Simulating a football Stadium

[pepperman]

Ok so I've been given the brief to create a realistic stadium crowd sound track to a TVC.

The thing is it's not quite as simple as getting a crowd sample and putting some reverb on it, I have to simulate the whole crowd beating out a rhythmic pattern with these beach ball type things.

I have tried recoding multiple tracks of myself doing the rhythm, rolling off some highs, copressing and treating it with a good dose of Lexiverb but it's not even in the same ball park!

The problem is creating the percieved size and distance the sounds will have in a stdium.

I will also lay down a bed of crowd noise to fill in the gaps.

Does anyone have any tricks, ideas or techniques that could help?

It's gotta be all about size!

Thanks All.

[DClarkson]

It's gotta be all about size!

Yeah! Size does matter!
I think it's impossible to simulate a crowd of 15-to 30.000 people all on your own.
Even if you made 2000 takes, it will still sound like 500 (same) people...
You want to create a rhytmic pattern the "crowd" should shout or sing; are there specific words?
If it's just a simple pattern like for example "hey-hey-hey..etc" you might want to check some cd's from the Hollywood Edge.
They're really good if you're looking for BIG crowds!

Good luck!

[audiaudio]

You might try an FX library, either on the web or by buying a CD.

A few with downloadable samples:

digipronet

sounddogs

hollywood edge

[picksail]

If you have Altiverb, there is a user contributed Impulse Response of a football stadium. This may help, at least in terms of ambient space.

I recently composed a section of a song which requires the use of crowd chanting. I just took a TLM103, set it on the desktop and recorded about thirty passes of my best vocal impersonations, trying dilligently to randomize the inflections and the character of how people would do this naturally. All tracks were first takes as to keep it from sounding too contrived. I did not concern myself with pitch or precision timing. Most people who are chanting have no idea anyway. It tends to 'feel' a bit more relaxed once you have stacked about four or so voices. Upon completion of the tracking and to preserve tracks, I bounced to disk without adding effects. When mixing, use delay judiciously. Allow for a shorter release on your compressor as not to reduce the perceived sound stage. Apply as much reverb a neccesary.

[Charles D. Ballard]

You need a crowd to sound like a crowd. Other than that, you may want to filter some white noise then "pump" it to the chant then send it through some echo/verb. It'll sound synthy and I'd only use it to enhance a crowd...but if you can't record a crowd, it may be worth a try.

[dstagl]

You might try a mix of a sampled audience and the white noise trick along with your own playing. See how it works to picture because things sometimes can be perceived as sounding different when you have a picture to go with it.

Dave

[remainanon]

You might also get some value out of mixing together an assortment of different-sized ambiences - some relatively close and dry, some much darker and with significant pre-delay...

The thing about huge groups of people is the variety of sonic elements, and the chaos in general - any variance in your elements will help including using different microphones and moving around the recording space for different passes.

Also having a bunch of elements pumping out of time with the main crowd - that always happens in stadiums!

If you get it nailed I'd love to hear how you managed it.
J

[Wolfgang Eller]

And even better as white noise is about 10 whisper tracks.
There shouldn´t be any tonal components just a lot of air and not really in time. Then remove all low end and compress it really hard - voila - that´s it. Not real but very close.

Cheers Wolfgang

[pepperman]

Hey thanks for the replies!!

I never thought of using white noise to simulate a crowd, that could deffinatly be mixed in to add a bit of size!

I am confident of getting the crowd to sound authentic it's just the rhythm they are supposed to be drumming (the we will rock you drum beat), with these inflatable bat type things that Im worried about. I think DClarkson is right in that even if I overdub like fifty trcks of the rythm myself it will still sound un-stadiumish. What I need to do work out a way of creating percieved distance and rythmic massiveness.


Damn I'm sure Altiverb would be great for this job.

[Pirate Post]

I did something like this a long time ago to match a large concert venue and it worked great. The trick is to overdub using 20 or 30 people at a time. Move the microphone radically on each overdub and you need to record in a decent size room or outside.

Oh yeah when you've got the sound thick enough you can then slather on a coating of AltiVerb!