SFX – Dangerous Dander

Early on in the production stage I decided that I wanted to do my own sound effects instead of using pre-recorded ones you can get online through various sound banks. My goal was to try and use midi instruments which is basically a simulated software instrument as much as possible because of the simplicity, I can easily modulate sounds through the use of effects and pre-amps, my favorite effects is a nifty little thing called Bit-Crusher, it adds a sort of Super Mario 32-bit feel to the sound.

Another great thing about using midi throughout your recording is that you’re free to change tempo without the loss of sound quality. But of course there are some sounds that are too hard to create using only software generated audio and to record them using a microphone is just so much easier. I started combining the two and added certain sounds that I thought that particular sound effect lacked for example I added the sound of a lighter hitting an empty mug of coffee made of paper to give the sound of a baseball bat hitting various enemies.  Last week I ended up walking around in the hall of the D building recording various sounds that I came across, me hitting one of the radiators in the staircase with an open palm, hitting a metal ladder, me and Simon walking through the hall, a cushion chair knocked over and me tapping my fingers against a bulletin board. I can then combine, add effects, pan, cut, change tempo in order to create the sound I want. The sounds I was going for this week was: character movement, attack and death. Trashcan death 1, 2 and 3, rubbish spawn and “pumpedmeter” decrease. I have some small plans of finding a place that’s sound-proof  and do some of the sounds by recording it using the object itself, like kicking a trashcan or hitting something human-like with a bat or a cane. Then there’s the talk of voice-overs for our game which would also require a studio of sorts. 

My typical process this week has been starting out with a base sound, typically something that describes the sound I’m going for, like for example I’d go for a trashcan tipping over and spilling it’s content on the sidewalk and in order to achieve that I usually prefer to start out with a sound that has many of the base traits required to mimic that sound, in this case me striking an object made of metal with something equally hard.
Now that sound can easily pass for a trashcan hitting asphalt, but it lacks several different key components that makes it sound realistic. For example it may be missing some treble or bass, or maybe it needs a sound to simulate the actual barrel traveling through the air, a sort of “swoosh” sound. There are many aspects of the sound you need to consider changing, for example: will the barrel bounce after its initial impact? Is the can empty? If not, you need to simulate trash moving around and possibly spilling on to the sidewalk.

Above is a part of the arrangement for the sound ”character movement” for this sound I used my recording of me tapping my finger against a bulletin board. what I did here is that I split this recording into smaller part and isolate what would be right foot and left foot hitting the sidewalk, I put those into different tracks and added just a touch of reverberation and then I adjusted the panning of the two tracks putting one a bit to the left and one to the right. After that i started to fine-tune the recordings using a channel equalizer.