Welcome back! Last week, we took a
look at how to create a basic background for a forest scene by
layering sound effects, using strictly free material. This week, our
theme here at the Flying Pincushion is Firefly, so we're going to
cover sci-fi-style sound effects. This time, however, we will be
focusing on what you can do when you have professional-style
resources to tap into. This is the stuff I work with every time I
create sound effects or music, whether for my own use or for a
client, and it'll give you something to shoot for. But don't despair
if you don't have a ton of money to throw at this stuff, because I'm
going to give you some resources to do this stuff for free, too.
Last week, I had you grab Audacity.
This is your bread and butter program for free audio sculpting. I
also directed you to freesound.org, where you can find just about any
basic sound you're looking for. If you want to design your sound
effects yourself and for free, see last week's article for a step by
step guide – the content there is for a forest atmosphere, but the
techniques don't change at all for any kind of other sound. Follow
the steps there, replacing the sounds I used with sounds of your
choice, and you'll get an idea of how to layer effects.
However, this week we're focusing on
using professional tools to come up with some really high quality
sounds for your science fiction needs. So here's a list of what I
will be using to do this, along with the standard prices of each (you
can frequently find deals and sales).
- Avid Pro Tools 11 ($699)
- Native Instruments Massive ($199)
- A MIDI controller keyboard of some kind, not expensive at all (and optional)
Pro Tools is the industry standard for
audio production (except movies, Steinberg Nuendo takes that one). NI
Massive is the synth for
electronic music, especially dubstep. It can do just about anything
except make you a coffee, and that's only because it's not hooked up
to your coffee machine. There are a massive (ahaha) amount of
tutorials available for it, because it is an incredibly complex
powerful tool. I'll spare you all that, though, because it delves
deeply into some very complicated electronics and music theory. By
the way, any of the things I'm doing here in Pro Tools can be done in
pretty much any professional DAW such as Cubase as well.
Alright,
so here's the step by step of what I'm doing to create this sound:
Step
1: Open Pro Tools and Setup a New Session
Once you start up Pro Tools it'll
ask what you want to do with it. Click Create Blank Session, and set
the Bit Depth to 24 and the Sample Rate to 48 kHz. I/O Settings, you
can leave at Last Used, they won't have an effect on what we're doing
here. Make sure you've checked the Interleaved box, too, and set the
audio file type to .WAV. (See screenshot)
Step
2: Get the Instrument Ready
Now that we have our shiny new
session open, we need the tracks. Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+N will open the New
Tracks menu. You want to create 1 Stereo Instrument Track. Once that
is ready, on the top menu click Window > Mix to open up the mixing
board window. At the moment, it only has one track. On the top of
the track, you have Insert slots. Click one, and click Plug-in >
Instrument > Massive to load the synthesizer onto the track. Now,
plug your midi controller keyboard into your USB port. Press some
keys to make sure there's sound coming into the track (the meter will
show you the level). (See screenshot)
Step
3: Picking Your Sound
Those not using a keyboard, go to
Step 4 and do that first, then come back here. Use Play to hear the
sound Massive is making.
Massive comes with a ton
of presets, and frequently you
can find what you want for just about anything by poking around in
the preset menu, and sometimes fiddling with the controls on the
bottom right. Let's open the preset menu in the plugin (see
screenshot) and choose the 4AD preset. I don't really like that base
tone, but the layers of chirping and beeping seem pretty cool, so
check out the Oscillators on the left of the plugin. Osc 3 is the one
giving us the sound we want, so just click names of Osc 1 and Osc 2
to disable them.
Step
4: Recording the Sound
The instructions for this one
differ depending on whether you're using a keyboard or not.
Keyboard:
There's a white dot on the track, both on the left panel in the Edit
window and right below the Panorama controls. Click that button and
it will begin blinking red – this is the Record Ready button, which
tells the program which tracks should start recording when you have
Record mode enabled. Now that we've done that, we want to record the
sound. To do this, enable Record mode by clicking the red dot button
in the transport area (next to play and stop). Then get ready to hold
down one note on your keyboard. I like how the sound plays a little
lower, so I'm going to use a C note two octaves down, but you can use
whatever you want. Just make sure you know which note you're using
(even if it's just remembering which key). Now, it's just a matter
of hitting the Play button (or spacebar) and holding down the note
for as long as you want it playing, then hitting the spacebar again.
No
Keyboard: For you folks
not using a keyboard, on the top menu bar click Window > MIDI
Editor to open the....MIDI Editor! Then find the note you want on the
keyboard on the left. Use the Zoom tool (top left of the window, next
to the blue highlighted area) till you can see individual spaces well
enough, and double click on one in the bar aligned with the note you
want, to generate a MIDI note. On the bottom of the window, there are
a few other sections, one of which is labelled Velocity. In that
section, directly beneath the note you just created, is a little
diamond with a line under it. Click and drag that diamond all the way
up to maximize the velocity (how hard you 'hit' the note). Now click
and drag the right end of the note you just made, and drag it out
until it's as long as you want it to be.
Step
5: Layering the Sound (optional)
If you like the sound you just
created, and don't want anything else on top, skip this step.
Otherwise, follow steps 1 to 4
again, but pick a different preset and play around with it. A quick
way to open a second track is to right click on the name of the first
track (Inst 1 in this case), and click Duplicate. Then you have an
exact duplicate of the first one. Click the second track's insert of
Massive, and change that one's preset to how you want it, and just
hit play to hear them both layered together. I picked the Ascending
preset. Now open up the Mix window again (Window > Mix) and move
the volume faders around until the sounds are layered how you want
them. I left Ascending at 0 dB, and moved the 4AD sound to about -6
dB. For added fun, copy and paste both the clips in the Edit window
again, then double click the second Ascending clip, grab the Midi
note, and pull it down by one key.
Step
6: Save the Sound
Once you're happy with the sound
you've created, go to the edit window, click anywhere in the tracks,
and hit Select All (Edit > Select All or Cmd/Ctrl+A), then click
File > Bounce To > Disk. Leave the Bounce Source alone, File
Type 'WAV', Format 'Interleaved', Bit Depth '24', Sample Rate '48
kHz', Conversion Options 'Convert After Bounce' (see screenshot).
Then hit Bounce, and pick the location and name you want to save your
file to. Let Pro Tools run, and once it's finished bouncing, voila!
Your new sound is ready.
Dungeons, Dragons and Soundscapes
won't be appearing next week, but will return the week thereafter.
