[Rob Bridgett, audio director on Prototype 2 issues a rallying cry for the mixing of the audio discipline with the rest of the studio, and opening up the closed studio space to collaboration -- perhaps even suggesting a fundamental change in studio structure.]

Read more at Gamasutra

Featuring Rocksteady audio director Nick Arundel, and foley artist John Roesch and gun recording expert Bryan Watkins

Click here for the video

The Recordist has released Autumn Rain.

A pristine collection of 50 24-Bit 96kHz rainfall sound effects from the forests and fields of North Idaho. Recorded primarily in the fall season of 2011 around my ranch and high up in the mountains. Other rain tracks were recorded early and late winter when the rainy season it peaking. A large portion of this library was recorded with the Sennheiser MKH-8040ST at XY-90 and XY-120 to capture the stunning detail of rain drops on leaves, wood and concrete.

BOOM has released Micro BOOM – Gun Handling.

Impressive and high quality gun shot sound effects are invaluable but they’re only half the battle. “Micro BOOM – GUN HANDLING” now gives you the perfect other half. 11 different firearms. Triggers, dry shots, safety switches, reloading, magazines and much more, delivered in the high BOOM Library quality standard with 96kHz, 24bit. A more than perfect addition to the BOOM GUNS Library. Click, click – BOOM!

Affordable Audio 4 Everyone released Lighthearted Magic. All proceeds above $5 go to Curesearch.org

A must have for anyone looking to add some interesting sounds for their visual FX. Don’t let the name fool you, there is plenty of good stuff to mix together to build up to darker sounding elements. The Lighthearted MiniMagic library was made for building that fun loving disappear sound, or for adding a great feel to some spining particles around a character.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Empty Sea has a sound library. They have one small release so far and there’s another one coming soon.

Coming soon, the full version of Sea Monsters.  This collection will showcase some of Empty Sea’s most original and best creatures.  Each sound will be recorded at 192k/24bit for optimum quality and maximum design potential

Designing Sound: So, you guys are working on Simon Killer…you’re wrapping it up today.

Antonio Campos: Yep.

Coll Anderson: Yeah. This is our last day.

DS: It’s going to print.

CA: Yeah. As soon as everyone leaves, I’ll probably re-bus…we have one line of dialog to see if we can get. It’s always a little game of inches at this point. All of the changes that we’re making are very, very, minor…just changes that sort of hyper focus the mood and flow. So, we have one line that we’re trying to get another inch or two out of, and then that’s it. Re-bus the console and hit record.

DS: So, how long have you been working on this film now, Antonio?

AC: We shot the film in the end of November/December in 2010, and then edited throughout the year. We submitted to Sundance in the fall and got in. So, we picture locked after about 11 months of editing. Coll and I started working in the…spring of that year?

CA: Yeah. You didn’t have an assembly when I started sending you stuff but scenes were starting to happen.

AC: Yes. Well, there are a lot of long takes in the film; a lot of scenes that are just one or two shots. So, we could go back and forth on full scenes.

DS: You were working on edits while Coll was doing sound?

AC: Yeah, we were only a few months into editing. There was a lot of back and forth. Coll designed a lot of the tones in the film. Coll started doing his thing, which I really like, taking a piece of dialog or word and creating a specific tone out of it. You don’t recognize the word, because it becomes a drone. I got a whole batch of those and started playing with them.

DS: That sounds kind of similar to some of the stuff you did on Martha. [ed. Martha Marcy May Marlene]

CA: Yeah, very much so. It was that stage in editorial, too early for music, but needing something emotional…some sort of connection to the actors that’s more than just talking.

DS: Something a little more abstract?

AC: Atmospheric.

CA: Atmospheric and…

AC: It’s felt, more than I think it’s heard. I think a lot of people don’t recognize the tones right away. They just sort of blend into the mix of the film.

DS: Could you…and obviously I won’t ask you to go into too much detail since the movie isn’t out yet…but could you give a little description of what the story is about?

AC: Simon just graduated college and has just gotten out of a relationship that he’s been in for five years. He goes to Paris to start this sort of Euro-backpack trip but ends up bumming around Paris too long and meets a prostitute and falls in love. That’s where this journey starts. Once they get together, that’s where the story really takes off. That’s all I can say without giving away too much of what the film is about.

DS: And how would you say the sound connects into the story, besides what we’ve already discussed?

AC: Theres’ a few things going on. One is that there’s a lot of long takes in the film, some of them wide, and the sound will allow us to push the audience’s eye one way or another. It’s amazing when you’re working in a very minimal soundscape how much you can get out of the details…how effective the details can be. Even the clinking of a glass contributes to setting the mood in a scene. The other thing going on is that we do go from very quiet to very loud in this film. One of the devices, or motifs, in the film is that we hear what he’s listening to on his iPod. He’s listening to a lot of indie-pop sounding music, electronic music, and we really played with how long we’re in silence to go to this loud explosion of music…and back to silence. [To Coll] What else would you say?

CA: I was thinking a little bit less about music and more about sound. In the case of Simon, and the film, there’s a sort of establishing geography that functions with the protagonist. How he feels grounded or doesn’t in places. We use sound as a tool to establish this vibe with him. In places where we want to settle him down, it’s really easy to create a location, a space… that’s very understandable to us audibly. It helps us create a link between the watcher or the viewer and Simon… Then, as his character evolves, we can subtly manipulate not just the backgrounds, but EFX, music even perceived spaces, so that we take him from being a grounded individual, to one who is less so, and thus mess with that subconscious attachment between the audience and Simon. He becomes no longer that grounded of a character. Our connection to him is now unsettled, because of how disconnected he becomes to the geography around him. And because it is so subtle, the audience still stays un-comfortably attached to him and they don’t know why. It’s really fun to create a space where we like him, because we understand the spaces that he’s in and then mess with that connection.

AC: Yes.

CA: We hear things we recognize; it’s a very comfortable environment to us. We shift it up a little bit…dynamic cuts in music, faster cuts so that the shifts are very obvious, traveling through the city…and as he becomes disconnected with the world, we shift the connection point in what we hear. We subtly manipulate those things that are so normal to us, those teacups and other small literal effects, become less and less literal as he becomes…I don’t want to say unhinged…but as our understanding of him changes. So, you don’t really notice that something is happening, but it is. It all happens between the use of backgrounds and designed sounds, and then using specifics to take your eye around the frame and look at what’s going on. As he changes, so does our world. That subtlety is something we can do with sound, it’s sublime.

AC: There’s also this other shift that happens in the film. In the beginning when you sense he’s still very much a tourist in the city, the sense of the city outside…even when he’s inside…you sense the weight of being in a foreign place. That gradually fades away, and it becomes so much more about him and whoever else is in the scene with him.

CA: Much more internal.

AC: It gets MUCH more internal. Another important character detail in the film, that is part of the sound design…he’s interested in peripheral vision. That’s what he studied; the eye and the brain. Visually, we played with that idea, and in terms of sound we play with that idea. There’s so much that’s happening in the periphery of the frame, that we’re not seeing, and the sound is doing all of that work. I really like when there’s off-screen action, because it inherently creates a sense of tension. The audience is now being given a certain amount of information that they can’t see, and their brains are working to put it together. There’s always something that could happen. There’s always a sense of tension in the film…that’s outside the frame.

DS: This is nice, because I just did a pair of articles on Designing Sound about deprivation and barriers, and leaving perceptual elements out in order to let people develop their own impression of the story. So this is going to tie in nicely with that. [laughs]

CA: The third eye is what makes…and when I say the third eye, I mean the implication that there is a necessary element “to” the film but that exists outside it… being the audience. The film itself, the characters and their interaction, is only one reality. The audience interaction with that is what completes this sort of film; how we as viewers project story… and Anotonio’s done a really great job in expanding that. What we see, and what happens outside of the frame, involves the audience filling in their own information; their own internal desire to complete story. It makes our involvement, with Simon in particular, unbelievably deep. It’s really fun. I don’t know how else to put it, other than the third eye involvement with the characters and what makes the film work so subconsciously.

DS: So, having myself only seen a handful of snippets of scenes a few moments ago, my familiarity with the film is poor at best. Were there any points where you were finding some good synergy between the visuals and the audio.

AC and CA: [Both laugh]

CA: Oh yeah! There’s a whole…

AC: I’m trying to think of just one.

CA: The flickers.

AC: Yeah, when we started…

CA: The Eiffel Tower, Paris…the whole scene.

AC: Right. That’s a good example. There’s this “light show,” we call it “light show,” that we did with flickering lights. The screen just becomes covered in this color scheme of red and blue…red will be, sort of like an orb, and the blue will be sort of flickering, and that will dissolve into an image of the city. Going in and out of those things…once we started taking those tones [ed. mentioned earlier in the interview] and making them really specific to just those sequences…all of a sudden, it gives immediate life to the thing. We had found the sound of something that had no sound. That’s exciting. When we shot the lights, it was shooting christmas lights with no lens on the camera. It was just the sensor responding to light in the room. It was all MOS. There was nothing to ground that in. The tones became the sound of those lights. And the way that they interact with the city, and the way those things bring us into his head, and out of his head, is part of the story. The tones and drones, in some way, could be considered a voice over.

CA: Yeah, they kind of are.

AC: For something going on in his head…

CA: There’s a visual that is just…it’s like the inside of Simon’s head. The sound occupies such a similar space that they just amplify each other. The connection of the two is unbelievably symbiotic. It’s kind of crazy. [laughs]

DS: I don’t want to eat up too much of your time with other questions, but if there’s anything you would like for people to have in mind when they go in to see this film…and this question goes to both of you…what would you like people to take away or go in prepared for?

CA: For me, sound in the film was a way to create a connection to a character that we were very comfortable with. So, we became attached to him…became a fan. We liked him. Once we cemented that sort of sympathetic relationship with the character… we shift who and what he is and the relationship the audience has with him. This calls into question our own feelings about him and more so, ourselves. “How could we like this guy?!” That’s what makes the film work for me, and that’s what makes the sound work. We are completely sympathetic to Simon. Then, all of a sudden, we realize how ugly we are in that connection. That’s what makes the character so deep.

AC: I like when people go into a film with an open mind. The thing to be prepared for is a very dark journey in a character that’s conflicted, and to accept your own conflicted feelings about the character for what they are. Don’t feel like you need to feel one way or another about him as a person. I think sometimes people want to feel one way about a character, and if they can’t accept that a character is conflicted or confused or unhinged…it won’t work. I like it anytime that people go into a movie with an open mind and take the journey that they’re going on for what it is; as opposed to expecting some sort of definitive answer. Even with Martha [ed. Martha Marcy May Marlene], we leave a lot of things up in the air. That’s the point. It’s not by accident. Everything that we do is very thought out. If a character is behaving in a way that makes you think, “I don’t like him,” at this point, and then behaving in a way where you go, “Oh, he’s kind of charming,” that’s what we set out to do.
 

The  release date for Simon Killer is not yet set, though it is expected that it will be in theaters later this year. A special thank you to Antonio and Coll for taking time out of their mix schedule to sit down with me.

…and now, as promised, a little bit of hilarity… The interview went very smoothly, and we were having a lot of fun…even with one small interruption.

When Dogs Attack! ………interviews:

Michael Bross is an award winning composer, sound designer and audio director who has worked on such popular video game franchises as Oddworld, Ratchet and Clank and WWE Wrestling, and he is currently working on free-to-play FPS MMO  ‘Firefall‘. Through my own work on Oddworld HD remakes, I has the chance to chat with Michael, who was kind enough to answer a few questions for Designing Sound

Designing Sound: Can you tell us a little about how you got into game audio, and your audio career so far? Can you tell us a little about what you are currently working on?

Michael Bross: I was first hired by a small game company called Paragon Software as a composer in the early 1990′s. I ended up doing sound design for them, too, and learned that part of my work on the job. I’ve been working on a couple projects this year which includes an Insomniac project. That’s all composing work. I’m also doing a bit of audio directing a project for Rumble Entertainment called King’s Road. Plus, I continue to write music for Firefall.

DS:  Is there an area of sound/audio development that you’re particularly drawn to?

MB: I go through phases. At times, I’m drawn more to sound design while others I’m drawn to music.

DS:  As an experienced Audio Director, how do you approach pre-production for a project? (defining aesthetic, creating a palette, communicating vision)?

MB: I spend a lot of time understanding what the game is about. I also talk with the key people on the team and we bounce around ideas about what kind of audio experience that we’d like to create. From there, I begin to gather a lot of reference material from games, film, TV, music along with any other sound sources that are inspiring and related to what we’re doing. I, or my audio team, may do some sound or music prototyping at this stage. There are also a lot of technical aspects to plan for a game, too, so I’m laying groundwork on that.

DS:  What are the main creative / technical challenges you faced in achieving your vision? Do you find the same challenges occurring on different projects?

MB: The main challenge is creating a production pipeline that allows creative people to focus on being creative and less on dealing with technical process.

DS:  How do you approach communication with the other disciplines on the team? How do you keep audio in peoples minds?

MB: By understanding who they are and how they contribute to the development process. How to keep audio in people’s minds? It’s a proactive effort for sure, but understand that great teams know that audio is important.

DS: What do you consider to be the hardest part of creating audio for interactive media?

MB: Production crunches, especially at the end of projects. It’s the time period where there are too many things to do and not enough time. At the same time, it’s also an exciting time. Adrenaline runs high.

DS:  You have worked on a wide variety of genres within games, from platformers Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One, to upcoming MMO first person shooter Firefall, through to sports / fighting with WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2011. Are there any unique challenges each of these genres poses?

Each has had its own unique challenges. With the Ratchet and Clank project, my focus was less on technical aspects and more on the creative, so really with that, my challenge was to pay respect to the soundtrack work on past titles while also trying to give it a refresh. With the WWE title, my role was to help them transition to new audio technology and pipeline, so it was more about making that happen and less about new content.

DS: You have previously been involved in creating music for films such as ‘Black Dahlia’ and ‘Ripper’. Is there a big difference in how you approach composing for games versus music for linear media?

MB: Actually, those projects were video game projects, too, but they were FMV-based games. The industry went through a period where it experimented with using live-action elements within a 3D world during the 90′s. We don’t really see that kind of game anymore.

DS:  What do you feel is the most satisfying part of creating sound for games?

MB: Working with talented people and being in the trenches with them and aspiring to make something astounding.

DS:  What are your preferred tools for working with? Do you have any software suites, plugins or apps that you use regularly?

MB: I use Pro Tools for sound design and Logic Pro for both music and sound design. I use an array of different plugins, but in general my favorite effects are those that manipulate pitch. Lately, I’ve been playing around with Izotope’s Iris plugin. It’s one of the more creative plugins I’ve come across lately. It’s like playing with crayons. I love it.

DS: On your last project, is there anything you would approach differently?

MB: On my last big project, I wished I would have had more time to go back and revise some of my mixes.

DS: What developments in game audio would you like to see in the future?
Closing the gap between content tools and implementation tools.

DS: Thank you for your time Michael

Frank Bry has released a new library called The Devil Dog.

Introducing Dixie, a very special English Bull Terrier with an amazing vocal ability that is unlike anything I have every heard. She is special because she is deaf and cannot hear what comes out of her mouth. She is loved and cared for by some friends here in town and they graciously allowed me to come to their home and record her. The Devil Dog HD Pro SFX Library contains over 800 individual Zombie-like sound effects recorded at 24-Bit 192kHz presented on 60 tracks.

Dixie makes the best noises when she is asleep dreaming or very tired and does not want to be bothered. She was very excited when I arrived so they tried to calm her down a little bit to see if she would make some of the amazing “alien” noises they say she makes. The sounds she made when I was in the room were great but after a while I went outside for 5 minutes and left the gear with them and they were able to get her to make some really cool noises. I was able to leave the recording gear overnight and got some really amazing close up sleeping sounds.

I used a Sennheiser MKH-416 and a MKH-8040 with the filter module set on a small stand. This combination is very good for this type of animal recording as the hyped-up top end of the MKH-416 works perfect for the normal pitched intense growls and barks while the MKH-8040 sounds amazing when pitched way down with a nice smooth top end and a monstrous low end. There are multiple distances for variety and dozens of variations on most tracks. Dixie can make sounds ranging from soft and subtle to over the top loud and vicious. She can purr like a kitten and snarl like an attack dog. I have never heard any animal make these kinds of noises especially a dog. Dixie got to know me after a few days and maybe next time I see here she will let me record her in her dream state.

The Devil Dog is available now at The Recordist. 60 files (over 800 sounds), 744.9MB, $50 us.

A collection of blog posts, and a special edition of the Game Audio Podcast, have been coordinated by Damian Kastbauer and David Nichols on the dense subject of racing game audio. The remarkably in-depth studies (which feature video examples) rip apart audio techniques for the racing genre, investigating subjects such as tire squeals, surface types, camera perspectives, and of course, the sounds of the engines themselves.

From the Lost Chocolate Blog;

These informal game sound studies aim to expose the technical side of game audio by making an assessment of current generation titles. The assessment is then used as a way to better understand the differences in approach, aesthetics, and progression of techniques across a small sample. By turning the focus onto emerging details that arise during the course of the study we are able to identify area’s of significance and interest that help communicate the current state of the art. These finding are then represented in a content-rich report that includes: videos, article links, and specialized interviews. The goal is to help raise awareness for the technical side of sound design and help in the understanding of what is often not very well represented in current literature.

Check out the study in all it’s glory at the following links:

Vroom Vroom – A Study of Sound in Racing Games ( Introductory article in Game Developer Magazine )

TrackTime Audio blog – Racing Game Sound Study

Lost Chocolate Blog – Racing Game Sound Study

Game Audio Podcast – Racing Game Sound Study (with guests Mike Caviezel, Mike de Belle and Tim Bartlett)

Hart FX has released Hart a Gator, a new library of alligator sound effects, cut from 10 hours of material recorded at 192kHz.

Alligators are quiet, stealthy creatures that roam the swamps and marshes of Florida like big, scaly, green ninjas. You see one silently skimming along, then all of a sudden it disappears! They hardly make any sound either – except for this one time of year… mating season.

During mating season, gators all of a sudden decide to emerge from their quiet ninja state and let the world know how much of a sexy beast they are – or at least they try to let the female gators know about it.

A gator bellow is when a gator fills it’s lungs with air, then lifts it’s tail and head up into the air, and then forces the air out in a way that causes the entire gator to vibrate violently. This creates this really awesome little dancing of water off the gator’s back, and creates a crazy growl that can be quite frightening. It definitely gave me a new respect for these oversized lizards…

This was not an easy library to record! The gator bellowing is infrequent, and it is often difficult to get close enough to get a clean recording. To add to that – if you approach too quickly and startle the gator, he will stop bellowing.

Hart a Gator is available for download at $95. More info: HartFX

Below is a q&a with Colin Hart, who shares some details about the process behind the library.

Can you tell us about the process of conceiving and planning this library?

I don’t really remember how the original idea came up (it was over a year ago…) but somehow we got the idea that it would be awesome to go out and record gator sounds. There is a gator “park” nearby where I live called “Gatorland”. They have upwards of 2000 gators and crocs there – I figured it would be a good place to start. So I called them up and got in touch with a guy that ended up touring us around to get gator sounds. The first time we went was in June – we were able to get some cool hisses and jaw snaps, which are territorial and warning sounds. Our contact told us that if we wanted some great sounds, it would be best to come back during mating season, when the gators bellow (as a mating call).

So come this year, around March, I called up Gatorland again and asked to come back in for a day of recording. I had no idea what to expect, so I just brought a bunch of gear and planned to stay a few hours. What I was able to get that day absolutely amazed me – these sounds were incredible! I had to get more. I was at the park for about 3 or 4 hours that day and only ended up with about 5 or 6 usable sounds, so I scheduled time to come back. I ended up going down there about 7 or 8 times total to get the sounds that I needed to build this library.

How were the recording locations and the specific situations with the animals? Did you have any preference regarding their movements and vocalizations?

The location made things a bit difficult. Because there are so many gators around, there are a lot of birds around. These birds don’t belong to the park – they are wild – but they come to the park because the gators add protection for nesting. No way a raccoon or bobcat is going to try to make it past all those gators to get to a bird’s nest. These birds were so pesky and loud! It made getting a clean sound very difficult. I basically had to be on top of a gator to get a decent sound.

The weird thing about recording the bellows was that the gators decide to bellow all at once. You’ll be sitting there with nothing to do for anywhere between 30 minutes to 2 hours, then one will start bellowing. Within a minute or two, all of the others start bellowing – one after another – as if they’re talking back and forth. Essentially, they are, telling the others how much more of a stud they are… In the main area, the bellowing probably only lasts 10 minutes, if you’re lucky.

So you stand around for up to 2 hours, waiting for the bellows, and all of a sudden it starts and you only have a few minutes to record. So you have to be ready. I would hang around taking pictures or something – maybe recording some ambiences – but my recorder was on and ready to go. I had to stay alert – as soon as you hear that first bellow, it’s off to the races! Then it was just a matter of figuring out which gator was about to bellow and get to them in time.

That was another thing – you could tell when a gator was about to bellow. They lift their head and tail up in the air and hold it there for a few seconds before they start. So when I saw one that was in a good recording location make that pose, I got over there as soon as possible – it is a very large area though, so sometimes that can be difficult – you always had to keep moving to try to anticipate what was going to happen next. The trick is that you can’t approach the gator too fast from the front – you will startle them and they’ll stop. Gators see movement and colors very well. David found that out the hard way when he wore bright colors one day and all of the gators were stopping once he approached them. Didn’t do that again!

How was your setup and methods for getting those sounds?

I had a recorder (generally a 702T) and a shotgun mic (a Sanken CS-3e or a Neumann KMR81i, depending on how I felt that day). I had the rig strapped to me and in standby for the whole time I was there, so that I could press record and go at a moment’s notice. Some days I brought little handheld recorders and my Joby tripod to mount them to the railing. I would just set them there, hit record, and leave them there for an hour or so. Those gave me my best ambiences, especially because the birds were slightly more active when nobody was near them.

The first two times I kept my headphones on, because I was concerned with the sound quality. Once I figured out how to best capture the sounds, I kept my phones around my neck, because I wasn’t able to locate where a sounds were coming from with them on, so my reaction time was slow – I was missing recording opportunities. David talks about this in one of his posts from a while ago on DS. I kept them nearby so I could reference if I needed to, but keeping them on my head wasn’t working so well. I experimented with using open back phones so I could hear through them, but they were still messing with my perception of direction.

I know one of the alligators ate a blimp that was covering the mic… How shocking was that? Do you have any sound of that moment?

That was a bit shocking – somewhat of an adrenaline moment… Both Johnny and I were recording when that happened, so we do have recordings of that – both from “First Mic” and “Third Mic” perspectives.

I have to say, I was kind of asking for it to happen because I was trying to provoke the gator into making hissing sounds by bopping it on the head with my boom pole – something that I picked up from the trainers. What I didn’t pick up from the trainers was that they were doing it with a stick, not a boom pole with $2000 on the end of it… Not my brightest moment, but it lead to some fun stories. The gator grabbed the “Dead Wombat” off of my blimp, along with one of the end caps. He also put enough weight on the pole to snap it in the center. Luckily I was able to wrestle it back from him (I did not actually wrestle him – just yanked on the boom pole a lot…), so I didn’t lose the mic or the blimp frame. K-Tek and Rode were both very nice and amused enough at my stories that they sent me replacement parts for free. Two awesome companies when it comes to customer service!

If I think about it enough, I can still feel the jarring sensation in my hands from when the gator bit the blimp – those things are strong!

Recordings of that moment:

You must be very busy recently, since there hasn’t been so much activity on Hart FX. I wonder if this library is the beginning of a new wave of releases or something. Any plans for what’s coming next?

I have been very busy! I’ve been doing a lot of SFX Editing on a handful of feature pictures over the past year, which has taken up a lot of my time. Also, a lot of custom sound effects libraries for specific projects. That has prevented me from having the time to release all that much on HartFX in the past year, but I am working on some stuff. I have 3 or 4 libraries that are all half done. I wouldn’t be surprised to see them released in the next few months :-)

The latest edition of the Game Audio Podcast is out, wrapping up a variety of subjects from GDC 2012 with special guest, Michael Raphael of boutique,royalty-free sound library provider Rabbit Ears Audio. Our  hosts also discuss the GANG awards, FMOD Studio, and newly emerging procedural plug-in formats for audio middleware, such as AudioGaming‘s AudioWeather.

You can check out some of the GDC talks mentioned, plus a wide variety of other GDC audio track content here

Listen to the Game Audio Podcast

Rabbit Ears Audio has released Hind Helicopter, a library of 77 files recorded at 24-Bit/96kHz.

One Soviet-era helicopter, four recordists, and plenty of fuel brings you REA_010 Hind. The Mi-24 Hind is a Soviet gunship that was introduced in 1969 and saw action in Afghanistan and throughout the Cold War. A few month back, I had the opportunity to record the Hind and assembled a team of of recordists to get ‘er done.

Sometimes when an opportunity presents itself, you just have to jump at it. This an animal of a helicopter that requires 26,000 lbs of thrust to get off the ground and pushes a ton of air. The helicopter’s large size and five blades give it a unique sound that is a combination of a “chirpy” whine and extreme low end.

Hind Helicopter is available at $129. More info: REA.

Below is a quick Q&A I had with Michael talking about this new release.

- What led you to create this library?

I was working at another gig and a friend of mine mentioned that he knew the owner of this particular helicopter and asked if I wanted to record it. At that point I didn’t know much about the Mi-24 and I started to do some research. Once I discovered how few of them were in the US and how little coverage there was, I jumped at the opportunity.

- What were the most interesting things of this helicopter regarding sound?

I can’t say that anything was boring. We learned very early on how powerful this machine was. It put out a tremendous amount of SPL and air-pressure. At various points throughout the shoot, each of the recordists were knocked down at least once from all the air that was being pushed. The blades are huge and the Hind has five of them, so it is truly a beast of a machine. I watched one recordist, Rob Byers, get flipped over twice during a take-off sequence because the Hind  passed a little too closely in his direction. We lost some good takes when we got a little too macho. During all of the pass-bys, I often found it hard to breathe from the amount of pressure hitting my body. Boy, was that fun!

We also spent half a day recording all of the doors, switches and electrical systems.  I really fell in love with that material during the editing process. Even the smallest switches have real weight to them.

- Could you tell us about the setup used and methods used for capturing those sounds?

For all of the pass-bys we wanted to capture a variety of perspectives and tonal elements so we went went out with a diverse collection of microphones. For all of the exteriors, we recorded with the following gear:

Exterior: Schoeps MK4, Sennheiser MKH 40, MKH 60, Sennheiser 8020, 8040, and 8050. Onboard: MKH 30/40. Interior Switches and Exterior Electrical Systems were recorded with a Schoeps MK4 + MK8 and a Sennheiser 8060. All tracked to Sound Devices 7-Series recorders.

The Schoeps really brought out the chirp of the helicopter where the Sennheiser 8000 series helped bring out the shear size and low end of the helicopter. Ultimately, the most important task at hand was recording as much coverage as we could with the fuel load we had. As you can imagine,  it is expensive to put the aircraft up, so you really have to maximize the potential for interesting recordings.

- How was the collaboration between the team of recordists?

I was happy to bring a crew of recordists that I knew very well and had worked with previously. All of the guys (Rob Byers, John Loranger, and Kelly Pieklo) have plenty of field experience.  Since I knew them well, spending a few days together was not going to be issue. We truly had a blast!  If one is going to do any sort of vehicle recording, having a group of recordists will help get the job done way more efficiently. We were able to spread ourselves across the airfield and cover the aircraft thoroughly.