Making Special Effects Sounds

[Inventor]

I suppose I could do a search, but I thought others might be interested: how do you make the following special effect sounds?

o Thunder
o Rain
o Lightning
o Rocket Launch
o Machine Gun
o Explosion
o Other sounds

The reason I'm asking is that I'm planning to write some special effects software for my soon-to-be-purchased guitar, and I'd like to have two of the modules be Thunderstorm and War. The software will do an FFT of the guitar audio and then detect peak fundamentals, initiating the special effects as new notes appear in the spectrum. It is OK if we have multiple examples of each type of sound, as there are six strings so each mode can have six sounds.

Thanks in advance for your comments.

[fireclown]

first, get a sheet of galvanized metal and a sampler. theres your thunder, just like the pros do it, I bet.
Most of the other effects you mention probably hail from some resonance modulations, with noise bursts shaped to fit.
Falling bombs like "you dropped a bomb on me" are probably easier (and more evocative) than a rocket launch, in my mind.
Machine gun effects? Id crib Jimi for that if youre holding a guitar.
Im not too sure what lightning sounds like (thunder maybe?, but I can imagine what it feels like. ZAP!
Sampler, sheetmetal, filtered and modulated noise generators and resonance envelopes, those are the ideas I have.
I wouldnt try to reinvent the wheel for a guitar performance when MIDI or whatever other controller possibilities exist already.

[Oenyaw]

This will be a good one from someone without a synth

Thunder: tap you finger nail on a ring modulator (the best thunder I ever heard on an album was Klaatu (damn, I can't remember the song right now)
Rain: filter white noise
Lightning: no sound, its light, you hear the thunder
Rocket Launch: phase shift the white noise, add alot of bass, play with the volume
Machine gun: hmmm, that may take a while (or get a friend to play the Buddy Miles drum part and...)
explosion: take an old Silvertone amp and give it a good kick!

bomb dropping: hit the high E and B strings high on the neck, press the wang bar and kick the amp!

(I'm listening to Alice Cooper "Schools Out" right now)

[Inventor]

[Oenyaw]

COOL!!!

"Is this all real
Is this all necessary
Or is this some joke"

So, does anyone know the Klaatu song?

has the line "for I myself refuse to be"
Is it "Little Nutrino"? I know it's the first album.

[Inventor]

[Oenyaw]

THAT"S IT!

[Sam_Zen]

Great !! Thanks for reminding me of one of the gems in electronic history.
So I dug the MC with the track out of my archive.
Maybe I'm violating something, but I made a rough digitized version of Neutrino and placed it (temporary) here.
EDIT: File is removed again.

As far as this thread is concerned :
Suppose you have only one synthesizer, then the common factor needed to achieve the first 6 sound is : noise.
(I skip 'Other Sounds' because it's too nondescript)

Main properties in using noise is the envelope shaper and the filter, regarding the demanded result.
An example, which can be used for sampling as well, can be found here made with the EMS Synthi A.

About rain and thunder : there's a VST plugin to render those, made by Xoxos.

Another suggestion to gather these sounds by sampling : just record the sound of one night of tv-broadcast, and harvest.

[elhardt]

First off, rain isn't done by filtering white noise. That will probably sound too smooth and synthetic. You modulate the filter with with noise or smoothed noise while running an osc through the filter. That same technique can also be used to add rumble and grunge to explosions and rocket sounds. I did an Autumn Storm demo using just synthesized sounds at the Youtube link below. You can hear a thunder strike at about the :57 mark witch I can't remember the details off hand, but a comb filter or flanger was used in there somewhere, plus there's rain and even single rain drops landing in water. Click on my Youtube name if you want to hear other synthesized effects demos like Beach Sounds, and Liquids.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8l4NJcsIWrs

[amnesia]

ols school EMS Synthi

[widdly]

Granular synthesis? There is a bit of software that goes with this paper...

http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~kvdoel/publications/prep04.pdf

I can't find a link to it now. It's pretty amazing though. It will morph from dripping sounds to rivers to rain sounds with just a few settings.

[Sam_Zen]

Nice video, elhardt ! I agree about the rain. There's more to it than just filtering noise.
2 amnesia
Maybe an old school instrument, but a valuable tool to construct a certain model of a modulation concept.
2 widdly
Nice relating to granular synthesis. One free 'Granulator' by Nicolas Fournel can be found here.

[widdly]

Ok found the granular droplets thing....it's a java applet


http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~kvdoel/icad04/simulator/

BTW: Inventor I remember you mentioning in another thread about getting 6 separate signals from a guitar. I couldn't find the thread now so I'll tack it on here.

Check out this page.. http://www.unfretted.com/loader.php?LINK=/profs/breakout

..it's got how to bust out a roland Gk2 pickup into six seperate signals. I'm sure you could cook up some bad craziness with that.

[Inventor]

[morbius]

First- I agree with ken. White noise thru a filter is too... too... too... easy and common... and unrealistic.

I'd also say that pink noise would be a better noise source for thunder... highly filtered, with provisions for some randomness for those 'echo-ie, rumbles' which often (but not always) follow. Dotcom noise has a 'low-output', which is below pink, and can provide some alternative randomness from the same module.

Lightning... well, really... thunder is the audible after-effect of lightning. Certainly, the 'tricity' has a sound all of it's own... but that's not really what we're talking about here.

Rain... there must be dozens of different ways to produce a 'rain-like' sound... some, much more realistic than others. You'd need the background sound, the mid, and the up-close 'pitter-patter' to make it realistic. That could be one monster patch, or overdubs, etc.

So many sounds require more than just 2-dimensional parameters, which lacks depth. That's another place phasing and flanging can help... not for the sake of adding a 'kewel sound', but to add that dab of realism which you may not initially hear so much, as subconsciencously identify. Spacial co-ordinates can have everything to do with realism... those little accoustic bounces off of various surfaces, which change the phase... add to it, subtract from it... all of that can count. It can also make you crazy, and make you feel like you're trying to reinvent the wheel.

Machine guns... and other effects... I'm not convinced that anyone can teach the King all of the world's knowledge while standing on one foot. The entire process is something that you learn with time, thru trial and error... experimenting over and over and over again. And then- who's to be the judge of the results, and how critical is it?

To be really good at recreating the real-world sounds, you need to listen very carefully to the 'real thing'... over and over... every element, while trying to patch-up another element of that sound... adding to it each time around until you have it. If you're a perfectionist, it can take you a very long time, indeed. If you're lazy, you can patch white noise thru a filter, and call it rain. It would seem to me that the real test is when the listener believes they are hearing the real thing... and asks where you did the remote recording.

Sometimes, the challenge isn't so much to create or recreate a sound to actually be used in a project... it's to stretch your muscles, and to learn from making the attempt. So much that is learned from composing a single patch can be applied to other patches, down the road. And- it's always good to keep paper and a pen/pencil handy to make notes, as well as having a recorder primed, and ready to go. You just never know when you might have an accident that you'd want to share with the world... one of those which words just won't do the trick.

As far as practical use of sound effects... at some point, ya have to ask yourself where and when should you perhaps look at maybe using samples/recordings... if nothing else, just for time's sake. For instance: I once, was doing sound FX for an upcoming planetarium show, where the script called for an audio demo of the 'doppler effect', using a train as the example. Obviously, just about everyone will think of the train's whistle/horn blowing... and raising in pitch as it approaches, and lowering in pitch as it passes and moves away. But what about all of the other sounds that make it sound like a train?.... the sounds of the tracks... the engine (steam or diesel?)... and any number mechanical sounds that aren't really at the top of the list, but play a part in the realism?

I could have easily tuned-up a 2-note chord, and done the pitch-thing manually, or using voltage-control... and be done with it. Or- I could have spent hours or days synthesizing the sounds I needed in an overdub... composing everything from scratch. Or- I could have used 'canned' SFX. But what I elected to do, was to take a portable two-track to a stretch of railroad track, along with a couple of mics... and I recorded several trains passing by. The end result (for the effect, and for the show) was much better... because it was real, and contained all of the elements one expects to hear.

I guess the short version of my point it... know when to fish, and when to cut bait. And also know your limits, the equipment's limits, and observe any time-limits you may have. Other than that... just record some audio from a TV show or movie, then try recreating sounds you hear. Practice is the way to get good, and to know what you can pull-off, and what you can't.

[Per]

There are cheap FX CDs available, with all that kind of sounds. Another aspect is that it can be fun to make them on the synth, or it can be used as backing voice.
I have done some things for a sort of live quiz, a murder story where the listeners had to participate to solve the mystery. The writer reads the story with a soundtrack, and then the listeners have to search the chrime scene for clues.
But the sound FX had to be synched to a live voice, so I did solve it this way:
I made a soundscape, mainly on several voices of BP filtered noise, randomly varying in frequency and level, and Low Frequency (less than 100 Hz) drones. As percussive accents, there was some Ring Modulator sounds, and a distant police alarm (modulated sine vco) now and then. There was also a distant horn, like a boat entering a harbour.
Then i had barking dogs, gunshots, slamming doors, starting cars and other sounds on a Korg ESX rhythm sampler, a common drum machine. Tapping on the buttons was all that was needed. All of the sounds was coloured by a simpel reverb.
And within that misty sound of faked city harbour, the sampled dogs and gunshots sounded much more convincing.
And it was a great fun to make it all.
Per

[Kwote]

turns out you can get some pretty good noise without a noise module.

it reminded me of this thread

http://www.kwotemusic.com/stormdrain.mp3

[elhardt]

I think Morbius is over analyzing things a bit too much. Most of the sounds in my video could easily pass as real if nobody was told they were a synth, and that was a rush job on a prewired synth with a few external effects done in a few hours. Seems that people either do poor and simple synthesis of sounds or don't do any at all and talk about how complex you have to get to mimic every single little detail, so don't bother and just use samples. This is one reason synthesis is dead and if you want to hear a synth doing these things (including a train passing by, as another example he quoted) I'm the only one who has audio files showing such things. After 40 years of synths, that's a sad state of affairs. If you're doing sounds for some venue that has nothing to do with synthesis, and nobody cares how the sound came about, then obviously simply recording a real sound is easiest and gives you realism with no effort (and no personal satisfaction for doing anything unique either). But if you're a synthesist and putting out a so-called synth album, but then end up cheating by using real sounds, that's no good.

So NO, you don't need to synthesize every single raindrop with proper individual panning, specifically synthesized to sound like it's landing on a particular species of leaf with a reverberant absorbing moss covered redwood to the right and a patch of concrete to the left and then do a hundred overdubs. After all, rain doesn't sound any less like rain in a monaural recording recorded from a short distance away where you're not hearing those details anyway.

[Blue Hell]

[Kwote]

plus i think that using synthesizers for "synthesizing" real sounds isn't really the true point of synth use. not even what Bob Moog had in mind when coining the term "synthesizer".

but anyways, making natural sounds with a synth is cool and isn't gonna hurt anyone. have fun synth addicts!!

[destroyifyer]

On that note, Kwote, I've always despised the "it's all been done before" attitude, God forbid. I like to think of synthesis with the same blank canvas edge as an artist...the infinite sound. "Towards the infinite beat", thank you Genesis P. Orridge.

By the way, Inventor, if you made a guitar effect where those sounds modulated the guitar signal, as opposed to replacing it, I think that would be pretty cool.

Are you familiar with wave editors? You could make the machine gun easily, although I don't think it would be as cool a guitar effect as the thunder or rocket launcher...unless it was tempo synced, yeah that would be kind of neat. Just get some beefy distorted noise and put an extremely mild pitch shift on it going up and down a few semitones, and run a repeating sharp envelope on it, that would be a machine gun in the making.

[Inventor]

Cool ideas all around! I buy my guitar in three days and the computer interface sometime after that. So soon I'll need the sounds. I better get to work again!!! Thanks for all your comments! Cheers