Recently I played a really funny game. Something like a “Social Sound Design Game ” created by Andrew Spitz from {Sound+Design}.
The Game
Remember the game “telephone” where you whisper something in someone’s ear, then the person whispers in the next person’s ear and so on? At the end the last person repeats the words and they usually have nothing to do with the original.
How fun would it be to do the same for sound? Start off with a recording, pass it to someone to be processed and so on up to 30.
The Rules
- Add one (only one) effect.
- Keep the sound at 16bit; 44.1kHz; .wav or .aif
- Send it by email
The Original Sound
Just someone packing huge beer kegs into a truck , recorded on a Zoom H4n and the on-board mics. The sound has traveled to all corners of the worldand even been taken out of the digital realm and through a Moogerfooger, and re-recorded under water with a homemade hydrophone.
The Results
You can download all thirty-one sounds plus a track listing [mp3; 11.2MB]. All sounds are under the Creative commons 3.0 license.
Here is the complete list of participants and their notes (I’m the number 27 by the way):
01. Brian Green:
“I reversed the sample”
02. Edu Comelles:
“I used an effect from ableton live called “chorus”, took away some feedback and left what you can hear, almost like a convolved thing.”
03. Joel Corriveau:
“I used Logic’s Ringshifter. I automated parameters, but didn’t use it’s built in delay.”
04. Hadrien Bourely:
“Pan automation”
05. David McSherry:
“I subtly mashed it through a Moogerfooger MF-101 low pass filter (hardware)”
06. Flemming:
“Audacity’s reverse”
07. Tom:
“500ms cross-channel echo”
08. @Watterberg:
“This uses a custom panning and frequency shifting plugin I’ve concocted myself””
09. Dan Mackinlay:
“Ableton live’s “Corpus” – which is some AAS physical modelling doohickey”
10. @Joshliebe:
“I used SSL X-Orcism on the sample – turned down the howling and tombverb, and then adjusted the other
parameters.”
11. Glenn:
“I ran it through a vocoder of a synthesized tone.”
12. Robert Newman:
“I used the Sweeping Phaser in Adobe Audition.”
13. Josh:
“Plugin: Audio Damage: Ratshack Reverb v 2.0
Made a macro where one knob controls mic level, delay, repeats and depth. Then automated that macro to give the audio a groove. Then while playing back the automation I am manually adjusting the min/max values for the delay parameter in the macro so the range changes over time.”
14. Hugo:
“I used Reaktor with the GrainStatesFX ensemble. Officially it’s not just one effect, but it’s one plugin”
15. Mike:
“CrossFilter_Short (Kyma)”
16. Marcio:
“Basically, I put an Autofilter in an aux bus, and during the 1st half we only hear the effect. Then, the automation gradually closes the pre-fader send, the volume rises and we have the “original” sound again.”
17. Martin:
“I used the “Resampling” effect from DtBlkFx VST (http://rekkerd.org/dtblkfx/) to apply pitch shifting on a spectral level. I automated the shifting, so it goes up and down again.”
18. @ivsound:
“I went with a simple reverse quad delay (applied to the beginning of the sound in reverse.) then gliding pitch-bend”
19. Joe Still:
“Monstercrunch from the Pluggo pack”
20. Tj:
“one effect: grain delay in ableton live.”
21. Rob:
“Ableton Live: added Corpus 17% wet”
22. Laurence:
“all I did was change the pitch on one of the tracks so that the difference ( when played through head phones and looped) you would get a binaural effect, a carrier wave would be produced in your head of about 10 hertz, I think this is in the lower theta or borderline delta wave. ”
23. @misterinterrupt:
“Steve Harris L/C/R Delay”
24. Erik:
“Its a reverb with variable size and width”
25. Toby:
“Re-recorded underwater”
26. Nathan:
“Audiomulch’s (http://www.audiomulch.com) “5Combs” filter to the right channel, leaving the left as I received it.”
27. Miguel:
“Just process the sound in Reaktor with a Delay ensemble. This one has a delay unit modulated by 2 LFOs. The main effect works in the frequency that is modulated by LFO 1 and the LFO 2 works in the stereo field, placing the sound from left to right and conversely.”
28. Stuart Smith:
“I used a custom Max/Msp patch using only 1 effect – FFT Fast Fourier Transform.”
29. Jason Job:
“I used Camel Audio’s Camel Space plugin.”
30. @themelissard:
“Soundhack’s Varispeed”
Andrew told me that He is working now on a new piece of software that will hopefully allow us to do something similar but bigger. Keep in touch!
[photo by Marcia_Salviato; artist David Mach]
I think it is extremely important that you know that the picture is from my town, Kingston in London!
I like this idea as well, the final result is great!
this is a great idea. i love it. let’s do this more often, as i just digitally arrived here for the first time and missed it, damnit.
Love this and the site. Will be here often.
I’ve done this on a small scale via acquaintances on kvraudio.com and even tried to orchestrate a “big band” passing tracks along as an exquisite corpse via ftp server. Life and technical problems got in the way too fast to see if the end results of playing “telephone” would have been cogent though, sadly.
I think I’ll be coming here often.
I just love the idea. I’m so happy I found this blog. Guatemala City is now near to this awesome sound designing territory.
yeah!!
What an awesome concept! Love it! Never in a million years would you have thought of where the original sound came from!!