WRITTEN BY GREG RUBIN
SOUND EFFECTS EDITOR, BOOM BOX POST
When I think of risers, stingers, and cinematic hits, I think of horror movies! They’re placed at just the right moments to make me jump out of my seat or hide behind a friend. I’m gonna get nightmares just thinking about it! Whether you know it or not, these risers, stingers, and hits can also be used in other genres. Here at Boom Box, we use them in the animated shows we work on! One of our editors, Greg, designed some cool ones which you can check out below along with how he went about making them.
What was your brainstorming process?
It was less of a brainstorming process for designing these, more of just playing around on my MIDI board with the general concept in mind. I set out to design a couple new risers/stingers/cinematic style booming hits and just had fun messing around with the plugins for the sake of creating cool cinematic sounds until finding the drones I was looking for. Or…well…synths, drums, fx, etc; couldn’t resist the Star Wars pun.
What was your step by step process for designing these risers/stingers/cinematic hits?
For these sounds, I recently got a plug-in and found myself with some time to dive into it! I really just went exploring rather than taking a more methodical step by step approach. I was trying out the different instruments, messing around with the FX and parameters to manipulate the instruments, blending them, and then recorded down the layers when I was feeling a sound and worked them to make it my own.
what plug in did you use?
For this round of designing I was mainly using Gravity by Heavyocity as I recently purchased it and was excited to dive on in and see what it could do! The answer to that is….it can do quite a lot! Between the library of sounds and instruments that are included within it and the multitude of built in FX and tools for customization, it’s an extremely effective virtual instrument for designing cinematic-style sounds. If you haven’t heard of it or checked it out, I recommend to!
Did you run into any problems while designing?
No, not particularly. There was a quick minute or two when I first loaded up Gravity that I wasn’t getting signal through and couldn’t locate the button I was missing. But, then I found it and had one of those “Ahh. Right. That one that’s right in front of my face. Of course.” moments, and laughed at myself for a second and got right onto working.
While I’m for sure still learning all of the more intricate ins and outs of Gravity to take advantage of, it’s mostly pretty intuitive and a very playful virtual instrument once you get the hang of the basics of its functionality. Oh, and once you get the whole little kid with a new toy going “ooo what does this button do?!…and what does this button do?!?…and what does this button do…” process out of your system. At least that’s how I tend to be with things like this!
How often do you find yourself using risers/stingers/hits in your workflow?
I would say surprisingly frequently! Especially on one of the shows I work on, they animate tension moments in what feels like almost every episode. It definitely varies from show to show and a lot of the time things of that sort are assumed to be music and if music covers the moment as well, it has a high chance of taking the place of my riser/stinger, but I personally enjoy implementing my own that I see as fitting to the moment. Also, it provides the client with options to choose from on the mix stage if music covers it similarly.
Any helpful tips on creating these?
In my opinion, it’s more difficult to lay out helpful tips when the goal is in the broad realm of “I want to design some cool sounds in -this- semi-broad general direction.” As you can see (or hear) for yourself below, I did find myself getting into a bit of a groove of designing in the direction of horror and suspense this time around. So that being the case, I’d say for stings, tension risers, drones, etc. that are designed with the intention to mess with the listener/viewer’s auditory senses to prompt a feeling of on-edge uncomfortability, some helpful tips would be, one, to work at creating dissonant tones and progressions. To do this, build and layer deep bass-y layers at low frequencies. You can even go with layering tones below 80Hz that most people don’t quite hear as much as they feel the thumping of the bass waves oscillating and pounding at their chest. This intensifies the impact of the dissonant tonal sounds carrying the mood and emotion. You can also use high pitched/screeching tones of course which also tend to be quite successful at making the listener feel the suspense. High pitched off key strings, aquaphones, metal on dry ice, screeching train/subway brakes, etc. can also nicely infuse a touch of the agonizing physical discomfort!
RISERS:
STINGERS:
CINEMATIC HITS:
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