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

Click here for the video

The guys at Tonsturm have released their sixth library, called Clocks.

With this sound pack you get a huge variety of ticking and chiming clock sound effects, recorded from various type of clocks: Old tower clockworks, wall clocks, cuckoo clocks, antique grandfather clocks and many more….

Avaliable at $69 (until 25.04.2012). Specs: 24 Bit 96 kHz / 142 Files / 6,42 GB

Below are some details Tilman and Emil shared with DS about the creating of this new release.

How did you start to record this library?

The first clock we actually recorded was the clockwork of our “Cologne Cathedral”, you have probably heard of it before: It is one of the biggest cathedrals in the world and a world heritage site. We got an exclusive guide to the tower clock, which is still the original mechanic unit and not an atomic clock. It was a big experience to be in areas of this huge cathedral where you usually are not allowed to go.

But unfortunately we realized that the city noise was much too loud. We did record it for about two hours or more but after checking the recordings in the studio we decided to not include it in the library. After this initial recording we knew we had to find a way to record more of these fascinating tower clocks in a more silent and controlled environment.

I wonder how your interpretation of time or the age of the clocks affected the way you approached the library. I guess those weren’t used just as “generators” of sonic material.

The perception of time has changed a lot over the centuries. And so the sound of clocks has changed too. The interesting question for us was, what will happen if we record a clock from a decade, where time had a very different meaning. Like the clock from 1600 AD for example. Not to forget these clocks have an interesting history, most times they were used in churches. Will this have a different impact when you create a scene in a movie which takes place today? What will be the consequence?

What was the setup you used for the clocks? any special preference regarding the size of the objects?

We used a lot of different microphone setups for this sound pack. A MKH 70, 30, 8050, Schoeps CCM41, CCM8 and a piezo microphone Schertler Dyn C stereo set. We decided to add the Shertler piezo mics as they are build to pick up classical instruments and have a very low self noise. We were interested in how the clocks would sound when recorded with a piezo mic directly from the surface, especially those tower clocks. Sometimes the sound of the piezo mics was so different from the other microphones, you could have thought that it is a different clock.

Could you tell us about those special gems you recorded? I know there are clocks that are about 400 years old?

We found someone who owns a lot of tower clocks, Mr. Harig, he is a real expert when it comes to clocks. He restored every single clock on his own. A work where you have to be very detailed and precise. He also owns a clock which is from around 1600 Anno Domini (which is short after the middle ages..). It is really astonishing to see something work that was crafted that long ago, hearing it is like doing a time travel!

What are your favorite sounds from the pack? Any special story about any of them?

Yes, there is one sound named “many clocks”. There you hear almost all tower clocks of Mr. Harig at once:-). All the tower clocks are ticking and working in one room. It is really like a concert. Mr. Harig told us, that he likes to sit in a chair and just listen to his clocks. In the evening he is going there, starting every clock, just sitting and listening. This is such a touching scene, at least for us, it could be in a movie.

You told me one special thing you did on the sounds, and is that you edited the files so they can be looped without needing to do fades. Do you see this as the way independent libraries could evolve? Actually thinking about the designer and giving those add-ons, those things that will change their workflow perhaps?

Yes, absolutely! I think we all already do this while recording. The way we record them is the way we need them in editing for film. But often this can be taken further, no doubt. One problem is that everyone is editing a little bit different. But the way we did it with the clocks is something I missed a lot. When looping a clock you always have to be patient that the loop is correct, that the rhythm is correct when looped. Its really much more convenient if this is done in first place, so you don´t have to worry about this anymore. And no fades, just apple-d, its really nice to add clocks this way to a project:-). So, if you, the reader, have any idea how you would like to have sounds prepared, just write us! its important to get inspirations!

Thanks a lot for your questions Miguel!

TONSTURM

Cool video profile about the work of the guys at Wabi Sabi Sound featuring sound designers Andrew Lackey and Geoffrey Garnett.

The vehicle focused Track Time Audio blog has posted an interview with Turn 10′s and ex-Bizarre Creations Creative Audio Director Nick Wiswell,  covering the production of Forza Motorsport 4 and the pipeline of recording sessions to finished in-game audio for the car engines.

TTA: Could you talk a bit about the process a vehicle goes through between recording session and finished in-game? I think the work involved after the recordings are made are under appreciated by gamers because they just don’t know how much work goes on.

NW: It’s a long process, so I’ll break it down into stages like a recipe:

To record a car you will need:
* A car and a chassis dyno, or an engine and an engine dyno
* An 8 – 10 channel recording device with multiple microphones to capture the engine, intake system and each exhaust pipe sound independently
* A dyno operator who understands that “full throttle” means all the way to the floor, and a car owner who won’t freak out when you do that
* An hour or two of time

1. First thing to do is set up the car on the dyno (your dyno operator will usually do this for you) and set up all the recording equipment
2. Then run the engine, do a few throttle snaps and a power run or two, and walk around the car trying to find the spots that have the sound you are looking for
3. Then set up close microphones on the engine, intake, turbo (if fitted) and each exhaust pipe plus microphones at points where you found interesting sounds
4. Press “record”, set levels and ask the dyno operator to run through the following sequence:
·Full throttle power pulls in different gears or at different speeds (depending on the type of dyno)
·Held steady RPMS at 500 RPM intervals from close to idle up to close to redline
·Idle
·Acceleration and deceleration through the gears (if possible on the dyno)
·Simulated track driving (if possible on the dyno)

View the rest of the interview on the Track Time Audio website

The Recordist has released a new gun library, including 550 sounds for $35.

Presenting The Thompson Machine Gun HD Professional Sound Effects Library, a multi-channel collection of 100 Broadcast WAV tracks recorded at 24-Bit 96kHz. The gun was recorded on two separate occasions. There was a session of shooting and foley and one extra interior foley session. The gun was recorded close up, medium and distant. The multiple channels gives you a broad selection of perspectives to choose from. Sound Designers like to create their own combinations so the individual microphone takes are included. All the multi-channel wav files are time aligned and in mono and stereo. Also included are customized mixes created here in the studio with a generous amount of combinations.

The interior mechanical sounds were recorded with two microphones (Sennheiser MHK-416 & MKH-8040) to give you different perspectives and tonal variations. Again the multi-channel foley wav files are time aligned. Both the original Auto-Ordinance Drum Magazine and Stick Magazine were recorded along with various handling and selector switches.

The Recordist

SPRINGS is a diverse new library of sound design source material released by HISSandaROAR and recorded by Tim Prebble.

Traversing from literal & very powerful trampoline springs & impacts through very strange bowed & manipulated extention springs all the way to abused outboard hardware (AKG BX5, Vermona Retroverb, Doepfer A199 with an Accuphonics tank) and of course, the classic slinky – but in this case stretched across a room and recorded with a contact mic at each end! Three sizes of thunder drums (long flexible springs attached to a drum resonator) were also hit, bowed & scraped to capture physically useful sounds as well as more evocative abstract material. This library is a diverse and inspiring collection of material that is incredibly fun to play with!

Available at $79 until December 25th (Regular price $99). Delivered at 24bit 96kHz. Includes 1,100+ sounds (6.9GB).

Below is a q&a with Tim, talking about the springs and some HISSandaROAR news:

What inspired the library?

Tim Preble: Being a bit of a dub-head I’ve always been into spring reverbs – I bought an AKG BX5 off ebay a decade or more ago, and I always remember almost blowing my speakers when I had it cranked up & accidentally moved my rack! But it was when I was working on the Cirque De Soilel 3D film that I had an epiphany. There is a scene in the film with some super hero characters doing totally outrageous moves on trampolines and despite being told the scene would be a music montage, I decided to try augmenting the rhythm with trampoline sounds. Next door to my studio is the rehearsal space for local circus group Fuse Circus, so I borrowed a small trampoline from them and recorded it using contact mics as well as normal mics. As soon as I listened to the contact mics I realised it was basically a large scale spring reverb – every hit made the all of the springs resonate! We did end up using some of the recordings in the final mix, and after I uploaded a video of recording those effects a few people contacted me, wanting access to the sounds. I couldn’t give them those particular sounds as they were specifically for the film, but I made a mental note to revisit that particular prop. And as always I started researching other elements I could record….

Click here to view the embedded video.

What else did you find?

TP: Good characterful springs are not actually that easy to find, but one source that proved useful was from exercise equipment – I disassembled a few chest expanders, and spent a bit of time attaching them to objects in ways that would encourage resonance… I also bought an old kids toy – a ride on horse, that was suspended by nice creaky springs. I explored other spring reverb outboard effects – I also own a Vermona Retroverb which is great – it actually has a ‘crash’ button on it that sends an impulse to the springs, but it also has a really nice resonant filter. My modular synth has a spring reverb, a Doepfer A199 module, so I bought an old Accuphonics 3 spring tank and used the module to get clean audio output from it, and I beat the hell out of that tank! I’m surprised it survived, but it was worth it. Some of the short sounds make me think of retro weapons, but some of the flickery sounds I got from it by applying friction along it, I have never heard before!

And of course I messed around with some slinkys – I hunted for the biggest/longest one I could find and then tensioned it horizontally across my studio, with a contact mic at each end, 20 feet apart. Another device I messed with are called Thunder drums – I bought one when I was in Bali a few years ago, its basically a long small tightly wound spring that is attached to the skin of a drum. If you shake it, it makes a sound a bit like thunder and hitting the spring has an almost flangey tone to it, but I discovered a few other interesting ways to extract sounds from it. Bowing the spring while varying the length created some really interesting pitch bends, but so also did rubbing or scraping your hand along the spring. A few times I’ve had to make sounds for someone suddenly abseiling or lowering down & I’ve always struggled for source material with that constant descending friction, but I’ve found a great element now!

Were they difficult to record?

TP: Some props really took some thinking about, because the sound they produced was acoustically very quiet but attaching a contact mic to the primary vibrating element meant the mic itself would absorb and/or stop the resonance. I think there is a concept in physics, where the act of making an experiment alters the circumstances or environment to such a degree that the experiment itself is no longer valid – it was a bit like that! I also soon learned that it is difficult to keep a contact mic attached to moving objects, so it took different setups and strategies depending on the specific sound I was after, even within the same prop. That little wood block with the tiny spring at the start of the video is a good example. I could get tone from it but I couldn’t record it – it just didn’t vibrate enough to excite the wood it was attached to. It was only when i clamped it down & actually attached the contact mics between the wood & the spring itself that I got interesting results. But, as you see (backwards) at the start of the video, it eventually flew to bits!

What are your favourite sounds? Any happy accidents?

TP: This library is full of happy accidents! Someone on my blog asked how I go about choosing what sounds to record, and I had to confess its half intent and half happy accidents – experimenting & being curious. The last prop I recorded for the library was when I revisited that trampoline, and having spent so much time recording other springs I had a few more ideas about how to get some new sounds from it. One aspect I now know is that to get ‘big’ dynamic sounds often requires gentle technique and hitting that trampoline gently with a gong beater, and being mic’d up and gain staged accordingly allowed me to get some huge subby sounding impacts, which feel more powerful than the hardest hits that I did later. But going back to that tiny spring, I now knew that attaching the contact mics on to the spring itself led to interesting sounds (it just couldn’t be the spring that was doing all the work, or the mic would detach) So the last sound I recorded was one of my favourites: attaching the contact mics directly to the springs and then very gently hitting other springs & elements of the trampoline. I swear there is an entire gamelan orchestra inside that trampoline when it was rigged this way – I could have sat & played it for hours. Over-recording was actually a real problem with this library, not over-level but content. I’d find a sound that I loved, that was really evocative or interesting and I could easily keep playing with it for hours! Must. Stop. Recording.

It’s been a great year for independent sound libraries – do you think its reaching saturation point with all these boutique library start ups?

TP: To be completely honest I think we’re barely scratching the surface. If you combined all of my libraries with all the great libraries released by Frank, Michael, Chuck & all the new sites, we would hardly match 5% in terms of quantity of the old school libraries such as Sound Ideas CD collections or whats on the Sound Dogs site. But in terms of quality, resolution and providing unique, characterful and interesting sounds I think at times we surpass them… Every time someone releases a new collection of recordings, whether you buy them or not, you know they are a resource waiting to be called upon. I sometimes dream about the huge library resources studios like Skywalker Sound must have, and while we’ll never get close to that, at least we’re slowly providing more diverse options, and they are options available to anyone.

Whats next for HISSandaROAR? Are you having a holiday??

TP: Indeed. This is my last library release for the year. As 2012 is a busy year with films for me I’ve deliberately been recording as much as possible and I have another couple of libraries recorded. The last task for me for the year is to finish the HISSandaROAR Christmas present, which is a free 24bit 96kHz collection of Tortured Cymbals, a preview of a library for next year. It will get sent out to everyone on the mail list next week, as a small gesture & to say a huge thank you for all the support this year. And thanks to you, Miguel and everyone at Designing Sound for an inspiring year!!
Happy Holidays!

Echo | Collective is a new independent sfx library created by sound designer Rene Coronado and composer Brad Dale, from Dallas Audio Post Group.

Their focus is on uncommon sounds. Found instruments and tools that can be manipulated and recontextualized sonically into a film or music project. The project starts operations with five releases:

• Forgotten Zither
• Antique Accordion
• Oliver Typewriter
• Borroughs Protectograph
• RR Adding Machine

All the sounds are recorded and delivered at 24-Bit/96kHz, with detailed metadata and unlocked .nki files for Kontakt.

Below is an q&a with rene, who shares more information about the project and their first releases:

What inspired you for starting echo collective?

We love finding interesting sounding things and recording them so that we can have fun bending them around. We have always done a lot of recording for our various projects, so we’ve been using the cataloging and metadata workflows of sound effects libraries for a long time, and there’s some different stuff in our work from what’s already out there.

Do you have anything to say about the independent sfx world?

The market is actually pretty saturated right now, so that affects how we approach things like pricing and what we include in each collection. Also, quality and usability can vary from library to library, so we work hard to make our stuff the best it can be. With all of that said, the guys that do this stuff are incredibly cool and supportive of others. We got lots of great feedback on our sounds and design from the guys that do this at a high level, and we’re aiming to put stuff out there that lives up to the standards that they have set.

Click here to view the embedded video.

How was the work with the typewriters and protectograph? could you tell us about the variety of sounds you obtained and how you manipulated the devices?

These turn of the century business machines are so unique, and when you run across one you jump at the chance to grab it and record it. I lucked out and found the typewriter, check printer, and adding machine all in one booth at an antique shop.  Once the owner of the booth plugged them in and showed me that they worked I was sold. After a little research I discovered that each of of those machines was over 70 years old, which made the perfect working condition of each even more impressive.

For the most part they all just click and whirr and chunk, which doesn’t create much of a stereo field. Given that, I decided that it would be far more useful to roll 3 unique mic perspectives on each one. I close miked the front and back of each, and also put up a wide mic in omni so that I could potentially drop those sounds into a bgfx track.

The case on the protectograph actually comes off, which changes the sound of the stamping mechanism pretty dramatically so I recorded it both ways. The adding machine had some moving plates that got sticky with age, and they would occasionally jam and then release with a big metallic ring out which was pretty great. I turned that ring out into a musically tuned Kontakt instrument that sounds very unique. The typewriter had the most moving parts, so after all of those were covered pretty thoroughly I did a bunch of drops and rattles for good measure. It was a lot of fun recording all of them.

I wonder how was the setup and recording process on the zither. I understand you used different mic options, positions, as well as some unique performances on the instrument.

Both the zither and the accordion were recorded a little bit non-traditionally. We would mic them up, and after a fair amount of general coverage and manipulation I’d crank some long reverb into Brad’s headphones and we would really start exploring the textures of the instrument in a very different context. The result is a set of really musically inspired manipulations that go in a different direction than just a bunch of clinical coverage.

The zither also got some extra love as a stringed instrument because we were able to both bow it and use an ebow in combination with some props to really get some unique sounds out of it. It has lots of broken strings and we would do things like scrape broken strings together and thump on the exposed wood that the strings would normally cover. We’d bow the broken string that was still attached to the tuning peg for some really freaky horror sounds, and yet we could still get these great angelic sounds out of the single strings resonating with the ebow.

We actually did the zither in three different long sessions because we just kept finding new sounds in it.

Also, I was inspired to build a stethoscope mic after watching a few Diego Stocco videos. Mine doesn’t really record anything above 200 Hz, but man it really extends the low end of the stuff we stick it onto. I hadn’t built it when we did the first zither session, but once I had put it together I knew we had to use it. That thing in combination with the xy overhead mics really turned the zither into a different instrument.

For the other mics we used a pair of line audio CM3s in XY and I had a COS 11 inside the sound hole and a 4050 wide in omni. In the end, the amount of stuff recorded made offering every mic perspective prohibitively complex (and redundant) so we did what we felt were the best mixes of each combination of mics per performance. The room mic was use judicially to add some air, and really gave a nice character to the samples.

I see there are Konkakt patches including in the libraries. Any special thought about this feature or the software?

Our goal is to make libraries that are not only useful to sound designers, but also to musicians and game designers. We feel that Kontakt is a good way to extend the libraries beyond just what the sounds are and into what they really can be. Having the sounds preprogrammed into an industry standard sampler really allows users to get into things like layering and pitch manipulation very quickly. Kontakt also has a powerful set of design tools built in that let us explore ways to bend the sounds into new forms with eq, distortion, delays, etc – all without having to render the effects for the end user. Also, the Kontakt sets are completely unlocked which means that the presets that we’ve designed can act as a starting point for even further manipulation.

With all of that said, we’re coming at these instruments from a sound designer’s perspective. This means that even though we have a musical instrument programmed into a Kontakt patch we focused more on making unique textures and noises than on things like multiple velocity layers of individual string plucks.  Also, we spend our time building and recording cool sounds instead of Kontakt interfaces. There are many very good straightforward zither libraries out there, and we’re not trying to replicate those at all.

Any plans for the future? What kind of things are we going to see on echo collective?

We have a ton of ideas and projects in the works, but we’re going to keep them under wraps until they’re ready to go. Also, the feedback that we get on things like our musical approach and our Kontakt instruments will influence the way we prioritize things.

Pro Sound Effects is hosting a webinar called “Why Sound Matters” (part 2), presented by sound designer Stephan Schütze. It’s tomorrow, no cost.

After high demand, Stephan Schutze of the Foundation Sound Effectst Libraies and PSE are hosting a second webinar about the importance of sound in education. This webinar will focus on sound production in the field, and is geared towards educators in media production. However, anyone interested in sound recording techniques will learn a great deal as well.

Register

CONTACT MIC is a new library of sound design source material recorded by Tim Prebble and released by HISSandaROAR, including 1,556 sounds recorded at 192kHz/24-Bit using contact microphones.

Recording with contact microphones is fascinating territory to explore due to the unpredictable results; it encourages experimentation! Inspired by the incredible work of Alan Splet and Anne Krober on Dune (as described in this article) I bought a custom built Trance Audio Inducer contact mic and preamp back in 2001, and have been experimenting with it ever since. A couple of years later I added a pair of Barcus Berry Planar Wave contact mics and while these mics featured in Tortured Piano this library is something else again: it is literally the result of hundreds of hours of experimenting.

One aspect of contact mic recording that is fascinating for sound design is the lack of acoustic – there is no reverb due to the sounds being recording via direct vibration, not through the air. This feature alone makes for very malleable sounds, excellent as components and layers in complex, composite sounds or for when you need an abstract organic sound but where the actual source must remain concealed…

The library is available at Hiss and a Roar for $99. Also check this article at themusicofsound, where Tim talks about the release.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Now here’s our Q&A with Tim, who shares some details about the recording process, props used and the inspiration behind the library.

What inspired the library?

Back in the 2001 a friend gave me an old copy of American Cinematographer magazine from 1984 which had an interview with Alan Splet & Anne Krober about their work on the film Dune. One section described their use of the FRAP contact mic and it totally set off my imagination! [article link]

What model contact mics did you use?

After reading that article I went hunting for a FRAP only to discover they were no longer available. I pursued some DIY approaches but the results just were not that useable – it was obvious the frequency response was not full range. But then I found the Trance Audio Inducer, which came with a matched preamp. This was a revelation to me, especially with regards to the tonality of the sounds and the low frequency response. A year or so later I bought another contact mic for my double bass, but it didnt have the same sensitivity so I went back to Trance Audio to buy a second Inducer only to discover that model was no longer available either! Next I tried the Barcus Berry Planar Wave contact mic, which also came with its own matched preamp and I ended up buying two of them as they produced similar great results to the Trance Audio. The library is all new recordings, but its based on my experiences recording with these for the last ten years.

Are there any special techniques or advice for using contact mics that you can share?

Well, the first & most important aspect is the matched preamp. Like most sound editors I own many different recorders & preamps but it seemed the only contact mics I got great results from were the Trance Audio and the Barcus Berry when used with their own preamps. I learned this through experimenting but only recently discovered why that is. I’m sure the reasoning behind is very basic for anyone who has studied electronics but this article spells it out…

“”The problem with piezo guitar pickups and contact mics is that they are not well matched to typical audio inputs. By their nature they can generate a lot of signal, but they cannot drive a 50 kilohm typical line input. The pickup needs to work into a much higher impedance, typically 1 megohm or so.

The reason why these devices often sound tinny is because the piezo sensor presents its signal through a series capacitance which is small, typically 15nF or less. When wired to a normal 50 kilohm line input this forms a 200Hz high-pass filter, which eliminates the bass.

If wired to a consumer plug-in-power microphone input of about 7 kilohms impedance, the result is a 1kHz high-pass filter. Hence the reputation for poor bass performance….”

So impedance matching is the key and explains why many DIY contact mics sound thin – people buy a cheap piezo element & plug it into a line or mic input. They get a signal & it is useable, but you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to appreciate what a 200Hz High Pass Filter does to the sound.

What about props? Contact mics were traditionally created for musical instruments, what else do they respond well to?

Psychologically using a contact mic makes you look at the world in a different way. We are all so used to hearing and interpreting the world through air molecules and acoustic spaces. And an important part of being a sound recordist is being able to hopefully predict how sounds will react in a space. But using a contact mic makes you put your assumptions aside and experiment because the results can be counter-intuitive. Sometimes I’ve found a prop and thought: “THIS will sound AMAZING with a contact mic” and then hooked it up & been thoroughly underwhelmed. What seems resonant & complex through the air may well have a singular pitch & be far less interesting with a contact mic. But its when the reverse is true that things get exciting.

I’m sure I’ll work out the pattern  at some stage, but in many ways the mystery is actually a pleasant side effect. Not knowing the outcome means when you do stumble across a beautifully resonant body, time slows down & you become completely absorbed into physically manipulating the sounds. I totally agree with Dave Farmer about not always wearing headphone when recording, with the one exception being when using contact mics. The exact placement can make a huge difference in the tonality of sounds, especially on hollow resonant bodies. Depending on what the object is made from there is also often a huge range in dynamics, which means setting levels can be tricky and requires constant monitoring. But it also fascinates me that some of the sounds recorded with a contact mic that you perceive as being big, loud, aggressive sounds were actually created through very subtle movements. The big blue water bottle in the video is a good example: hitting it hard with a mallet produced a harsh sound, but hitting it very gently with a soft bass drum mallet produced a sound that would excite your subwoofer!

With such diverse sounds, how did you go about categorising them?

About half way through recording the library I came to realise that a good way to think of the sounds is ‘resonant body’ versus ‘activator’. Over the years I’ve slowly built up a collection of props that respond well to contact mic recording, many of which feature in the new library. But I’ve also slowly collected up a suitcase full of activators, so the files are named based on this approach. But I also spent time making sure every file in the library has a photo of the prop included so you get an actual image of how the sound was created when browsing in SoundMiner.

What are some of your favourite sounds form the library?

My favourites tend to be the unexpected new sounds I discovered while recording. One good example is the rubber recording. I had never thought of sticking contact mics to a balloon but I did and spent half an hour getting fairly familiar sounds from them and I didn’t include those sounds in the library. But it got me thinking, what if I used a much bigger balloon and only partially filled it with air, so it is a large resonant body but with very low air pressure? I gave it a try & discovered some really expressive sounds which I can only describe as sounding like a whale with indigestion! The low frequencies are quite amazing, because the pitch variation was totally controllable and they sound unreal at half speed!

Like most sound effects editors I have a lot of metal recordings in my library but during these sessions I managed to record some metal sounds that I have simply never heard before. Due to how I was applying pressure the two metal elements produced almost rhythmic stutter effect!

Another funny sound I stumbled across reflects an aspect of why contact mic recordings can be so useable. Because the sounds are recorded through direct connection with the vibrating material, there is no room acoustic or reverberation. This means the sounds can be used as layers or components in composite sounds without the listener being able to identify the source, but it also has a less obvious benefit for recording. One example was when I was recording different scrapes & movements across a metal bowl. I was performing them with a knife and a drill grinder bit, but I was interested in more complex sounds & remembered I had my battery drill at the studio. Normally if I recorded anything that involved the drill, it would have the sound of the drill motor all over it. But if the contact mic is not attached to the drill it doesn’t hear it at all! So I started putting different activators in the drill & trying them…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Whats next for HISSandaROAR?

Having spent so much time in the studio lately I am craving some exterior recording, and as summer is just starting in New Zealand I am going to record a library of beach ambiences before the cicadas start & make life difficult. I’m also working on a library of metal spring recordings and am pursuing another creature vocal library. Onwards!

Rejoice! There is a recording available.

A huge round of thanks goes out to Ann for taking the time to chat with us, and thanks to everyone who participated in the chat. Note: If the webinar does not seem to be playing back correctly when you click on the link, try refreshing the page.

Update: Ann also sent along a few comments, post webinar, that she’d like me to share with you.

On dual shotgun microphones for recording ambiences:

“After thinking it over some more, and hunting down some examples to listen to, using two Sennheiser shotgun mics for a stereo pair is something I personally would probably NOT recommend. From what I was able to listen to, the Sennheiser’s still have that thin slightly strident sound that you get in many of their mics, and the crossed pair can sound like you’re recording in something of a tunnel. I’ve always felt that mic placement and what you record is more important than what gear you use. A really great cheaper mic that wasn’t discussed by the group is the Octava cardiod mic. The Octava doesn’t always have great qualilty control and not all are the same but if you listen to them before purchasing them you can find ones that sound quite good for the cost. (nope scratch that I just looked Guitar Center doesn’t carry them anymore…they were brilliant when you could get a good Russian one but..they outsourced to China and cut quality.”

On technique vs. gear:

“Several years ago I was on a nature recording panel at the AES. At the time I was supplying sounds to Ben Burtt for his upcoming Star Wars trilogy. I played a recording for him of a chair rolling around that sounded like a wounded animal and got him interested in my recordings. Afterwards a guy in the audience contacted me and said he wanted to intern with me. I put him off because I assumed he just wanted to find a way to get to work on Star Wars with Ben. He persisted for quite awhile and I finally agreed to meet him.

His name is Jon Meyer. Jon brought in a recording he wanted me to hear of his. Even I was shocked when he pulled out a Dictaphone recorder that he had used to make this recording. (I don’t even know if you know what a Dictaphone is?? it was a little recorder than men used to record letters they wanted their secretaries to type. The quality of the recordings was really pretty poor, it didn’t matter just as long as the secretary could understand what he was saying.  He had pushed the mic in when he recorded and got awesome squealing sounds that were simply ingenious. I instantly hired Jon. I realized he was the real deal. We worked together on the Hollywood Edge CD “Common Sounds Heard in Uncommon Ways.” We had a blast discovering music inside crazy simple objects around the home and office.”