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Sound Design Process in Studio 5

1) The author realized late in the process that spatializing a mono recording of an environment would be problematic since only one microphone was used. 2) They have a good conceptual understanding of the space but determining whether bird noises came from individual birds or several scattered birds was guesswork. 3) The author experimented with different sound design techniques like using a square wave LFO and pitch envelope to emulate the sound of a saw but were not fully convinced with the results.

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7 views1 page

Sound Design Process in Studio 5

1) The author realized late in the process that spatializing a mono recording of an environment would be problematic since only one microphone was used. 2) They have a good conceptual understanding of the space but determining whether bird noises came from individual birds or several scattered birds was guesswork. 3) The author experimented with different sound design techniques like using a square wave LFO and pitch envelope to emulate the sound of a saw but were not fully convinced with the results.

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api-3715732
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Audio Arts :: Sound Design :: Sonic Environment :: Process

_ Edward Kelly _

It wasn't until fairly late into process that I realised/noticed that I was trying to spatialise the results of a mono
recording. It just didn't occur to me that using one microphone to record the environment was going to be
problematic.
I have a very good conceptualisation of the space involved - but it doesn't help with the birds for example. I
have gone through and tried to discern individual birds from their noises, but as to whether there's but one
bird of a type, or several scattered about is all guesswork/conjecture.

My first thoughts on the saw, were of using a square wave as a LFO on a noise osc. I figured on a freq of
about 60 Hz with a bit of a pitch envelope for velocity changes at the end of each stroke.
I tried a few variations, using a pulse wave, and using FFT to iFFT (Plogue), using one amplitude source to
control the other sound source. The result could do with more work..
I also automated an eq (on different sections), to emulate the changing sound of the sawing. I think this
helps, but the sound itself is not very convincing.
I lost track on the amount of editing I did on it. I have an approach to editing where I just keep processing,
going back and forth - trying ideas, using discovered techniques on different files, jumping between software,
starting again, cross modulating two files......it is slightly challengin to attempt anything but a broad
documentation of what I did.

The ladder noise I sort of gave up on.


I think I would have like to have done some foley for the ladder, clanks and creaking would have been quite
easy to achieve, also the sawing.

The major bird noise I had the most "fun" with. I went through and sequenced the bird melodies, then
automated pitch and modulation. I spent a while in Plogue trying to create an appropriate voice, then I tried a
random VSTi or two. The voice I used is basically a default setting with a small amount of adjustment (mostly
on the modulation settings), probably the second VSTi I tried.

The car noise is pretty much an envelope driven slow filter cutoff and pitch variation - in retrospect the pitch
content could be lower in both volume and pitch, and perhaps a bit more complex.

Studio 5 is quite a challenging space in which to work. Apart from the ambient noise level which is quite high
and distracting, it is quite a live room. It's very hard to get a good idea of the spatialisation of a sound.
To a certain extent, positioning a sound has been more visual (ie in the surroun pan box in Cubase) than
aural, and automating moving sounds has been similar.

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