New Site

Yeah, I'm done with this blog...already.
I've got a new site where this will continue and, hopefully, allow me to do some bigger things.
So, head on over to http://www.dynamicinterference.com/ and check it out.

Thanks.

RIP Sean Newman

About a week and a half ago, we lost a good friend and coworker. Sean was always excited about something, and always trying to make everyone around him just as excited as he was. If he couldn't do that, he'd be finding some way to at least make you laugh. This is video is one of the last things he produced before he passed away.

He wanted to test a car mount kit for the Canon 5D. In his usual fashion, just slapping it on the car and driving around was too simple, so he created this. I'll let the video speak for itself, as it's really very characteristic of what he was like in life.

We all miss you, Sean.

Canon 5D MarkII / Car Mount Test from Sean Newman on Vimeo.

Night and Day

I went to see Toy Story 3 yesterday with some friends. As usual, Pixar puts together some awesome flix, but I was more impressed with the preceding short than the feature. Don't get me wrong, I loved the movie; but that just goes to show how much I enjoyed the short "Night and Day".

There was some truly excellent story telling done through sound effects. This was also something that was planned out that way from the get go, which (as an audio nut) really makes me smile. If you haven't gone yet, I highly recommend it.

What the sun sounds like

So, a group of scientists have released an audio clip of what a solar corona sounds like. I haven't found a lot of information as to how they've put this together, but it remains interesting none the less.

I've got my wife to thank for this one. She forwarded me the link, which I now post here:

Sound of the Sun (courtesy Richard Morton) by University of Sheffield



If you'd like to check out the (what I think is) original posting, head here:

http://www.thedailyswarm.com/headlines/listen-scientists-record-sound-sun/

Fun with electronic interference

I went around my apartment a few weeks ago recording electronic interference using a super cheap unbalanced microphone/pickup. I got a couple of interesting sounds, and I need do it again to see what other unique sounds I can grab. I've got a really interesting sound from a digital cable box. I think it was the power supply, and I was hearing the alternating current relay. That's one I've got to go back to, and see if I can hold the correct position a little longer to get something a bit more usable.

I loaded a couple of them into Pro Tools to toy with them a bit, and wound up layering two very different sounds. (As a side note, it's interesting just how varied electromagnetic interference can be.) They turned into a pulsating sci-fi sound. Admittedly not hard to do (it only took about 5 minutes), but I was just messing around anyways. The two sounds are the interference caused by a power LED in a computer monitor, and the interference picked up from a cd player's drive.

Here's the result.

Phasey electronics by spfarley

Doors done!

So, I finally finished all the work for my contribution to the DOORS collection for Tim Prebble's Hiss and a Roar library.

It was an interesting task to complete. I won't say it was fun right now (probably will with some more time behind the project), but that was mainly due to trying to finish it before going out of town while trying to restore my audio computer from catastrophic failure. Things got a bit tight because of that, and I'm just happy I was able to get it done.

Thanks for the chance to contribute, Tim. I'm looking forward to see what everyone else's work inlcudes.

Preverbs/Reversed Reverbs

One of the go to tools in sound design is a good reverb. We use them a lot not just to put them in a space, but to change the characteristics and presentations of a sound. DesigningSound.org had a nice little tutorial up recently from Jim Stout on how to make the creepy voice sound from Poltergeist.

In it, he uses a process that involves reversing an audio clip, applying a reverb to this new backwards clip, and then reversing it once more (now with the reverb). The result is that the tail of the reverb builds up to where the initial attack of the sound occurs and smooths it out. This is great for creating a sound that sort of slides into existence. Here's an example of the final product of that process, I used a layered effect of metal bangs that I built for a recent project:

Reverse reverb by spfarley

Like I said, this can be a great method for creating a sound that slides into existence. It also gives the sound a nice sense of movement. What happens if you want to preserve the sound of the attack though?

In that situation, I like to do an internal bounce to a separate track that has a reverb plug-in instantiated. So, my original clips place on one track, and feeds a second via an internal bus. I set that second track to record, and capture the reverb at my desired wet/dry ratio. Now, all you have to do is reverse the new clip, and line up what was originally the attack of the reverb clip with the attack of the original dry clip. It will give you something that sounds like this:

Preverb by spfarley

If you want, you can add a reverb to the the original dry clip to locate the entire clip within a space. I didn't do that here, as my original clip already had some reverb in it; and I didn't want to overdo it.