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Audio Arts :: Sound Design :: Sonic Environment :: Process

_ Edward Kelly _

It wasn't until fairly late into process that I realised/noticed that I was trying to spatialise the results of a mono
recording. It just didn't occur to me that using one microphone to record the environment was going to be
problematic.
I have a very good conceptualisation of the space involved - but it doesn't help with the birds for example. I
have gone through and tried to discern individual birds from their noises, but as to whether there's but one
bird of a type, or several scattered about is all guesswork/conjecture.

My first thoughts on the saw, were of using a square wave as a LFO on a noise osc. I figured on a freq of
about 60 Hz with a bit of a pitch envelope for velocity changes at the end of each stroke.
I tried a few variations, using a pulse wave, and using FFT to iFFT (Plogue), using one amplitude source to
control the other sound source. The result could do with more work..
I also automated an eq (on different sections), to emulate the changing sound of the sawing. I think this
helps, but the sound itself is not very convincing.
I lost track on the amount of editing I did on it. I have an approach to editing where I just keep processing,
going back and forth - trying ideas, using discovered techniques on different files, jumping between software,
starting again, cross modulating two files......it is slightly challengin to attempt anything but a broad
documentation of what I did.

The ladder noise I sort of gave up on.


I think I would have like to have done some foley for the ladder, clanks and creaking would have been quite
easy to achieve, also the sawing.

The major bird noise I had the most "fun" with. I went through and sequenced the bird melodies, then
automated pitch and modulation. I spent a while in Plogue trying to create an appropriate voice, then I tried a
random VSTi or two. The voice I used is basically a default setting with a small amount of adjustment (mostly
on the modulation settings), probably the second VSTi I tried.

The car noise is pretty much an envelope driven slow filter cutoff and pitch variation - in retrospect the pitch
content could be lower in both volume and pitch, and perhaps a bit more complex.

Studio 5 is quite a challenging space in which to work. Apart from the ambient noise level which is quite high
and distracting, it is quite a live room. It's very hard to get a good idea of the spatialisation of a sound.
To a certain extent, positioning a sound has been more visual (ie in the surroun pan box in Cubase) than
aural, and automating moving sounds has been similar.

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