[Article written by Frank Bry about his new library Ultimate Destruction, a collection of+600 destruction sounds recorded over a five year period at 24-Bit 96kHz in a multitude of dirty, dusty, smelly, noisy, dangerous and physically grueling locations. Available at The Recordist]

The Idea

Where do I begin? This sound effects library has been in the making for over five years so I need to access my memory banks and see if I can remember some of the crazy sessions I did. But first, I want to share some of my thoughts on why I made this collection and the theory behind the madness.

Ever since I started in sound design I’ve always needed all kinds of crashes and general destruction source material. This kind of material is not easy to find and sometimes recording your own can be a challenge. There are some great CD library collections of destruction sounds but most of it is designed. While these work great for a simple “drop and play” audio situation when your in a time crunch and they sound wonderful when played by themselves, they often leave you to a situation that is just not quite right. What if you have a complex destruction scene in a film or need to create that incredible crash sequence in a video game? You need clean, high quality sound elements separated out that you can manipulate and process so it sounds like something you created, your signature sound. That is the idea behind Ultimate Destruction.

From My Mind To The Microphone

Some of the sessions for this collection were planned multi-microphone fiascos and others were just from being observant or being in the right place at the right time. When I was recording the crashes and other crazy stuff on my ranch I ran images and sequences through my mind of my favorite crash scenes from my favorite movies. I tried to remember what certain scenes sounded like and how the arrived at the final audio destination. One of the things I noticed in theses scenes is there are a lot of elements used to create them. How can I mentally break them down to the individual parts was my obsession during the recording process.

My goal was to record them as big as I could and as long as I could and this presented many challenges. The first was having the various objects needed to make the vibrations and second, the tools need to make the action happen. I’m always on the look out for stuff to smash. My garage is full of things like old TV monitors, computers, boxes of bricks, metal objects and other stupid stuff any sane person would dispose of. When I purchased my ranch it had a lot of junk laying around and I have kept it all and even found some things I never knew were there until recently. I have my tractor, long chains and cables and many farming tools to hit stuff with. OK, a good start. Time to begin recording.

Got Concrete?

After recording Ultimate Concrete SFX I had tons of cement block and sidewalk debris left over. I wanted to record long dumps and pours with the tractor but the loader bucket always made a multi-pitched metal tome when things fall out. I needed to solve this problem as the concrete dumps sounded like they were coming out of a metal container. I experimented with many types of padding inside the bucket and finally found the right combination of a couple of old rugs clamped and taped inside the bucket. This was no easy task since the weight of the concrete would sometimes pull the rugs off and they would fall to the ground with the debris. This did not effect the sound that much but is was a pain in my backside to put the whole dampening system back in place after each dump. It was enough I had to hand load the bucket each time so this was an extra step I wanted to do without.

The concrete still made some noise as it was falling out of the bucket so I carefully positioned the microphones so that sound was off axis and I tried to dump from as high a location as possible. I have a dirt ramp I built to drive the tractor up on and was able to dump the debris onto a concrete floor I found buried in a hillside that was from an old barn the burned down many years ago.

Cool! I Found a BIG Rusty Old Tool Box!

Just recently I found a old construction tool box that fits into the back of a pick up truck on a remote corner of my ranch. I pulled it out and dragged it to my foley pit and planned my next sessions with this lucky find. My goal in recording this metal box was to create source material that could be used for a variety of crash situations. From a car rolling down a hill to a large bus hanging off the edge of a cliff and falling over.

This tool box was full of old nails, tools, chains and other disgusting things so when it was moved it made all kinds of noises not just a hollow metal sound. Stuff was rattling around inside the box and I knew it would eventually all fall out so I only had a few takes to get that sound. The first thing I recorded was the rolling and tumbling down a hill. This did not go as planned at first because the box would not roll! It would just fall to the ground and stop even on a steep embankment. This was actually a good thing because I was able to kick it down the hill one or two revolutions at a time. I was able to digitally edit the take together for a full roll and still have the separate parts that can be timed to a sequence.

The next thing I recorded was pulling the box with a cable attached to my tractor. I had 75 feet of cable so the tractor was far enough away from the microphones that the engine sound is not there. I proceeded to yank the box up and down a steep dirt embankment and got some great stuff. Slowly the box began to empty itself and was now becoming lighter in weight that I was able to easily pull the box with a short cable against the dirt. I later added some metal pieces and then some glass windows for added effect.

No, You’re Not Tearing That Building Down, Are You?

When one of the auto dealerships moved out of their downtown location, the new owners scheduled the buildings for demolition. I kept an eye on the location as I drove by it on my trips to town. I finally noticed the big excavators and cranes in the parking lot next to the buildings. Soon they would be ripping the buildings apart, and I wanted to be there. I missed the first part of the tear down, but I eventually showed up and recorded the machine operators pulling some of the walls apart and separating the metal into piles. Wanting to be mobile, I used my MKH-8040ST rig on a boom pole. I was there at the right time. They had already pulled the roof off and the machines were inside the building behind the walls they were about to rip down. I was able to get up close (maybe too close for comfort) to the wall as they tore it apart and it fell over. I struck gold! I was so nervous and excited that I barely shot any video. The video I got was with my iPhone while I was holding the boom and positioned to flee if debris headed in my direction. This was a little dangerous I guess, but in the end, it all came out great. Thankfully I did not breathe any toxic dust.

The excavator operator came over to chat with me during the metal separation. He was more than happy to “perform” some cool metal mangling for me. Metal can make such unexpected sounds and this metal certainly did. As he shoved it around and slammed the excavator bucket into the pile, I recorded all sorts of nice big wrenching and squeaking sounds. Gold!

On another occasion, a house right up the road from my ranch was being destroyed, and I was able to get the final stages of that tear down. I recorded some wood crunches and cracks along with some metal roofing being rolled up for recycling. This was the same house where I recorded glass windows being broken for Ultimate Glass SFX.

Wood and Glass Make A Great Couple

I recorded some hard breaks, cracks and dumps using some old, slightly rotted lumber that I had laying around. After whacking them with a sledgehammer and breaking them to bits, I loaded them into the tractor bucket using the same dampening technique used with the concrete. I dropped them onto the ground and also onto the concrete floor. I had some alternate microphone recordings from Ultimate Wood SFX of plywood rips in my archive that I included in this collection.

Glass is a very difficult thing to record. It’s dangerous, loud, and messy. My goal this time, using all the left over debris from recording Ultimate Glass SFX, was to get some long glass debris sprays and dumps. After hand loading the glass into the tractor bucket (I always wear hand, eye, and hearing protection when working with glass), I was able to slowly pour the glass out. I had previously separated the large mirrors and thinner glass so each pour had a distinct size to it. Mirror glass is thicker and heavier while window glass tends to be much thinner. I tried short and long pours, but at times it did whatever the hell it wanted to do and it all fell out.

I had saved some broken window frames and was able to crunch and crack them in a stack using a MKH-8040 to record them. I also had some computer and TV debris set aside that contained glass pieces along with the plastic and metal portions. These made for some great debris movements that can be used to sweeten a crash scene. Some of the sounds are subtle, but they are still destruction.

Metal Madness . . . The Recycler!

I took a quick trip to the local metal recycling facility to ask them if they would allow me to record. They were super nice and loaned me a hard hat and said, “stay out of trouble.” The only interesting activity they had going on was some scrap aluminum bundling. This giant machine is belt fed with scraps of metal. After tumbling down the chute into the compactor, the scraps come out bundled in a fairly large size rectangular hunk of metal.

I was able to position the MKH-8040ST microphone just inside the top of the chute and get the pieces falling in and being mangled. The machine is powered by a large electric motor and hydraulics which produce a very loud whine and hum. Since the mic was just inside the chute, the motor noise was minimal. This machine was extremely loud when the metal was falling in. Since I had to wear a hard hat I could not wear headphones, only earplugs. Good thing I did not monitor the recording with headphones as I’m sure hearing damage would have occurred.

The sounds this machine made were awesome! Most of the time the belt would continuously feed hundreds of pieces of metal into the compactor so it sounded like one long, drawn out metal crash, perfect for sound design. The metal pieces were not that heavy so the resulting sound does not have much low frequency information, but when a larger aluminum chunk hit the side of the chute, it was great.

KABOOM!

I’ve always wanted to record explosions and while I was recording a few guns last year I had my chance to record some Tannerite. Explosions are not something you can record everyday. It takes some planning, a good location that allows this kind of very loud noise, and a very good rifle shot. Since I have the gear, all I needed was the above. It all came together after months of planning with the local gun shop. After recording multiple guns, it was time to set off the Tannerite. If you don’t know about Tannerite, it is two (legal) substances that when mixed together and hit with just the right projectile at just the right velocity, it goes BANG!

We brought along 25 half-pound canisters and planned how many we were going to tape together and set off. We started out with a few singles and doubles and then moved on to the big ones—up to five taped together. We set the canisters on tree stumps so they would not kick up too much dirt and debris. I recorded with all the microphones I had on the gun shoot placed at various locations in the gravel pit. I used a Sanken CSS-5, AT 835ST, MKH-416, PCM-D50 (96k), MKH-8040 and my MKH-8040ST microphone set at 24-bit 192kHz and 96kHz. I aimed the microphones in different directions and set them at different distances. I would guess the mics were anywhere from 30 meters to 50 meters away from the blasts.

I did not know what to expect. I knew they were going to be loud, but since we had just shot off some REALLY loud rifles, my perspective was totally messed up. Needless to say, they were LOUD. Your body feels the concussion but if you’re wearing hearing protection (like I was), they sound muffled. After we set off the first few smaller blasts it started to rain. I quickly grabbed all the gear scattered around the gravel pit and set it under the hatch of my car. It seemed like the rain was not going to stop so we called it a day, and I tore down the gear. Then as quick as it came in, the rain stopped. Since we were running out of time, I quickly got the MKH-8040ST and Sanken CSS-5 set up, and we recorded the remaining explosions.

I thought I was going to regret not setting up all the gear after the rain delay. After I returned to the studio and listened to all the takes, I found the best recordings were the MKH-8040ST. These microphones at 192k sound amazing. They record the full spectrum of the blast and when pitched down, live up to the hype.

It’s A Wrap

I recorded a many more sounds for this library and would love to detail it all out but this article would become a short novel. Head on over to my website and look at the photos from many of the sessions. Some of the sounds date back to a time when I was not documenting the sessions as I do now.

There are no heavily processed sound effects here (except the explosions), just the real life destruction action as it happened. Many of the tracks were recorded with multiple extended frequency response microphones at close, medium, and distant perspectives. Each category was recorded separately to give you, the sound designer, the freedom to layer and process each type of sound individually for the most creative options. I hope you get much use out of this collection and hope it works well and inspires you. If you use it, feel free to let me know where and how. I would love to hear your end results and am honored if you were able to use it in your sound designs.

One of the things I’ve learned over the many years recording sound effects is to be very observant. I’m almost too observant (it drives my wife crazy sometimes). I can get easily distracted driving around town or just hanging out in a public place. I’m always listening and looking for things to record. I was fortunate enough to be at the right place at the right time and get some unique, and maybe once in a lifetime, material. I thank my lucky stars I was not in the right place at the wrong time. As always, be safe and enjoy! -Frank

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here’s a Q&A I had with Axel Rohrbach of BOOM Library, talking about the process on their latest release, Medieval Weapons.

Could you tell us a bit about the process on this library? What happened on the different stages of production?

First we had a rough concept of what should be included in that library. Of course there have to be tons of elements for the Construction Kit and as always a good general sound base for the pre-designed weapons of the Designed collection.

We started discussing about the experiences we had in recording and designing hand weapons and ranged weapons like bows and crossbows for movies or games. One big issue we all came across: we just don’t have enough material to work with. Shortly after that we talked to some reenactment fighting clubs about the most important fighting techniques and what kind of sounds they make. There was one interesting statement: “You can actually hear who knows how to fight with a sword and who doesn’t – the less sound variation, the less skilled the knight is”. That only encouraged us to provide tons of different clanks, clonks and scrapes from different sizes, materials, etc.

We started to record the most important medieval weapon: swords and blades. First we used the real thing and had about ten different swords including one handed, one and a half handed and two handed, a whole bunch of knifes and daggers, one- and two-handed axes, scythes and more. But we already knew that those might not necessarily produce the best thinkable sound for swords or hand weapons. So we grabbed metal poles, bars, sticks, planks and so on to get the extra thing.

After recording the most basic thing for the medieval battle scenery, we started to go out and shoot some bows again. We had a bow / arrow manufacturer build some for us and we tried a lot of things on our own. We attached all kind of things to the arrows, used so called Flu-flu arrows and different kinds of bows. However, same thing here, the real bow sounds interesting but doesn’t really give us the elements to create an in-your-face bow shot, in our opinion. So we also recorded some bow shot sweetener sounds like wood impacts, string sounds and so on which we used either on top of the real recording or on their own to create bow shots for Medieval Weapons – Designed.

We shot a crossbow a while ago which was one of the most boring sounds I ever heard for such a powerful piece of equipment. Again, we decided to record a lot of elements so that designing that mighty William-Tell-ish shot is easy and fun.

How was the experience with the siege weapons? I wonder how challenging it was to record those ones

We went to a bunch of festivals and medieval shows that happen a lot in the castles around here in the spring and summer. We realized that real catapults don’t sound too impressive. The sound you can hear is mostly squeaking hinges. We recorded one catapult to have a whole shooting sequence and fire shots. But for the rest we decided to focus on good sounds rather than good marketing material. We used the time more efficiently in recording gears, winches, squeaks, wood and metal impacts and rattle sounds – all the stuff that fits into the process of designing sound for a catapult. We went to a winery that actually had a lot of historic equipment. Those things sounded just perfect for our needs. One of our Sound Designers, Sebastian Pohle, went out to record large wood drops of whole tree trunks from an excavator. Tristan Horton recorded a whole bunch of large fire whooshes down in South Africa.

You went to a very special place to find medieval weapons to record. Could you tell us how were the sessions in that place? Any favorite weapons you found there?

We are actually located in the upper Middle Rhine area, which is a Unesco World Heritage Site. There are tons of medieval castles around here, some habitable, others are only ruins. However, we did not really record there, but we were able to get contact to reenactment groups who work at shows or festivals which take place in or around those castles. One of them was Robert Forster (German only: http://www.ritterausleidenschaft.de). He had a bunch of equipment and it was his catapult we recorded. Most of those reenactment guys are amazing. They really try to be as authentic as possible. Some of them even have their homes furnished like an average medieval house – no electric lights, just candles, straw beds, arsenal of weapons right next to the bed. I can relate to their passion, though. Most people don’t understand why we are always listening to the surroundings rather than the small-talk either.

Any happy accident or unexpected sound you got in the process?

Speaking of accidents: we saw some real blood during the recordings. The catapult slipped out of Robert’s hands once, hitting his forehead pretty bad and leaving a bleeding cut. The bow string slipped off the bow twice, resulting in major bruises, literally reaching down Michael’s and my whole left arm. We missed the windshield of our car with a burning arrow once by about an inch or less. The rest was some minor stuff like splinters, bruises from dropping stuff and such. Well, it’s called “Medieval Weapons”, not “Medieval Toys”.

Sounds that accidentally happened are not really in the library. We knew for about a year or so that we were going to create this Medieval Weapons library. So before the real process began, whenever we heard something that might suit the library we tried to reproduce that in the studio or wherever it was possible to do that. We ended up recording some things at our homes. I recorded a loose wooden floor board at my place which makes very cool, low creaks and Michael has this wooden cabinet that creates very cool grumbling squeaks.

Finally, is there anything you’d like to add about the process on the designed package? How was it?

For the designed collection we decided to make them less aggressive and loud than the Trailers – Designed sounds because their field of application is a whole different one. With the Designed sounds you will still be able to compress, limit and layer them with other sounds if necessary. They are ready to use as always, just more open to the application, be it TV, games, movies, radio shows etc. Once again, the making of the Designed collection influenced the Construction Kit. There’s a bunch of blood and gore libraries out there and originally we did not want to include those sounds in the Construction Kit. However, since we only use the audio of the corresponding Construction Kit for a Designed collection, we had to record some. Designed hammer hits without breaking bones, stabs without blood, arrow impacts only in metal and wood – we found out that this doesn’t make too much sense.

BOOM Library

[Written by Axel Rohrbach]

Here is a teaser video showing some of the things we recorded:

Click here to view the embedded video.

But this is only a very small part. Creating the “Cinematic Trailers” was one of the biggest challenges for us so far. The goal was to provide a designed collection with sounds having both, the quality you expect when you are in a cinema watching trailers and at the same time new and inspiring sounds. In addition to that, we wanted to put stuff into the “Construction Kit” that we never found in other sound libraries before.

We started with some basics, to get a feeling for which source sounds we need to create the “Designed” collection. We tried some things here and there, recorded flame whooshes with torches, fire balls and burning arrows. We did textiles whooshes, impacts and eerie Piano scrapes. After those basic standards it became difficult. We thought “having orchestra recordings for those typical rises would be awesome”. This is something used and needed very often, but besides music instrument libraries like “Symphobia” I don’t know of any sound fx library, especially in that price range, that contains such things. As BOOM Library is a spin-off of the audio production company Dynamedion (www.dynamedion.com), luckily we have access to a great and very experienced team for orchestra recordings. I instructed the orchestrators to arrange those orchestra-effects and let them some free space for experiments as well. We did the recording during one of the “Open Orchestra Recorcing Sessions” Dynamedion organizes several times per year, where the team books a high quality German orchestra for 2 days of recording and then gives everyone the chance to “buy in” the session to have music recorded. It is a great way to have smaller amounts of music recorded without needing to go through all the hassle and costs of organizing a complete session only for a few minutes of music.

Recording Taiko drums was another thing, not very typical for sound libraries yet very often used for trailer impacts. For the impacts we figured out that some really harsh crackling / breaking sounds are missing. That brought us to the idea of the plastic cups, shown in the video. We experimented with doormats, duct tape and glass. We put all kinds of stuff on a rope. We recorded very fast car drive bys with quiet engines to get rid of the car feeling as good as possible. Bike drive bys were very cool sounds as well as ski and snowboard pass bys. I had a vacuum cleaner around and recorded a pretty cool sound which actually sounds processed already, simply by turning it on and putting my hand in front of the tube and removing it again.
We prepared sustained sounds and swung speakers playing those sounds in front of the microphone, went to an airport to record starting planes and created some synthetic and processed sounds as well.

For the “Designed” collection we had some days of research before we started. We tried different new Plug-Ins, especially algorithmic reverbs and equalizers. Some new made into our PlugIn folders. I am personally very impressed by the sound of the Brainworx EQs. They are not very precise, but very nice sounding and clean. They replaced the Waves APIs on my system for now. Nebula3 is another EQ that is used quite often on the designed sounds. As for reverbs, all kind of plugins were used, only the Lexicon reverbs are new because they sound dense and crisp. We released two videos, going into the depth of the sessions of two sounds.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Spoken frankly, we are quite happy that this project is over, because it took way more time that we initially thought. However we are also happy because we use those sounds every day. I mentioned that in another interview before: we are our own best clients because we always do libraries that we are missing for our own daily work. Since the library has been released, we used the sounds in trailers already, I did the audio for a cinema logo animation of a VFX studio, used those sounds in movie scores as well as for in-game sound effects. It makes our lives much easier and I hope yours too. Together with Cinematic Metal it is a perfect combination to create fat trailerish title sounds. Thanks again to Charles Deenen for your support!

The greatest thing however is that we are indeed receiving tremendously good feedback from our customers at the moment. Honestly: after our first four releases we couldn’t imagine to have a fifth collection that would even be more acclaimed by our customers. Every release is so exciting: you never know if the sound designers out there will like it or not until the collection is being released. So this makes everything just more fun and inspires us to raise the bar with every new release.

Adam Stiles – Sound Designer (Trailer: The Dark Night, Gamer, Hellboy II: The Golden Army)
“There are so many sounds in here that aren’t anywhere else but needed so,so often. For example, to have that much taiko drum recording at that fidelity is worth the cost alone. Everything is fantastic, an excellent,excellent collection. With the Cinematic Metal library, you could almost do any high end trailer with those alone.
I’m so happy there’s a company like you guys out there. The need for these type of sounds are monumental. Especially for us at Riot Games, we need more, and more.”

Besides the demos, make sure to check out the “Facebook 500″ sounds which you can download for free here.

Those are mostly created exclusively with the Cinematic Trailers library. Some sounds however do include our other libraries, mainly Cinematic Metal.

For some more information check out our website.

The Recordist has released Mangled Metal, a collection of 715 sound effects, including metal rips, tears, dents, scrapes, folds, slides, rubs, impacts, crashes, drops and more.

Being a pack-rat runs in the family so I instinctively saved all kinds of metal like my old roof, appliances, stoves, containers, steel bars, pipes, barrels, etc. Recorded with a variety of microphones and recorders, and over many years, this collection captures many styles and qualities only metal can produce.

Most of the library was recorded at 24-Bit 96kHz but also includes the latest sounds recorded with the Sennheiser MKH-8040ST microphone at 24-Bit 192kHz. These wav files are presented individually at 96kHz and as multiple take 192kHz tracks. Be sure to pitch down the 192kHz metal strains and crashes and experiment with extreme processing. These files will hold their own. Most of all, have fun designing your next maniacal metal sound effect.

Mangled Metal SFX Library is available now at $75. Complete file list here (PDF).

Click here to view the embedded video.

Now the turn is for Frank, who tell us how was the making of this new library:

Where Do I Begin?

I spent a lot of time with my Grandfather when I was growing up. He was a scruffy old man that liked to keep EVERYTHING. I guess it rubbed off on me and I tend to save stuff that other people think is crazy. Some of the things I like to keep around are metal objects. Large, small, rusty, you name it I’ve got it stored around somewhere. The stove that I recorded is one of those things. I used it for years and then when it was moved to my ranch it fell off the truck and got beat up. It still worked but it was dented and warped. Perfect for sound effects recording!

The Early Sessions

Sometime in 2007 I found an old wood stove on the ranch and jumped on the John Deere tractor and dropped it from the bucket a few times. I liked what I heard and proceeded to get the electric stove (Scrappy is the name, thank you Michael R.) and drop it. The wood stove drop was a test and turned out great but I wanted the sound of them rolling and crashing so I found a location on the ranch with a hill I could access with the tractor. It was winter and there was little snow, very quiet and I was on a roll so to speak. When I dropped the electric stove I left all the rings, racks and pans inside and that was great because it totally had a “scrappy” crashing roll sound. Perfect! I recorded with three mics from different perspectives.

In 2008 I decided it was time to replace my roof on my house. Since my brother is a metal fabricator I flew him out and we both tackled the crazy idea of “do it yourself roofing” After we were done I thought of recycling the metal but my genetics kicked in and the ghost of my Grandfather appeared in my head and told me “keep it, you never know when it will come in handy”. So, we stacked it next to my garage and it sat there for a few weeks until I had the time and energy to record. The first session with the roofing metal was awesome. I placed a Sanken CSS-5 on one side of the 22 foot long stack and a Sony PCM-D1 on the other. Since we just ripped the sheet metal off the roof quickly, most of the 30 year old nails stayed in the sheets. When I dragged them across each other the nails would catch and make an awesome screeching sound. One of my favorite sounds in the library. I combined both recording set ups and with the PCM-D1 very bright and the CSS-5 with body, I got a great mix of the two.

What else can I record?

Since those early sessions I have been collecting and keeping all the metal I can. I found pipes, huge steel plates, mailboxes, stop sign posts and 6 foot crowbars. The stove has held up well getting the crap beaten out of it over the years and these new objects were used with it. Very recently I dropped the metal junk on the stoves, dragged them around on concrete, pulled them apart and general mangled them.

One of my favorite sessions was when I used the sign post and long crowbar with the electric stove. I slid the bars into the mouth of the stove and got some great slide-clanks. The other session was right after I picked up the Sennheiser MKH-040ST rig. One of the panels on the stove had come loose and as I was moving out of the way it made a great scraping sound. I recorded this sound for 15 minutes with the MKH-804ST rig very close. I recorded at 192K and when they are pitched down they sound like communication towers or old steel bridges collapsing.

I recorded many other metal objects and learned that metal is the wild card. You never know what you are going to get and you can make it into anything.

Mangled Metal SFX Library by therecordist

So, What Did I learn?

Metal is loud! And, it can be very soft and subtle. I never really knew how loud something was going to be and since I record alone I was constantly adjusting the levels and pads on the recorders. I clipped many takes and had to re-record a lot of stuff. I lost some great sound events and in the future I will try to be more careful. I must say scrape metal is also dangerous. I never drew blood on the sessions but I advise anyone recording sharp metal objects to be careful. Pace yourself and take frequent breaks to save you energy. Being tired while tossing metal around is not a great idea.

I also learned that at some point you have to stop recording. I wanted to record a lot more for this library but it got to a point where it felt right and there was a certain “vibe” to the collection. I tend to live in the moment and I suspect there will be more moments in the future for a second library. I’m going to keep following my gut instinct and my genetics that I got from my Grandfather and keep saving EVERYTHING!

Mangled Metal SFX Library Pitched by therecordist

Tim Prebble has released Blow Holes on HISS and a ROAR, opening a new catalog of ambience libraries.

Ambiences play a crucial role in every film: literally, emotionally and physically they define the world that the film exists in. Accordingly we endeavor to provide characterful multichannel recordings of dramatically interesting locations.

The ocean has an infinite range of moods, but when the power of an incoming tide becomes constricted it can lead to some awe-inspiring sounds. This library was recorded on a Sound Devices 744 recorder using a Sanken CSS5 stereo mic along with Sennheiser MKH70 and MKH816 mics. Four locations were chosen specifically for their unique sonic properties:

• Punakaiki Blow Holes – West Coast, South Island, New Zealand
• Alofaaga Blow Holes – Taga, Savai’i, Samoa
• CastlePoint The Gap – East Coast, North Island, New Zealand
• Muriwai The Gap – West Coast, North Island, New Zealand

Blow Holes Library | 24bit 96kHz | 1.52GB download | 2.17GB uncompressed

Here’s a Q&A with Tim, talking about the library and his projects.

DS: What was the inspiration behind this library?

TP: Ever since I first started working as a sound effects editor I’ve loved recording and editing ambiences for films. Its such a lovely subtle area to be working in, and is also somehow personal as you tend to draw from your own experiences and memories of how specific locations sound, how they affect you and how you can recreate them, while also retaining control so as to impart meaning and emotion to them. So it was inevitable I would start releasing ambience libraries. Living in a small island nation I guess it was also inevitable my first ambience libraries would be of the ocean. I’m not going to wax lyrical about the ocean but I love its many moods; there is nothing more relaxing than the gentle rhythm of a calm beach, nor more terrifying and life threatening than a storm at sea. The BLOW HOLES library is the first part of a trilogy of ocean ambience libraries that I am working on, the second library will be STORMY SEAS and the third CALM BEACHES, so that between these three libraries a vast range of situations can be catered for, with really unique & dramatic character.

DS: Tell us about the locations.

TP: Well the first location, Punikaiki I have been to literally dozens of times. It is on the West Coast of the South Island, only a couple of hours drive from Christchurch, where I grew up and went to University and then Film School. Punikaiki is always visually stunning, but sonically you need some local knowledge. Years ago I went there with friends during the day and it was impressive but the tide was out and it was calm, and I think my friends wondered what I had been so excited about. We were staying only a half hour way walk away so after dinner & a few drinks that night, we wandered back – I distinctly remember the full moon and the subsonic rumble as we approached the area. But the sound I will never forget is the first vented blow hole. This vent is maybe 200m from the sea, so there is no water, just a large hole in the ground surrounded by flax. You hear a distant boom and then a huge rush of air. The Maori of New Zealand have a term ‘Taniwha’ which refers to beings that live in deep pools or in the sea. Some taniwha are considered protective guardians while others are predatory. When we came across this vent, in the middle of the night, I could easily see how you might think only an angry sea monster could be creating such a sound! When we finally got out to the viewing area, the blow holes were blasting spray 20m into the air! It really is equal parts awe inspiring and scary! I’ve recorded at Punikaiki a few times, but I figured it was worth another visit armed with the tools I now have.

The second location was a side trip when I was in Samoa, recording ambiences for the film O Le Tulafale (The Orator) – I stayed an extra weekend & took my rental car on the ferry over to the larger island of Savaii. I had read of the Taga blow holes at Alofaaga, but again describing them is nothing like experiencing them. There were a few times when I had to really quell a surge of andrenalyn caused by being so close to such a powerful and unpredictable force of nature. As you can see in the video a local guy appeared out of nowhere and took a bag of old coconut husks, and would throw them in the blowhole just before the wave surged in, and the husk would fly like a cannonball such was the pressure (I had to ask him to stop shrieking with laughter every time he did it!)

The third location, Castlepoint, is a lovely summer resort for swimming and surfing, but also has a treacherous reef that has claimed the lives of a number of fishermen. I wasn’t quite aware of how dangerous it was until I went there to record a few months ago, and driving from Wellington I only got there an hour or two before high tide. I started to walk across the reef to the gap that I wanted to record and could instantly see how evil that sea was. It literally rose and fell three or four metres in a few seconds, a wave could easily sweep me & my gear off into the open sea in the blink of an eye. A little shaken I went home and planned to return, and when I did I rented a nearby holiday house for a weekend so I could stay and easily track the tide and choose my moment to record.

The fourth location was Muriwai, a vast open beach, on the west coast from Auckland. Muriwai is well known for its surf but also for its treacherous fishing spot: The Gap. The waves pound into a narrow rocky inlet and the containment really amplifies and focuses the powerful relentless sound of the ocean.

All in all, many fun and scary days at the beach were involved! And best of all, using a boom I could put the mic where it was completely unsafe to be… and listen.

DS: What’s next for HISSandaROAR?

TP: I’m half way through recording TORTURED PIANO which involves the total destruction of an old bora-ridden upright piano, along with some rather strange manipulation of my baby grand piano. Its going to be a multi channel library as I am recording with two contact mics as well as condensor mics. But it is not a music library – I am specifically after sound design elements: strange textures, resonant scrapes, cracks, hits, metal creaks & groans. While it is kind of sad to see a musical instrument destroyed, this piano was long beyond saving before I got it, so in a way I am paying tribute to its life by immortalizing its final sounds. After that will be a new creature vocal library – the SEAL VOCALS have been so well received that I am going to follow it up with a smaller, nastier creature, capable of some truly viscous sounds.

DS: How about THE DOORS library?

TP: Its definitely in the schedule, but the drives are literally still traveling around the world to all of the contributors. So it will be another month or so before I am able to release it. Its a little frustrating, we really need the speed and data limits of the Internet to catch up with our use for it, to make this concept more efficient.

DS: How are the film projects going?

TP: Great but very, very busy. We started predubs at Park Road Post for the Cirque De Soilel 3D film this week. So in 4 weeks time it will be finished, and then I start back into O Le Tulafale (The Orator) with another field trip to Samoa. After we mix it in July I’m taking a long overdue break and will head to Japan and hopefully South Korea. I’ve also started planning a field trip to Papua New Guinea for a film (Mister Pip by Andrew Adamson) that I’m starting near the end of the year. No rest for the wicked!

Frank Bry has released another of his great “Ultimate” collections, this time including a huge amount of glass recordings.

Presenting Ultimate Glass Sound Effects Library. 736 glass sound effects recorded at 24-Bit 96kHz. Sounds included but not limited to: Windows, Mirrors, Bottles, Vases, Jars, Dishes, Wine Glasses, Drinking Glasses, Light Bulbs, Ornaments and Computer Screens.

Not only is there the usual smashing and breaking of glass, there are many sounds made by glass that are perfect for video game and film sound design. Pitch, bend, warp and process to your hearts delight.

Over a year in the making and dozens of location recording sessions, this is the Ultimate Glass Collection.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Gear used: Sound Devices 702 – Fostex FR-2 – Sanken CSS-5 – Sennheiser MKH-416 – Audio Technica AT-835ST – Sony PCM-D1

Ultimate Glass – $100 | 96kHz 24-Bit WAV | 736 files | metadata ready | PDF List

Bonus: TV Screen Goes Bada Boom

And here’s a Q&A with Frank, talking about the making of this fantastic collection:

Designing Sound: What was the most challenging stuff to record for this library?

Frank Bry: The most challenging thing about making this library was dealing with recording levels. Glass is very dynamic and sometimes I had no idea how loud a certain glass object was going to be. The bottles and jars have a loud peak at the start and then quickly drop in volume as the debris spreads out. If the levels were set too low it seemed the body of the sound was missing and if it was to high the limiter would kick in hard. It took me a while to find the best average but I eventually did through trial and error.

Another issue that came up was glass debris hitting the microphone. When I record outside I try and use only the zeppelin and when there is substantial wind I will add the dead kitty. My outside “recording area” is a concrete floor from an old barn that burned down and has some protection from the wind with dirt walls around 3 sides. This kept the wind to a minimum for the most part but I made an effort to record with no wind. Sometimes the glass debris will fly everywhere, very unpredictable! When it does it can hit the microphone zeppelin and make a small plastic tick sound. When the dead kitty is on you don’t here it so at times I would have that on if I felt the glass was going to spray everywhere. A few times after I got back up to the studio I found pieces of glass in my hair.

And finally, one of my favorite sessions was at a house up the road that was getting demolished. I heard the sounds of destruction one morning and quickly grabbed my gear and ran up to see what was going on. The guy who was destroying the house told me he would hold off for a couple hours while I set up my gear inside and smashed my way through the house. I had to record quickly so I only used one mic set up, the CSS-5 and SD 702. I got some great material from throwing objects throughout the windows from the outside and hitting window frames with a crow bar inside. It doesn’t get any more fun than that!

DS: How were the sessions conducted? Did you have a kind of guideline to record the different perspectives and performances?

FB: I started recording this library a little over a year ago after I stored up a few dozen wine bottles in the garage. I also had stored many other types of glass like jars, old vases and lightbulbs. The only guideline I used was the “get it right the first time, you only have one shot” idea. Unless you want to spend lots of money on glass source you have a limited amount of takes you can do. I did purchase over 100 windows for this library but I still only had one shot at most of the smashes because a lot of the windows were one of a kind. I picked them up from a local glass shop that had accumulated tons of glass window “mistakes”

I only drew blood once and it was a tiny poke to my left index finger when I was picking up some glass shards to drop. I forgot to bring my thicker gloves one day and paid the price, well, it really was nothing. I will say to all who want to record glass: be very careful, this stuff is sharp and can be very unpredictable. When you get tired, stop and wait for another day to finish.

Click here to view the embedded video.

DS: What gear was used and how?

FB: I mainly used the SD 702 and a Sanken CSS-5 along with a Sennheiser MKH-416 and my trusty Sony PCM-D1 as a back up. I did use the AT-835 ST and Fostex FR-2 rig on a few sessions also. I would either have a mic set-up on each side of the glass smashing area or one close and one far depending on what I though would yield the best results.

DS: Apart of the “destruction” elements, there’s also a lot of special found sounds that can be used for a lot of sound design tasks. Could you talk us about those unique recordings and ways to use them?

FB: While recording I found that glass makes some cool noises by accident. Whether it’s cracking, scraping or hitting all sorts of noises can pop out. One time when I was setting up a large shard of heavy, thick glass it slipped out of my hand as I was holding it vertically and it tapped the concrete floor. Luckily I was rolling and recorded some very cool and bright “glass ping” sounds. The shard also cracked slightly as it hit so I just kept on rolling.

I also recorded lots of debris falling and “raining”. I found that certain pieces of glass have a musical quality to them and with a little processing can be made into some great “fantasy spell” type sounds.

When I was recording the large windows smashing I tried to make the Impact and debris falling have a longer gap so if you wanted just the debris part it can be easily separated. At the same time I cleared the ground under the window smash after almost every take so you would not hear too much glass falling on glass sounds. There are some in the library but for the most part the glass falling after the impact is landing on a clean surface.

DS: Was there anything special in the editing/metadata tagging processes?

FB: I tried to use as many descriptive words as I could to make searching more accurate. I use key words like Large, Small, Medium, Interior, Exterior, Debris, etc so when you search you can narrow down what you are looking for. Other than that it was pretty straight forward.

DS: Anything else to add? Perhaps a hint for the next release?

FB: I still have about 50 windows left to break and decided to wait and record them with some new gear optimized for 24-Bit 192kHz resolution. There will be Ultimate Glass II sometime this year. I have a few other large collections in the works right now and I let you know as soon as I get closer to release date. It’s cools stuff and most of it has not been heard before. I’m excited to get these finished.

The Recordist

The problem I’ve always had with sound effects libraries is the “stock” sound effects idea. I’m a big fan of creating your own sound effects. The catch is my primary gig is developing sound effects libraries. Enter my dilemma…

Sound effects libraries are necessary. You won’t have the time or budget to gather every sound you need for your project. This is when you grab a canned sound (yes, they used to come in cans). When I started Blastwave FX, the vision was simple – give sound designers tools to develop and create their own sound effects. The bottom line, Don’t Be A Lazy Sound Designer! If you have to use stock sound effects, blend, layer, twist and manipulate them so that they are unique to your project. While it’s fun for me to hear my work at the movies, on TV and when playing video games, I’d much rather never hear my work. Stock sounds can become campy and overplayed. So, it’s important for sound designers to use them as the icing on the cake, but never the batter.

With Blastwave FX, we’re trying to keep our libraries fresh and consider them living entities. In other words, it’s alive! It grows, and continues to give you the tools you need to create great soundtracks. Enter Sonopedia 2.0.

We spent three years creating and recording new sound effects, including sound design elements that just aren’t found in any other general sound effects library. We even added a brand new category called Textures. Textures work kind of like production elements, except that they are real world sounds that you can use to combine and create your own effects. Sounds in this category include crunches, squishes, scrapes, slides, fruits and vegetables, etc. By far, I think this is the most useful category for sound designers.

And speaking of sound-design-friendly material, we took special care with the sounds in post. One of the things that make stock sounds yucky is the over use of compression and EQ. This makes the sound effects sound almost artificial. With our material, we tried to use better mic placement to get the sound we were after and used little or no compression in post. This allows the end user to have more control over the sound. Remember, you can’t un-compress a compressed sound. I have no idea how you will use the sound, so why would I make critical decisions for you? Instead, we leave the sounds as flat as possible with plenty of dynamics still intact. Of course, when it comes to the larger-than-life sounds like creatures, science fiction and serious crashes, all bets are off.

Our recording sessions covered Foley, weapons, vehicles, monsters (yes, they are real) and even original wax cylinders of recordings from the 1800s. We went to two-time Grammy nominee Ken Flaherty’s home to record his incredible collection of phonographs. The session was very awe-inspiring for me. There is a recording of Thomas Edison straight off of an original wax cylinder print of his “Let Us Not Forget” speech after World War One. It was surreal. I was a recordist recording a recording of the inventor of the recorder (say that ten times fast). During that session, I was also able to record on one of the ten original foil recorders that Edison created. This was essentially the first recording device. I got to record my voice on the device saying “Blastwave FX, the new wave in sound effects”. Quite ironic, considering that I was recording this on an original device that was a hundred years old.

Other sessions included snowmobiles, ATVs, helicopters, guns with several perspectives, water effects, snow and ice, destruction and tons of industry sounds including an incredible session at General Motors. The hardest part about recording at the major automotive manufacturer was getting permission. We tried to get in for years. Then, one day we found ourselves inside both the assembly and stamping plants. Some of these machines were absolutely huge! There was one stamping machine that was about two hundred feet long, thirty five feet wide and twenty five feet tall. It was breath taking. So, we recorded the machine from the sides, top, bottom, middle and even underneath in a basement that collected all the scrap metal. Because of the sheer size of the machine, we were able to find unique sounds and perspectives from nearly every angle.

It was fun to start over again and fill in the gaps. I recorded a blizzard that hit Detroit in February and captured the sound of a tree getting knocked over by the violent wind. That was super spooky. It was in the middle of the night. I was all alone in this forest and it was dark. All of a sudden, I heard bending and cracking and finally a thump as this huge tree came crashing to the ground nearby. It was pretty hard to keep quiet, but I didn’t want to ruin the take.

During a trip to lecture at Full Sail, I stopped in a day early and spent nine hours with Colin Hart and several students recording anything and everything on their sound stages. There were tons of props, machines and studio equipment that we recorded. Its one thing to write a book about sound effects or even lecture about the topic, but it’s another thing to throw headphones on everyone in the room and explain the process with a hands-on approach. That was a cool trip!

Overall, the biggest challenge was finding new things to record. We worked hard on the first version of Sonopedia to cover all the bases. So, in this version we focused on sound design elements in addition to rare antiques and machines. There is also an emphasis on hard to find Foley effects including simple things like cloth tracks, tying shoes, scrapes, slides, movements and the like. In fact, we recorded many Foley sounds on location to capture more real world environments and props that were impractical to bring back to the studio.

A big focus for me was to enjoy the process. I didn’t want to rush anything. I wanted this new version of the library to evolve on its own. I think that will come across in the final product. You can check out some of the fun we had making Sonopedia 2.0 by watching the Chop Shop Video Diaries. Of course, we didn’t document the hundreds and hundreds of hours spent designing and editing. This is mainly because no matter how cool the music is in the video, nobody wants to sit and watch some dude staring at a computer screen all day!

Sonopedia 2.0 will have 30,000 general HD sound effects including production elements, 5.1 surround effects, science fiction and lots of interesting material for sound design. There’s over 300 GB of content with all the metadata your heart desires as well as a free search engine to find the right sound to drag and drop into your session. And to show our commitment to producing fresh material, Sonopedia 2.0 comes with free updates for life. That means you get new sound effects delivered to you four times throughout each year you own the product – for free. Our goal is that this will be a Comprehensive Lifetime Sound Design Solution. But, keep in mind; I’d still prefer if you made your own sound effects! : )

Oh, and I should also point out that despite the addition of 10,000 sound effects, the price will stay the same. And if you are a student or have recently graduated from college, check out the Blastwave FX Facebook page for an announcement about upcoming student edition pricing.

Now, for you gear heads, here’s a list of some of the equipment we used for Sonopedia 2.0:

Microphones

• Rode NTG-3
• Rode NT4
• Rode NT2A
• Rode NTK
• Sanken CSS5
• Sennheiser 416
• Sennheiser 418
• Sennheiser MKH60
• Sennheiser MKH800

Recorders

• Fostex FR2
• Fostex FR2LE
• Sound Devices 702
• Sound Devices 744

Sound Editing / Design Software

• Acid
• ProTools
• Sound Forge 10
• Vegas 10

Mastering Software

• Sound Forge 10

For more information check out www.blastwavefx.com.

This is a little different from my previous articles. I had planned to write a massive article on the making of the library. I have been writing so much lately that I thought it was best to give the written language a break from my abuse and half baked prose. I decided the making of this library was best told with visual images and sounds from the library. The video contains footage of my fire recording sessions from early to late 2010. I am also showing for the first time the “Spanky Cam.” It’s my iPhone held in my hand as I try to melt bottles of flammable liquid. I also include new footage not seen in the teaser or trailer. As you watch you can follow along with the on screen captions giving you all the play-by-play action as it happens. If you have ten minutes to burn, watch the video. Please excuse the Infomercial type music, except the credits music at the end, that’s mine. It’s the best I could do in the time alotted.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I managed to keep track of all the hours it took to make this video and when added up I realized I’m not in this for the money. I have to wear all the hats around here, even the one I wear when I plow my driveway of snow. Video production is now one of the hats I’m really starting to enjoy. I did this because I really had fun with the video. Being able to put together this footage of my many recording fiascos brings me tremendous joy knowing others will be watching, learning, and most importantly, laughing.

Some mind numbing technical notes on what it took to make this video:

• 74 hours of video editing
• 18 hours of audio prep, sound design, music editing, and final mxing
• 5 hours encoding and uploading final video
• 100 Gigabytes of raw HD footage material
• 7 Gigabytes of final HD footage using the Apple Pro Res 422 HQ codec
• 4 Macintosh computers (I like to multitask)
• 0.5 hours rebooting the computers for one reason or another

Software programs used to make this monster:

• Final Cut Pro
• Compressor
• iMovie 09 (for titles)
• Quicktime
• Photoshop CS3
• Pixelmator
• iPhoto
• TextWrangler
• Pro Tools 9 HD
• Soundtrack Pro
• Peak Pro
• Soundminer Pro v4
• Waves Plug Ins
• Izotope RX2

Could you imagine the concept of television re-imagined for sound designers only? How would that be?

How would be a Field Recording TV channel? or can you imagine a show where you can see how the sound of a recent film was done? or what about watching some channels where you can find other guys like you recording sounds outside the world? What if you could watch interviews with different sound designers each night while you drink a cup coffee?

Well, I’ve created something like that, but using the Internet. It’s called Designing Sound TV, a new website packed with lots videos about sound for films, video games, tv, and more. There you can find all kind of stuff on sound design, field reording, foley, mixing, and more.

In the last years I’ve collected (links/files) many ”making of” videos, featurettes, dev diaries, library promo videos, tutorials, etc. Just any sound design video you can think of. I love that stuff as a treasure, and I realized that you could love it too, so I decided to create a dedicated place where all that videos can be perfectly organized and available to the community.

I created it with the geek sound designers in mind, so there are several features that you’ll love:

It’s not from scratch. DS TV is launched with 400+ videos already tagged, organized and waiting for you.

• Everything is tagged and filtered by Sound Person, Film, or Video Game titles. So, if for example, you want to see all the videos of “Ben Burtt”, you just need go to the Sound Person page and click.
• I’ve seen all the videos published there, so I can guarantee that all is good stuff and doesn’t have inappropriate content. I’ll keep the site updated by myself, so you’ll never find any kind of bot, automated system or similar.
• The site’s structure is designed specifically for video. The video size changes dynamically (ie: when you change from the front page to a single post) and you can also change the video quality directly from the site, no matter the video service used.

You can visit it right now but please remember: it’s beta! so, keep in mind that there can be some issues, bad links, etc. Any problem, bug or suggestion, please don’t hesitate to contact me at miguel@designingsound.org.

I’ve worked very hard on this new project and I’ve learned a lot from those videos, so I hope you enjoy it and learn a lot from it as well!

Thanks for your support.

Frank Bry (The Recordist) has announced the release of the Ultimate Mud SFX Library, a new collection of 464 mud sounds recorded at 24-Bit/96kHz.

This awesome royalty free collection contains 464 slimy mud sound effects recorded at 24-Bit 96kHz. Mud was dropped, squished, splashed, moved and poured to create a generous assortment of sounds that feel alive. Actions include: dumped from a tractor, plopped and poured from a bucket, squeezed and hit with a shovel, stirred with a hoe, stomped on with boots, air suction with a hose and so much more.

Equipment used

• Sound Devices 702
• Sanken CSS-5
• Sennheiser MKH-416
• Audio Technica AT-835ST
• Sony PCM-D1
• John Deere 4110 Tractor
• Rubber Mud Boots
• Five Gallon Bucket
• Wheelbarrow
• Garden Hose
• Shovel
• Unknown Tools and a Flip HD Camera

The Ultimate Mud SFX Library is available now at The Recordist at $50. Also, if you want to know about the details of the recording processes, please visit our exclusive article at Sonic Terrain.