This is a pretty funny one to share.
I spent the day reworking a couple old tracks that I was planning to play in a live set I have coming up. One of them had a lot of fast break edits going on, with all manner of daft effect processing going on.
I figured I may as well continue in that vein as I reworked the track and stumbled across a cool sound which I figured I may as well continue with a bit.
So this sound actually started life as a kick drum from an Amen break, there's a whole load of stuff done to it, it's hard to remember the exact order I worked in, so wont go into too much detail.
WARNING SIRENS by Noisy Neighbour Sound
It's been EQed and compressed, then I used some stacked comb filters to give a weird twangy resonance to it, pretty high feedback dialed in with a little bit of automation on the delay time.I rendered that out before loading it into a sample and adding some loop points to get it repeating at a cool point. Messed about with pitch and speed till it was getting pretty siren sounding. Again, I rendered that out before loading it into Absynth for a bit of final tweaking. Tried it across the keyboard till I found a note that worked best. Rendered again before opening in sound forge to EQ a little bit and add a reverb.
I was hoping to get a sort of space ship warning siren, like the type that goes off in a sci fi film when the enemy ship is near by. Think I did a pretty good effort!
Showing posts with label effect. Show all posts
Showing posts with label effect. Show all posts
Wednesday, 30 March 2011
Thursday, 24 March 2011
Sound-A-Day 24.03.2011
Sometimes all it takes is a silly idea. A "I wonder what happens if?" type moment. I had one this evening which turned out really well.
Was curious what would happen if you used the same signal for both carrier and modulator inputs on a Vocoder. Only with one of them playing in reverse. So what the hell, lets give it a go!
I took a chunk of vocals out of an anime series I'm quite into called "Serial Experiments Lain" and made 2 sample channels. Loaded the same sound into both channels but reversed the playback of the carrier signal. Ran them into a Vocoder and hit play...
Well, weird to say the least. Definitely some crazy harmonic stuff going on, but all goes a bit too fast to appreciate. For the second attempt I figured Id use granular channels rather than plain samplers. After playing about with the playback speed I ended up settling with a very slow playback speed and a pretty large grain size. It gives a really nice rhythmic overtone I think. Finally a large reverb and done!
INVERTED-VOCODER by Noisy Neighbour Sound
I really like this one! Really simple process to do, and such a cool result. Something I'm going to try and build into a self contained patch of sorts. What would be great would be to combine it with the real time scrubbers I mentioned a couple posts back, and some real time time stretching (time time?). A sound scape generator that works by vocoding yourself with yourself in reverse, could be cool!!
Was curious what would happen if you used the same signal for both carrier and modulator inputs on a Vocoder. Only with one of them playing in reverse. So what the hell, lets give it a go!
I took a chunk of vocals out of an anime series I'm quite into called "Serial Experiments Lain" and made 2 sample channels. Loaded the same sound into both channels but reversed the playback of the carrier signal. Ran them into a Vocoder and hit play...
Well, weird to say the least. Definitely some crazy harmonic stuff going on, but all goes a bit too fast to appreciate. For the second attempt I figured Id use granular channels rather than plain samplers. After playing about with the playback speed I ended up settling with a very slow playback speed and a pretty large grain size. It gives a really nice rhythmic overtone I think. Finally a large reverb and done!
INVERTED-VOCODER by Noisy Neighbour Sound
I really like this one! Really simple process to do, and such a cool result. Something I'm going to try and build into a self contained patch of sorts. What would be great would be to combine it with the real time scrubbers I mentioned a couple posts back, and some real time time stretching (time time?). A sound scape generator that works by vocoding yourself with yourself in reverse, could be cool!!
Wednesday, 16 March 2011
Sound-A-Day 16.03.2011
So really odd moment this morning.
I woke up a little later than usual, stayed up kinda late last night, and almost instantly got a really vivid idea for a patch I wanted to have a go at building.
Not like an idea for something to try, but more like "if i do this, then this, and make that, it WILL be awesome" So I leaped out of bed, made some coffee and got stuck in!
The first part of what I wanted was a synth engine built around a Wave table type deal. So I went to work making some wave forms of various complexities. From a simple sin to some very complex additive ones. I made about 40 in total, each a perfect cycle at the same frequency. I put these together into one long wav file and loaded into one of the sample modules in Reaktor.
Set up a macro to define the correct loop point as so on, and soon enough I had a lovely scanning wave table. I made a duplicate, and a small mixer macro to mix and blend the 2 oscillators in a bunch of different ways.
The next part of my idea was a way of sequencing numerous aspects of the synth engine. Rather than a sequencer lane for pitch, amplitude etc.. I thought it would be fun to make large value tables for sending to envelopes, and sequencer lanes to select from the tables. Essentially meaning you sequence the modulation shapes. This took a while, defining a good selection of envelope profiles and then modifying the envelope generators to redefine those values based on master tempo.. took a very long while to be honest.
Anyway, once that was done I duplicated the macro and attached them to lots of different parameters. Amplitude, pitch modulation, table position etc etc.
I also thought it would be interesting to include a stereo delay with the delay time also being modulated, and so I built that in too.
Well moment of truth, fired it all up and..... hmm, well not what I had expected!!
SELF-AWARE-DRUM-MACHINE-FAIL by Noisy Neighbour Sound
The envelopes are far too severe, the delay just didn't work, and the whole thing was so hard to sequence in any way that it is more or less impossible to use! I'm sure that there are some aspects which can be rescued, and I'm sure the envelopes idea could work, but I really need to re evaluate the method I tried here, come up with something better.
So all in all, not quite sure what to say about this sound. I guess sometimes what feels like a great idea can turn out to be a shoddy one. But I'm glad I gave it a go, it's given me some more ideas for the future and definitely doesn't feel like a complete waste of time!
I woke up a little later than usual, stayed up kinda late last night, and almost instantly got a really vivid idea for a patch I wanted to have a go at building.
Not like an idea for something to try, but more like "if i do this, then this, and make that, it WILL be awesome" So I leaped out of bed, made some coffee and got stuck in!
The first part of what I wanted was a synth engine built around a Wave table type deal. So I went to work making some wave forms of various complexities. From a simple sin to some very complex additive ones. I made about 40 in total, each a perfect cycle at the same frequency. I put these together into one long wav file and loaded into one of the sample modules in Reaktor.
Set up a macro to define the correct loop point as so on, and soon enough I had a lovely scanning wave table. I made a duplicate, and a small mixer macro to mix and blend the 2 oscillators in a bunch of different ways.
The next part of my idea was a way of sequencing numerous aspects of the synth engine. Rather than a sequencer lane for pitch, amplitude etc.. I thought it would be fun to make large value tables for sending to envelopes, and sequencer lanes to select from the tables. Essentially meaning you sequence the modulation shapes. This took a while, defining a good selection of envelope profiles and then modifying the envelope generators to redefine those values based on master tempo.. took a very long while to be honest.
Anyway, once that was done I duplicated the macro and attached them to lots of different parameters. Amplitude, pitch modulation, table position etc etc.
I also thought it would be interesting to include a stereo delay with the delay time also being modulated, and so I built that in too.
Well moment of truth, fired it all up and..... hmm, well not what I had expected!!
SELF-AWARE-DRUM-MACHINE-FAIL by Noisy Neighbour Sound
The envelopes are far too severe, the delay just didn't work, and the whole thing was so hard to sequence in any way that it is more or less impossible to use! I'm sure that there are some aspects which can be rescued, and I'm sure the envelopes idea could work, but I really need to re evaluate the method I tried here, come up with something better.
So all in all, not quite sure what to say about this sound. I guess sometimes what feels like a great idea can turn out to be a shoddy one. But I'm glad I gave it a go, it's given me some more ideas for the future and definitely doesn't feel like a complete waste of time!
Friday, 4 March 2011
Sound-A-Day 03.03.2011
A little late uploading the last of this weeks sounds.
Yesterday I was really ill, ate something that disagreed with my stomach a fair bit. The only sound I was capable of making was a techni-coloured yodel which I don't think anyone would want to have heard!
Never the less, I've made a couple nice ones this evening to make up for it.
I suppose my current interest is trying to get some interesting sounds from simple sources, really stretch things to their limit almost. So that got me thinking, what is the most simple source available? Probably a sine wave...
So with that in mind I started playing around with stuff. I built a Reaktor patch based around a simple constant sine wave and assigned the XY of a Korg Nanopad to controlling the pitch across a really wide range. Next I started adding some effects in, there's Stereo pitch modulation, comb filtering, retriggering, time stretch, and bit rate reduction. I assigned one of the pads to each effect macros On/Off, and assigned various effect parameters to the same XY pad as the pitch.
Then just started playing around and seeing what noises I could get out of it. Some really interesting bleeps and whirrs. This is a recording straight inside Reaktor, no additional editing what so ever.
SINE MASHING by Noisy Neighbour Sound
The sound quality is a little shoddy since the effect macros I built are very simple, no smoothing etc, but still some cool sounds and something I think I might have another go at, build the effects a bit better and hopefully improve the quality etc.
Yesterday I was really ill, ate something that disagreed with my stomach a fair bit. The only sound I was capable of making was a techni-coloured yodel which I don't think anyone would want to have heard!
Never the less, I've made a couple nice ones this evening to make up for it.
I suppose my current interest is trying to get some interesting sounds from simple sources, really stretch things to their limit almost. So that got me thinking, what is the most simple source available? Probably a sine wave...
So with that in mind I started playing around with stuff. I built a Reaktor patch based around a simple constant sine wave and assigned the XY of a Korg Nanopad to controlling the pitch across a really wide range. Next I started adding some effects in, there's Stereo pitch modulation, comb filtering, retriggering, time stretch, and bit rate reduction. I assigned one of the pads to each effect macros On/Off, and assigned various effect parameters to the same XY pad as the pitch.
Then just started playing around and seeing what noises I could get out of it. Some really interesting bleeps and whirrs. This is a recording straight inside Reaktor, no additional editing what so ever.
SINE MASHING by Noisy Neighbour Sound
The sound quality is a little shoddy since the effect macros I built are very simple, no smoothing etc, but still some cool sounds and something I think I might have another go at, build the effects a bit better and hopefully improve the quality etc.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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!
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!
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)
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 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!
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.
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.
Thursday, 27 January 2011
Sound-A-Day 27.01.2011
Back to the synths again. Felt the need to modulate the crap out of something!
This sound, to be honest, I didn't have any goal in mind as to what I was trying to achieve. No sound in mind, just a desire to use every mod source in the synth I was using and see what happens. In all fairness though, I do really like the sound that came out. It's pretty dry, and could do with a bit more tarting up to make it really usable, but i thought I would share it anyway!
Gargle Laser by Noisy Neighbour Sound
(BTW, at the time of writing, soundcloud seems to be acting up a bit, not certain this has properly uploaded, will check back in the morning just in case)
So I guess the lesson here is, just dicking about with things can lead to some cool noises. I do like to work with a clear destination in mind, but from time to time, it's great to just play about with things for the fun of it!
This sound, to be honest, I didn't have any goal in mind as to what I was trying to achieve. No sound in mind, just a desire to use every mod source in the synth I was using and see what happens. In all fairness though, I do really like the sound that came out. It's pretty dry, and could do with a bit more tarting up to make it really usable, but i thought I would share it anyway!
Gargle Laser by Noisy Neighbour Sound
(BTW, at the time of writing, soundcloud seems to be acting up a bit, not certain this has properly uploaded, will check back in the morning just in case)
So I guess the lesson here is, just dicking about with things can lead to some cool noises. I do like to work with a clear destination in mind, but from time to time, it's great to just play about with things for the fun of it!
Friday, 14 January 2011
Sound-A-Day 14.01.2011
Phew, What a heavy week! Had some really tough days at work, and my brain has been close to melting point from fussing over the routing in this Reaktor Patch I'm busy with ATM.
Still, always nice to have a good constructive week. Will enjoy relaxing a bit over the weekend, hopefully get some photography done on Sunday, and maybe even work on some tracks!
Here's one last Module sound, going for a classic analogue-ish sounding modulation freak out. Wicked sounding, I really enjoy making sounds with this thing.
Module-Working by Noisy Neighbour Sound
Sounds like some sort of industrial bot doing its business. Pretty nice sound!
I'm going to take a bit of a breather from this synth for a while now. It's great fun, but for the time being I want to re asses the approach to getting the routing working better, it can get a touch confusing at times, and that's really something I like to avoid with interfaces.
No worries though, I have another thing underway which is going to get a bit more attention, more about that next week. Suffice as to say, I am WELL excited with this, it's gonna be mega!
Hopefully a new theme next week as well, I'm thinking loops.. more bang for ya buck
Still, always nice to have a good constructive week. Will enjoy relaxing a bit over the weekend, hopefully get some photography done on Sunday, and maybe even work on some tracks!
Here's one last Module sound, going for a classic analogue-ish sounding modulation freak out. Wicked sounding, I really enjoy making sounds with this thing.
Module-Working by Noisy Neighbour Sound
Sounds like some sort of industrial bot doing its business. Pretty nice sound!
I'm going to take a bit of a breather from this synth for a while now. It's great fun, but for the time being I want to re asses the approach to getting the routing working better, it can get a touch confusing at times, and that's really something I like to avoid with interfaces.
No worries though, I have another thing underway which is going to get a bit more attention, more about that next week. Suffice as to say, I am WELL excited with this, it's gonna be mega!
Hopefully a new theme next week as well, I'm thinking loops.. more bang for ya buck
Thursday, 13 January 2011
Sound-A-Day 13.01.2011
Another day, another sound! Again, this one is something I made using this new synth I've been busy with.
Managed to get a new little feature working, and this was a little test sound. One of the thing that really attracts me to modular synths is the ability to route pretty much anything to anything. Makes creating weird modulation combos really possible. I've started trying to implement that kind of functionality into my patch. Its a bit fiddly at times, but getting there.
Module-Trigger Sweep by Noisy Neighbour Sound
This sound is made by using an LFO to act as the gate input for the envelope generator. The envelope generator is then controlling the amplitude of one of the oscillators. There is also another Envelope generator controlling the Frequency of the LFO. This second Envelope is triggered by Midi input...
Hmm, maybe a diagram would be better! (on a side note, I know I should make more "visual" input for this blog, am on it!)
Anyway, just another little noise from today. Most of these sounds will get saved as Presets for this patch, so when I finally get it all working properly, it'll be downloadable, and my terrible explanations will have something to be compared to!
Managed to get a new little feature working, and this was a little test sound. One of the thing that really attracts me to modular synths is the ability to route pretty much anything to anything. Makes creating weird modulation combos really possible. I've started trying to implement that kind of functionality into my patch. Its a bit fiddly at times, but getting there.
Module-Trigger Sweep by Noisy Neighbour Sound
This sound is made by using an LFO to act as the gate input for the envelope generator. The envelope generator is then controlling the amplitude of one of the oscillators. There is also another Envelope generator controlling the Frequency of the LFO. This second Envelope is triggered by Midi input...
Hmm, maybe a diagram would be better! (on a side note, I know I should make more "visual" input for this blog, am on it!)
Anyway, just another little noise from today. Most of these sounds will get saved as Presets for this patch, so when I finally get it all working properly, it'll be downloadable, and my terrible explanations will have something to be compared to!
Friday, 7 January 2011
Sound-A-Day 06.01.2011
Whoops!
Fell asleep last night when I returned home from work, normally the time I upload something here. So this one is to make up for last night, and I'll put another one up this evening.
Today's sound is a very unusual one, there is a whole lot of different processing going on, more than is really worth listing! Suffice to say there is a bit of Absynth, a touch of Reaktor, a smidge of field recording, all mixed up in Soundforge with a spoon made from Waves plug ins.
Intergalatic-Transmit by Noisy Neighbour Sound
REALLY like this one, was trying to make some type of alien scrambled transmission. Something that sounded like a message beamed across the cosmos in some weird language, and distorted by traveling through space.
Fell asleep last night when I returned home from work, normally the time I upload something here. So this one is to make up for last night, and I'll put another one up this evening.
Today's sound is a very unusual one, there is a whole lot of different processing going on, more than is really worth listing! Suffice to say there is a bit of Absynth, a touch of Reaktor, a smidge of field recording, all mixed up in Soundforge with a spoon made from Waves plug ins.
Intergalatic-Transmit by Noisy Neighbour Sound
REALLY like this one, was trying to make some type of alien scrambled transmission. Something that sounded like a message beamed across the cosmos in some weird language, and distorted by traveling through space.
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