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!
When we hit the studio or the field to record sound effects, we want to leave with the best material possible. Not only do we want recordings that enhance our current project, we want additional material that we can use to build our libraries. We want to optimize our time to create the best possible ratio of useable recordings to useless takes. We want to take our material back into the studio, throw it into the DAW, hit play and say “Wow! That whoopee cushion sounds incredible!”
This month we're kicking off a two part Boom Box collaborative blog post challenge! I've tasked our editors with creating a unique non-human/non-english voice from their own mouth that is evocative and has potential for sound design. Next month I will assign each editor someone else's voice, which they will twist and tweak to help achieve the original intent, using whatever tools they choose.
Ableton Live is a DAW that has been blowing up the music production scene in recent years. With its powerful ‘in-the-box’ effects processors, built-in Sampler instruments, and MIDI data parameters galore, Live has been the go to workstation for pioneering beat makers and EDM artists around the world. So why can’t us Post-Sound peeps have a little fun too? Using Live’s built-in Drum Rack and Simpler instruments, I’ll share with you a simple technique to build a Game of Thrones type battle scene ambience.
To kick off a new class of interns (and score some cool new sound elements for our library), I asked Boom Box Post intern James Singleton to create a selection of lightsaber/laser sword sound effects. The original Star Wars trilogy is chalk full of classic sound effects that continue to inspire our field today, and recreating old favorites is a great way to flex sound design muscles and explore unconventional techniques. I requested James work primarily from recordings and sounds created specifically for this project, and take inspiration from Ben Burtt's original methods. To wrap up the project I asked him to tell me a little about his process for creating the final sound effects.
When the team from Nickelodeon's Albert walked through our doors, they presented us with a great sound design challenge - bring a rich world of talking, walking plants to life with sound. Nickelodeon’s first original animated TV movie tells the story of a tiny fir tree named Albert and his plant friends overcoming all kinds of obstacles (like a Christmas hating cactus) as they journey to the big city. The rich animation of these plants - bouncing around in their pots, foliage and needles flying, trunks bending - is extremely detailed and impressive. Now it was our job to provide the proper sonic support. With the use of digital foley, we had just the tool for the job.
Here at Boom Box Post, we are lucky enough to work on an exceptionally large variety of animated shows. Each show has it’s own unique style and sound; some of our shows are more on the toony side, while others are incredibly realistic. Because of this, a large number of our shows take place in real places. In one of our newest shows, Mickey and the Roadster Racers, the characters take an adventure to a new place or city in almost every episode, which is what inspired me to write this blog post. Whether it is traveling to a new city in each episode in Mickey and the Roadster Racers, The Lion Guard in the African Savannah, or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in New York City, we often have the challenge of making a specific, genuine place sound accurate.
To celebrate Halloween in gruesome style we came up with a unique challenge for our editors: Death by Sound Effect! To kick off the creativity, we asked the team to come up with bone-chilling, funny bone-tickling and gut-wrenching ways to die, and threw all of their ideas into a hat. Each participating editor was randomly assigned a form of savage expiration, and encouraged to be creative in their approach to a sound effect representative of that event.
The great thing about recording and designing sound effects is that source material is near infinite. Fortunately and unfortunately, having such an incredible variety of sound sources makes each new recording session a technical and creative challenge, requiring forethought and experience. One of the decisions we must make is the format in which we will capture the sound; mono, stereo, quad-surround, 5.1 surround and ambisonic are all valid options depending on the source at hand. Sound effects are most commonly captured in mono or stereo, and today we will compare several common stereo microphone techniques for field recording.
Over the past year, Jeff has written two excellent posts on sound effects editorial layout: Downstream: Valuable Sound Designers Think Like Mixers and Speak Volumes Through Well Organized Work. He's laid out the golden rules of sound editorial layout in an easy-to-follow manner, and I highly recommend reading both posts before this one.
But, even the clearest rules can be misinterpreted and scenarios that seems like exceptions can often arise. Even the most seasoned editor will encounter situations where he or she will wonder, "How do I know if this is the best layout?" Here, I want to address some common pitfalls that I've seen and help you to solve them.
This month's collaborative post dives into the everyday lives of the talented editors here at Boom Box Post. For this challenge I asked the editors to open their ears and listen to the sounds they take for granted everyday, and attempt to capture a unique window into their lives with sound. I sent each editor home with a small handheld recorder(unless they had their own) and encouraged them to capture a fresh take on a sound they hear in their daily lives. The results were exciting and surprising, let's take a listen!
We have just begun work on several new projects here at Boom Box Post, and it has jump-started a lot of conversations about how best to go about designing signature sounds. It’s one thing to chug along on a previously established television series (and not always an easy thing!), but it’s a different beast completely to be in charge of creating an entire new world from scratch. How do you manage your time? How do you commit to your choices? How do you know which sounds should be signature, and which should be filled in with your best stand-by library sounds? Here are my top five tips to help answer those dilemmas.
Unfiltered Audio’s newest plugin, Fault, has just been released, and it comes with high expectations. Plugin Alliance’s website (where you can download a full functional 14-day trial version or purchase the plugin outright) boasts Fault as a “new kind of effect,” a “pitch/mod tool [that] soothes the savage sound,” and the creator of “spectral modulation mayhem.” But what do those catchy phrases really mean? I dug into the new plugin to find out.
This week we challenged the team to create Sonic Branding Stings. These short clips are designed to create a fun and interesting sonic brand to help identify and showcase the company.
One of the major hurdles of becoming a sound effects editor is learning your library. This means knowing what keywords to search in a given situation as well as building up a mental catalogue of "go-to" sounds.
While it is always a good idea to start by looking at the picture and then thinking of descriptive words to search, it helps if you know which words will yield the best results. This is where onomatopoeia enters the scene. Onomatopoeia is defined as the formation of a word from a sound associated with what is named (e.g. cuckoo, sizzle). Following is a beginner's guide to onomatopoeic sound effects search words. Some of these terms can be found in any dictionary, and some are unique to sound effect library naming conventions.
This week I challenged the team to create their own audio "Rube Goldberg" machines. If you aren't familiar with the concept, a Rube Goldberg machine is
"...a contraption, invention, device or apparatus that is deliberately over-engineered to perform a simple task in a complicated fashion, generally including a chain reaction. The expression is named after American Cartoonist and inventor Rube Goldberg"
Thanks Wikipedia! In addition to imagining and executing their sequence of events with sound, I also asked that everyone give me a visual representation to include in this post. Granted, we are all audio people for a reason. That said, I'm really impressed with all the work here BOTH audio and visual. I hope you enjoy these fantastic Boom Box Post Rube Goldberg machines!
Traditionally, Foley--or footsteps, cloth movements, and the handling of small props--is performed and recorded live to picture and later cleaned and edited to be sent to the mix. In recent years, with the development of new technologies, Digital Foley is now available as an alternative to traditional Foley, and it is how the Boom Box Post team covers the footsteps for many of our current projects.
I've been a fan of Native Instruments plugins for years. For sound design and music, I find their software hard to beat. In particular, I was a huge fan of KORE, their "sound machine" that had the a very useful FX processing mode, allowing the user to run any source sound through it's many amazing effects chains. Some of these chains, sold in bundles of 'effects packs' were extremely powerful and very intricately constructed. Many posts on my old Sounds Like Jeff blog refer to my use of KORE for original sound design. So naturally I was bummed when NI discontinued the product, I suspect to make way for MASCHINE, it's flagship product for the future.
A few months back, an episode of Nickelodeon's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles presented us with a stone cold challenge. In The Moons of Thalos 3, the gang encounters a bunch of Ice Dragons. We decided to get some custom ice recordings in order to give these creatures lots of original character.
Have you ever attempted to record a prop, only to find that a small tweak creates an entirely different sound than you were going for? Sure a creaky door sounds like a creaky door, but what else can it sound like? How about hearing something while out and about that triggers your creativity? With the right tweaks, that bird would be a super cool laser blast!
As sound professionals, our ears are always open. Creatively, these discoveries can be the most exhilarating part of the job. I challenged the team here at Boom Box Post to come up with some of their favorite 'smoke and mirror' sound design moments; creating sounds from unexpected sources.
![Death by [Sound Effect]: A Halloween Sound Design Challenge](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54813413e4b0034aade3a0bc/1477583620478-NXJOE06KIWZN6610ZHBX/skulls-623532.jpg)
