WRITTEN BY JEFF SHIFFMAN, CO-OWNER OF BOOM BOX POST
Over at Boom Box Library we recently released “Magic Chimes,” a library of mark tree and bell tree recordings for sound design and music applications. The library has been a big success thus far, clearly filling a need in the sound library community. Creating it from scratch was very fun, so I thought it would be interesting to share the process with you.
Waaaaaay back in April 2020, we were deep into the initial COVID crisis. Everyone was working from home and work was slowing down. To keep ourselves and our staff busy, Kate and I decided we would use the extra time to create a handful of new sound libraries.
I’ve always felt that our access to good chime recordings - tinkly, magical bells - could improve. We were working with some very old recordings, a lot of which have been used to death. These old standbys are great, but were lacking in variety and had their limitations. I particularly wanted multiple takes of the same sounds so we could create all new magical builds with tons of variations. I also wanted sounds that had extremely long, natural ring-outs, giving the designer the choice when to end a build, rather than being hamstrug by the recordings.
I have a lot of experience with auxiliary instruments. I received my undergraduate degree from the Indiana University School of Music (now the Jacobs School of Music) studying percussion to a dizzying degree (seriously… we did a four hour masterclass on the triangle!). My experience in school gives me a unique advantage when it comes time to recording foley props and musical instruments, which I have way too much fun doing whenever I get the chance. With that in mind, I decided I’d take on the Magic Chimes library myself.
STEP 1 - PREP AND PLANNING
While it’s everyone’s dream to own their very own sets of mark trees and bells, that one is still on my bucket list so I needed to start by sourcing the instruments. I took to Google and found California Percussion Rental. This place is a playground for percussionists. They had everything you could imagine. As soon as I set foot in their warehouse, scores of new library ideas came to mind (but I’ll save those for another post). I had my pick of a number of different sets of chimes and opted for both a large and small mark tree (beautiful sets from Treeworks) as well as a huge bell tree.
My recording setup for “Magic Chimes”
Instruments in hand, my next job was to list all the potential performances I wanted to capture. These instruments were only mine for a few days, so it was important to have a comprehensive list of everything I absolutely had to have so I didn’t regret missing anything later on. The plan was to record the following on each of the three instruments:
Glissandi
Scales
Triads
Single Notes
Steadys
Twinkles
Not a huge list, but when you factor in recordings at multiples speeds and in various combinations of ascending, descending and random pitches, the list gets exponentially longer. I had my work cut out for me.
STEP 2 - RECORDING
One advantage of COVID times was a completely silent recording space. With everyone at home, I set up in Edit 7, a padded room holdout from its days as a podcasting bay. This room has been an old standby for us to get remarkably clean recordings. Our go-to microphone for in-studio recordings is the Sennheiser MKH 8050. This little workhorse was perfect to capture all the overtones and nuances of the chimes. And with that, I spent the next two days recording! It was way more fun than you’d imagine (at least for me) because with every recording I knew I was filling a much needed hole in our sound library with something spectacular.
STEP 3 - EDITORIAL
Ah yes, the final steps that all sound recordists dread. It’s all fun and games until you actually bring everything into Pro Tools and see the massive amount of recordings you need to sort through, clean up, organize and render. This project was no exception with SO MUCH material. Luckily I slated all my recordings as I went for easy identification, so I got to work rough labeling everything and organizing by category; first instrument and then performance.
I like to have a Source track with a preloaded chain of inserts (FabFilter ProQ-3 and Izotope Insight) that is bussed out to a Record track through which I am monitoring. I also open a number of Audio Suite plugins to have on hand, speeding up the cleanup process. Here was my workflow for each sound file:
On a Source track insert, FabFilter is set with a very minimal high-pass filter to eliminate any rumble (like planes overhead). Luckily chimes are pretty high pitched so it’s very hard to overdo the high-pass. I play back each file, checking the Insight meters for level and listening for any issues. This is the really time consuming bit. Because it’s real time, there’s no way to speed up the process. You just have to hunker down, open your ears and pay attention. I’ll use markers to denote any problem takes I want to toss or any issues that I think I can fix.
I got great levels in general, but on occasion a file may need a little boost. Based on the readout from the meters, I would then use the Gain plugin where necessary to boost the recording. If the gain boosted the noise floor too much, I had Izotope RX Spectral De-noise on hand to clean the file.
Next up, I’d find the transient that denoted the start of each file and make an edit point as well as trimming out any unwanted noise in between takes or removing bad takes altogether. With all the best takes cleanly chopped, I then lay out each take with exactly the same space between each file. Now, I’m a bit crazy about this kind of thing… of course you could have them spaced out at random. But in my opinion, it’s worth the time and effort (which is considerable) to make everything pristine.
The final step is to record everything down on the Record track, creating one perfect master file. I’ll then label the file with a temporary name (instrument, performance notes) to keep everything organized until we settle on a final labeling scheme.
In the end, the Magic Chimes library consists of over 220 sound effects, coming in at just under 1GB. That’s a lot of chimes! You can see the full list here. Before putting it up for sale, we shared the library with our team and it’s been so rewarding to see these sounds popping up in editorial as I mix. I spent enough time editing these files to know them by ear, and hearing them in context within the shows on which we work brings a smile to my face, reminding me of that crazy COVID time where I decided to put my percussion skills to use and create something magical.
You can get your own copy of Magic Chimes as well as all of our other original libraries over at boomboxlibrary.com.