Written By Kyle Stockbridge
Apprentice, Boom Box Post
I was recently cutting sound effects on a scene for my apprenticeship project that included a slow motion sequence. During the spotting session, my supervisor was advising me with some proven ways to get in and out of slo-mo sequences by using stingers and sub (low frequency) dives as the bread and butter (check out Brad’s blog post about slo-mo sequences). He referenced this specific sound effect, one that we all know… and the moment I heard it, I felt compelled to try re-creating my own version.
Now this is one of those sounds you’ve heard a thousand times through the years but may not be able to place where you first heard it, or how to find it. We’re talking about the iconic Hanna-Barbera “Singing Sword” sound effect!
The Singing Sword effect is heard at 0:00-0:04
Famously first heard in the ‘70s TV series: The Six Million Dollar Man, but over the years this sound has solidified itself as one of the most effective slo-mo or dream sequence stingers in countless movies and TV series.
APPROACH
There’s a ton of speculation as to how this sound was originally created. Most commonly suggested (and most likely how it was made) is the idea of a sound source played through a Leslie Speaker for metallic characteristics, then through a delay unit for feedback tones and finished with an LFO for shape. However, I’m limited to the tools at my disposal and there are many ways to skin a cat… so for the sake of exploring other methods I took a different approach.
To me, achieving the stuttering effect from the LFO felt like the first step to tackle. For this I used a gate effect in sidechain mode, receiving input from a repeating kick drum for the length of the clip (alternatively I tried a ruler twang sound effect as a sidechain trigger but wasn’t as successful). The idea was that if I matched the rate of the stutters of the original sound with the kick drums, this could provide a good starting point for the gate to open and close and mimic the same shape in terms of amplitude modulation. Then I could build layers of sounds to play through the gate.
Tip: It’s key to play with the attack and release controls to shape how the gate responds to the kick drum. You can also play with the ADSR of your kick drum or whichever sidechain trigger source you use. You can even try automating the gate controls to shape the sound even further.
Now with the gate opening and closing in a stuttering fashion, it was time to choose the layers for the sound. While analyzing the tonal characteristics of the the original HB Singing Sword sound effect, I tried flattening it into a sausage with a compressor and some clip gain to remove the dynamics and stuttering so that I could focus solely on the timbre with a static amplitude.
The characteristics of the “Singing Sword” sound almost exclusively metallic, so I broke it down into three metallic layers:
Layer 1: Sword Shing (I mean I had to… it’s in the name)
Layer 2: Magical Chimes
Layer 3: Cymbal with long tail
Once I had my layers, I recorded them down and used a reverb and delay to obscure the sound and give it a more mystifying feel.
Here’s a look at my session. At the top I have the original reference material in light green. Pink is my sidechain triggers (I only used one). Yellow are my metallic sound layers in a routing folder for easy bus processing. Red is my record track which has some final processing for my final result.
Here are three of my attempts with some slight variations. Check out how it turned out!
Obviously not exactly how it sounds but I think this served as a great exercise in coming up with new creative ways to achieve a similar result. It’s an excellent starting point for exploring different tones and characters while maintaining a similar effect. I hope you enjoyed a peek into my process and feel inspired to try recreating other sound effects with your own approaches.
If you enjoyed this blog, check out these:
LUNCH AND LEARN: SOUND EFFECTS EDITING SLO-MO
HOW TO DESIGN AN INTERDIMENSIONAL TIME JUMPS
HOW TO DESIGN A MAGICAL TRANSFORMATION