How do you make Production/Imaging Elements?

[Nate Zona]

I could easily go out and buy an FX cd, but I'm an aspiring sound designer damnit!

I have searched the web high and low looking for any help and have found nothing!

Can ANYBODY tell me how to make the sounds you typically hear in radio spots?

Bursts, Sweepers, Choppers, Washes, Whooshes, Bumpers, ext, ext, ext.

!!!!

[Ryan Young]

By buying a sound effects cd/library and mixing sounds together.


Get a yard stick and "whip" it by the microphone, then pitch it down a lot and add reverb.

[obiwan177]

Record random things and mutilate the crap out of them with crazy effects. Your bound to end up with something cool! :D

[Nate Zona]

Thanks! With how the internet is today I am very surprised there is not detailed youtube tutorials on this sort of thing, haha!

[daeron80]

Intern with a pro foley artist for a few months.

[albee1952]

Intern with a pro foley artist for a few months.
That's a great idea. Also, scrounge pawn shops and such for vintage synths. Some of those old beasts could make awesome sounds.

[Keybeeetsss]

Record random things and mutilate the crap out of them with crazy effects. Your bound to end up with something cool! :D
YEAHPPP'ski!!!!

[ondruspat]

obiwan177 gave you the basic gist of it. Listen to sounds around you and think what they would make you imagine in a different context. Also check out some of your favorite movies on DVD, sometime they have cool production features in the bonus material. That can give you some insight into how they came up with certain sounds.

Here's a good example from the first Indiana Jones movie. There is a scene where the head of a skeleton turns and falls off. The sound used in that scene is a recording of someone biting an apple. (of course now I know it, so all I can think about is the apple when I see it!! LOL!! yea, I'm a geek!!)

Hope this helps ya develop some ideas!

[O.G. Killa]

I could easily go out and buy an FX cd, but I'm an aspiring sound designer damnit!

I have searched the web high and low looking for any help and have found nothing!

Can ANYBODY tell me how to make the sounds you typically hear in radio spots?

Bursts, Sweepers, Choppers, Washes, Whooshes, Bumpers, ext, ext, ext.

!!!!

Man, that topic is so vast that there are people that get 4 year bachelor degrees in it!!! That's probably why you can't find youtube videos of it. There is just so much information to go over a youtube video won't cut it.

But to get you pointed on the right path. Most of those sounds are created from white noise or pink noise.

If you are really interested in learning how to do sound design... start googling things like FM Synthesis, Additive and Subtractive Synthesis, Granular Synthesis, Wavetable Synthesis, phase distortion synthesis, physical modeling synthesis, subharmonic synthesis and sample based synthesis.

In doing so you'll start to learn about tone generators, wave shapes, harmonics, filters, oscillators, envelopes, modulation, feedback, and so on and so forth...

Without a knowledge of synthesis you are basically just shooting in the dark (twisting knobs and moving faders) and have no idea why things work the way they do. You could be so close to getting the sound you are after, but never know it and it could allude you for months and months until you happen upon the correct combination of parameters to get the sound ... but this it took you so long to arrive at the sound, you'll have no idea which changes actually led to you getting that particular sound.... anyway...

[Nate Zona]

Thanks for all the info! I'm actually enrolled in the Sound Design Certification program at
IAFT ( http://www.filmschool.ph/ ). I start in January!

but...

1. How do I get an internship with a foley artist? That would be so awesome!

2. Where can you get a four year degree in sound design? That would also be awesome!

These are probably google material, but since I'm here...:D

[O.G. Killa]

2. Where can you get a four year degree in sound design? That would also be awesome!


http://www.berklee.edu/majors/music_synthesis.html
http://sound.media.mit.edu/

[O.G. Killa]

by the way I have two friends that have degrees in synthesis from berklee. One does sound design and "music design" for big video games and the other used to make sounds for korg and roland and then switched to being a keyboard tech for tours and is now a production manager for large touring groups (Brittney Spears, New Kids on the Block, etc).

A lot of the sound design people are musicians. Hamilton Sterling is one big name that comes to mind. Check out a software called Kyma. Used by everyone from Ben Burt to BT.

[obiwan177]

It's cool to see how people can have such big career changes like that, going from designing keyboard sounds to being a manager for Brittany Spears and the like.

[O.G. Killa]

It's cool to see how people can have such big career changes like that, going from designing keyboard sounds to being a manager for Brittany Spears and the like.

Yeah, in some ways it is a natural progression. He was working with all these devices making sounds for them... so he inevitably got asked to help set them up and service them on tours.... which then led to other things.

You never know where your next gig might come from... ;-) I know a guy who played vibes one night in a little divey jazz club in LA for something like $8 or $10. The bass player just so happen to be on tour with lionel ritchie at the time, and they needed a piano player. So my friend was recommended and got the gig and went from an $8 jazz gig at a dive bar to making $250K a year... which then lead to the gig as Brian Setzer's piano player and so on and so forth...

[DonaldM]

I concur with what's been said here already and would add that you can use the process to begin building your own library of sound fx. One of the fun aspects of doing it is that almost anything you can think of to do is fair game 'cause you never know what great fx you might come up with so be as out of the box as you wanna be!