Posted on July 11, 2015
It’s been a long time since I wanted to record some magnetic sources and after reading nice documented blogs on this subject from other sound designers, I thought it would be fun to give it a shot!
With a friend of mine a few months ago, I bought a Seymour Duncan pickup and we started experimenting with it. I used it in combination with 2 recorders a Fostex FR-2 and a Sony D-50. I try to record all sort of equipment such as : Hard drives, hoovers, a Liquid mixer, remote controls (TVs and smaller ones), small milk mixers, fans, motorized screwdrivers, etc..
I tried differents things with the spring drum : shaking it as we should to get the drone sound, using scissors to hit the string during the shake so that we could have these metallic small impacts on top of the drones, then we did a few vocalizations in the tube while the drone was playing, we had some pretty interesting results. The sounds were recorded using a Fostex FR-2 recorder and an XY stereo mic : the Rode NT4. Here is a one minute medley of these recordings :
Posted on July 10, 2015
I recently bought a spring/thunder drum to use it on the game project I was working on lately and I found it really useful to create some dreamy/eerie ambiences. What is interesting with that instrument is that you just basically shake it with one hand and it will produce a nice beefy drone, the more you shake it, the more intensity you get on the drone’s sound, pretty easy eh!
So, we decided with a friend to experiment a bit with it and of course record it! We tried differents things with the spring drum : shaking it as we should to get the drone, using scissors to hit the string during the shake so that we could have these metallic small impacts on top of the drones, then we did a few vocalizations in the tube while the drone was playing, we had some pretty interesting results.. I just processed a bit my friend’s voice who was definitely inspired that day to do some kind of dinosaur/reptile monster voice and that was it.. We recorded the sounds using a Fostex FR-2 recorder and an XY stereo mic : the Rode NT4. Here’s a comp of my best takes, enjoy!
Posted on December 5, 2011
Last time I went to New York, I walked downtown and we saw a church called “St-Thomas”, it’s in the middle of the skyescrapers in the midtown center. We decided to go inside to see the look of it : the design inside was beautiful but very quiet, not a lot of people just one guy with a broom cleaning up the area.. We just took a few pictures, check a bit the area then suddenly we heard a massive sound coming from the 1st level of the church, there was this chinese lady practicing the organ but man that sound was pretty scary! I had this image of the frankenstein mansion in my mind with the rain, thunder and this organ playing along…
I am glad I had my portable recorder this day, I tried to find the best spot which seemed to be in the middle of the church below the organ tubes but not too close so I could benefit of the church reverb, I waited for a little pause in her game, hit record and that was it! Here is a sample of it after a bit of editing and level matching.
Posted on July 9, 2011
Hi there! Been working recently on some monsters and this one was supposed to make weird sounds with his teeth – the direction was to go for some teeth chattering, jaw clanking, stuff that can be ennoying enough to make you stay away from him..
Regarding my original material for these audio sounds, it was multiple takes of teeth clanking and jaws dislocation movements from friendly co-workers. I recorded the sounds with an AKG C 414 and I had to compress them a lot because even if the person was quite close to the mic, the clanking was really soft.. Also I added compression and a bit of maximising as it helped me to get the presence and punch I needed, then I filtered with a low cut everything under 200 Hz which wasn’t needed for this type of sound.
To finish the processing, I automated a pitch shift plugin now and again and use time compression to make the clanking a little faster on certain sections. Here are a few extracts of the sounds :
