TONSTURM Releases The Whoosh

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/23456902[/vimeo]

TONSTURM has released The Whoosh, a new sfx library loaded wih 160 whoosh/pass by recordings, containing 1030 different sounds.

For The Whoosh we did quiet some research. Again we wanted to come up with fresh and unique sound effects so we tested all kinds of things and build our own custom made whoosh devices.

We build a wooden bullroarer with three thick rubber bands which is emitting very cool deep and droning sounds. We also took big plastic pipes which we prepared in a special way so that we got these nice howling pass by sound effects.

Furthermore we recorded the sounds of arrows passing by and curly steel shreds fired by a slingshot. These arrows were prepared with different kinds of whistles, fluttering magnetic tape and burning cloth. We also build a big fireball with which we performed huge fire whoosh effects.

Again we recorded the sounds at different locations and some devices were recorded in the field and in this very nice sounding wooden orchestra hall. Certain devices like our custom bullroarer had a really thick pleasing sound when recorded in this orchestra hall. Something that you can not reproduce with a plugin hall!

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/15430689″]

The Whoosh is available now at 49€ for the 96kHz/24-Bit version and 59€ for the 192kHz/24-Bit version. More at TONSTURM.

Here’s a Q&A I had with Tilman and Emil, who talk about this new release.

Designing Sound: What inspired you guys to do this library?

TONSTURM: There were a lot of sources that inspired us for The Whoosh. First of all the film projects each of us have worked on so far. We were never really happy with the source material we had when it came to designing whoosh effects. But through all these independent libraries it gets better and better! Also we think natural recorded Doppler shifts are the best! So we only had to think about the coolest devices to record some thrilling pass by sound effects. I once used the sound of a bull roarer in one of my projects. I was fascinated by this instrument. So we googled and youtubed everything about bullroarers. For the other props Designing Sound TV was also a big inspiration! So we collected all these ideas and started to experiment quiet some time ago.

DS: I guess there’s a lot of research behind all those recordings. The props, the setups, performances, etc. How was that process?

TONSTURM: I guess every topic you plan a soundpack on requires research. As I said we watched a lot of stuff at youtube and saw this device with double rubber bands and loved the sound of it. So we build some devices our self. We tested different sizes – even a really big one but it did not make such cool sounds. So we ended up with the one you see in the video, it has three rubber bands and can produce some really thrilling sounds. The big plastic tubes were inspired by a little bamboo device which is only 5 cm long and has a slit in it. When you swing it around it chirps like a bird. Inspired by this we prepared tubes of different sizes and some of them created these nice howling sounds.
During a test recording with the prepared arrows we found out that we liked the ones with a whistle on it the most so we collected different styles of whistles for the next recording. Also these curly steel shreds were what worked best for the slingshot recordings. I guess we found it very important to come up with sounds that have character a defining signal, sound or tone and not just an airy quality. Soundeffects can become harsh and airy very quickly and that is so very true for whooshes.

DS: And what about the locations? There’s footage showing you recording in a studio and also outdoors.

TONSTURM: The different recording locations are an integral part of this soundpack. The bullroarer or howling pipe recordings do sound very thick and smooth in this wooden orchestra hall. You can not reproduce this character with a dry fieldrecording and a plugin reverb. Some sounds deconvolve when you record them in a nice big room. But we also found it important to record in the field to get that type of character too. Some of the props were recorded on both locations. Which for sure excludes the big fireball.

DS: What gear you used and how was your setup during the sessions?

TONSTURM: As always we used our Sennheiser MS and Schoeps MS setup. We think recording in MS works really great for sound effects. As with the other soundpacks we deliver in MS and Decoded LR format.

DS. Any happy accidents?

TONSTURM: Well maybe… During one recording session someone showed us a really special device and we have planned our next soundpack around this pretty cool machine.

DS: Any news about you/TONSTURM? What’s coming next?

TONSTURM: Some things are in the pipeline and like I said our next thing will deal with this crazy machine.
Thank you Miguel for the interview and we also want to thank you for all your great work and the best sound design platform out there!