A COLLABORATIVE POST WITH INTRODUCTION BY 

JACOB COOK

ASSISTANT EDITOR, BOOM BOX POST

The shocking conclusion of our 2 part vocal sound design challenge is here!  In Part 1 we asked several BBP editors to perform a non-english vocalization, and tell us about the imagined creature that created it.  For this post, we asked a few other BBP editors to process, twist and have fun with one of the clips in order to enhance the original vision.  Not surprisingly, they favored the clips with a lot of low-end information, and especially enjoyed pitch-related processing.  Check out the before and afters, plus each editors methods below!

James Singleton

First I used a combination of Varispeed and sound shifter to slow down as well as lower the pitch of the original recording.  Then I used Ultra pitch to layer in some extra voice texture and create a more unique alien vocal sound.  Finally I used mondomod to add a bit of fm modulation for that extra scary monster texture!

Kevin Hart

To process these vocals I used Excalibur by Exponential Audio. After finding a good preset, I messed around with the pitch and random shifter modulator parameters to drop the vocals into monster range. I then added a subtle but fast warbly LFO type parameter to make it vibrate a bit. I finished it off with a bit of eq and compression.

Jacob Cook

To kick off the fairy-fest, I wanted to take the pitch of Tess's sample way up into tiny creature territory.  To accomplish this I used Pro Tools elastic audio tools Vari-speed, to shorten the length of the clip by playing it faster, which raises the pitch.  Once I was satisfied it was high and tiny, I did some heavy processing using Unfiltered Audio's Indent plug-in, which allows you to link all kinds of processing to its various parameters.  I found a preset that linked the input level to a sweeping wah filter(essentially an auto-wah) and tweaked the sound and threshold until I was satisfied with the weirdness.  From there, I created a double of the whole clip, and pitched it down a Major 6th.  My final step was to add some tingly magic by keying a gate to the original clip, so that when the clip hit a threshold it triggered a sound effect playing, in this case some magical tingly wind chimes.  

Whats your favorite fictional creature from a film, TV show or game?  Let us know in the comments!

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