if you fancy having a play you can download it here This time its a much smaller file, only 2.1mb. It's really easy to use, just select the sound you want to play with, and click & drag on his body.

























There's something I really like about this type of sound design, and it's just another reason why I'm such a fan of Ben Burtt. It has this amazing cross over between sound design and Foley work. I think WALL E's voice is a great example of that, both the initial recording and the playback manipulation have such a strong effect on the end result. The guy is a genius!!

Anyway, hope you enjoy the patch, I really recommend loading some of your own sounds into it, gives some really cool results, and also means you wont have to listen to my terrible vocal takes!

Tuesday 1 February 2011

Sound-A-Day 01.02.2011

So, the first sound of February! Have to say, I'm pretty pleased with myself for keeping this up, loads of sounds uploaded and at least 25% or so are half decent =D

Today I had something very particular in mind for what I wanted to make. Something nice and robotic (well THERE'S a surprise!). I'm really into the sound of circuit bent stuff, especially things like speak n spells and other voice toys. But the thing that puts me off that type of thing is the lack of control, it's all a bit random and hap hazard which isn't really my thing. So as well as making a nice robotic voice, I wanted a way of making it sound similar to a circuit bent device, but also with the ability to control the "bent-ness" so to speak.

BUSTED-BOT by Noisy Neighbour Sound

The robot voice started out using the Fruity Voice generator in Fruity Loops. Set it to monotone for extra mechanical effect. Once I rendered the sample, it was loaded into Sound Forge for a bit of tweaking. There's some bit rate reduction, and pretty hard compression to make sure there is no emphasis what so ever, as mechanical as possible. A bit of fine tuning and it was pretty much there. Next I built a pretty neat little patch in Reaktor based around the resynth sampler module, and an XY panel to control it. I assigned the Y value to control pitch, and the X value is controlling the sample start point. Loop point and speed are set so that moving through the X scale allows for rapid scrubbing through the sample play position.

Really fun way of doing this type of effect, great for allowing a degree of performance. I tried it out with a few different voice recordings, and you can get results VERY similar to the voice of WALL E.

Anyways, I'll upload the patch too for people to have a play with, just want to refine it a touch first.