Various Media Sound Design
Just a little hodge podge of some fun things that I don’t get to do everyday.
1. Barnyard (released 2006): Co- Engineered, edited, co-arranged and drummed on this music that was eventually licensed for the movie
2. Road Kill: Indie film. Sound design and final mix (warning: spoiler alert - maybe watch this one first )
3. Golden Tee Tournament: Aired on Fox Sports – provided pre production support and music beds
4. Radio Spots for Regional and National Promotions: Engineer, sound fx, created music beds and voice talent for 3 of the 4 examples.
Tao Fang Foley Sound Design Example
I think this is a great example of what foley is. The first video has the speech and music but no foley or sound fx. The second one is the final product. When I think of foley, I think of images of some guy walking around in a little box filled with sand and a mic pointed at his feet. I have never looked it up, but foley is more of the organic sounds and how they occur in nature and sound design is when you start adding all the explosions and alien space zaps that tend to occur less frequently in nature.
My second made up definition: How you can tell good foley and sound design. You can tell it is good when you don’t notice it at all and everything just blends in and feels right as it corresponds to the image that is on the screen. If this stuff ever sticks out, 9 times out of 10, it will be because it is bad. Think of it as a supporting character. All of the subtle foot steps, sword scrapes, dripping water in the background, subtle yet if you listen to the first video, it just seems empty compared to video number 2.
There is a spot where the green guy has just defeated the big guy with the sword. He is yelling "Sho-Sing" and the first time he yells, that camera is close but the next time the camera is a distant view. By cutting some of the lows in the voice and exaggerating the effect of the voice bouncing off the cave walls, the audio emphasizes that dramatic camera pull back.
No Foley/Sound Design
With Foley/Sound Design
Golden Tee Golf Sound Design
Not to much to say about this one. Golden Tee has been around forever and it is a great game. More Golden Tees have been sold than Pac Man’s so you know it has to be good. This version of the game had about 5,000 speech calls and a ton of crowd sounds.
The way I see Golden Tee, it is a lot less Sports Rock than Silver Strike so my pieces tend to be a little lighter musically and sound fx wise. With Silver Strike, everything needs to slam and hit you in the face and hurt you, where Golden Tee needs the air and the space sonically.
These are just some fun clips
Golden Tee Montage
Broadway Big Band Now Shipping
Wow, I just ran into this sample library and it looks pretty amazing. It is the Fable Sound’s Broadway Big Band Distributed by SONiVOX. There are plenty of horn libraries out there and some are very good but this is the first that I have run across that I am really excited about for big band sounds. The recording quality really captures how I think a big band should sound.
They also seem to have broken some type of barrier in regards to how the sample library is played. I have never quite gotten the hang of other libraries and how you have to use the controllers to switch between the different articulations, but from watching the demo they seem to have done something to make playing and switching between articulations more natural.
Of course that is the demo and they always make everything look easy, and it is a very expensive library so I definately want to try and find some more info on it or talk to some who has used it before putting up that type of money.
In the past, the technique I have used to record midi horns is this. If it is a trumpet line, I find a generic trumpet sound to write with. After the writing is done (really done because this is a 3 step process that you don’t want to do over and over) I will take that midi track and duplicate it into usually 3 midi tracks. Each of those midi tracks I assign to the different articulations and such that I want for that line (scoops, swells, hard attack, etc) Basically one midi track per articulation.
Then in pro tools record each midi track on to its own audio track. Stereo track if the sample started out truly stereo.
After they are all recorded, I go into each track and cut out the stuff that does not sound good. so track one has all of the sustain notes, track 2 has all of the hard attacks, track 3 has all of the swells, etc. After cleaning up the audio and playing with the fades, bussing all the tracks to a L/R sub mix and then adding some verb, it usually sounds ok.
If it is a very important part, I will repeat this process with another library using the same midi tracks I started with. Layering like instruments and articulations from different libraries can really fatten up a sound as all libraries sound different.
I will check back if I am able to get my hands on this new library.
Matt
King Of Golden Tee Remix
King Of Golden Tee: Original
King Of Golden Tee: Remix
This was a great little song that was submitted by a fan of the game. The purpose was to take the existing tracks, engineer them for our use and produce a music video style production piece.
I tried keeping the guitar because I liked the energy it had with the performance but I was also needing to add some guitar parts. In the end, I could not get the guitar parts I added and the original to mesh so I had to take the originals out.
I tried a few passes with me tracking the drums but nothing felt right, so I left the original drums in, did a lot of editing in pro tools to tighten up the performance and ended up just replacing the cymbals. The original cymbals had too much bleed so to leave them in with the amount of editing I did was not possible. Everything else is from the original tracking session that was submitted.
I finished mixing and mastering the music but the rest of the project never happened.
Blazing guitar courtesy of Dan Peters.
Imagine All The Beatles
Imagine All The Beatles
This was a tune I wrote for Golden Tee Golf. It is in the game but pretty hidden so probably won’t be heard much. The idea was to have a little John Lennon type tune play when the golfer approached the Lennon memorial that was in our Central Park course.
We talked about taking the tune and making a promo piece for that course centered around the Memorial but that never quite got off the ground.
Harmonies provided by Jeff Powell and I. George Harrison Guitar provided by Rob Harding of Off Broadway fame.
Finally getting this site together
Wow, this site has been on my mind for a long time and I finally got around to getting it all together.
My plans for the site are to post the audio and videos that we have been working on here at Incredible Technologies and also post some of the outside world stuff that has come my way. An Indie film I worked on with Sean McMenemy and the movie trailer from Barnyard that I got along with Professor John and hopefully some more good stuff.
I am also looking to put some sound fx out here as I make them and some explanations of how/why they were made. kind of tutorial style, I guess.
Look for my Whoosh Anthology to be available soon. This is a toolbox I made that has hundreds of pre-defined whooshes from all kinds of different sources. I got tired of making them one by one so I finally sat down one night at home (actually, a weeks worth of one-nights) and cranked out the Whoosh Anthology. Every whoosh you will ever need.
More to come…..
