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Hi! I'd like to start thread to share some secrets on how to create nice whooshes, everyone has their own technics and methods so how do you make fresh, new whoshes???

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16 Answers 16

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I like to take some interesting ambiences and pass them through a short doppler effect.

You can generate a lot of varied material rather quickly and have precise control over the length.

It works great with natural elements such as wind but I've had some surprisingly good results with machinery, there is quite a large opportunity for experimentation with some of your tired out sound library.

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The human voice is one of the most versatile synthesizers going and I've recorded many whooshes that can be used as base sounds and then layered with other sound textures.

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Add a little more doppler effect by loading the sound into a sampler and then pitch bending.

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Anyone familiar with this technique??? http://designingsound.org/2010/02/charles-deenen-special-100-whooshes-in-2-minutes/

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  • this is an amazing workflow that works everytime.
    – SonicDesigns
    Jul 11, 2012 at 2:25
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    its interesting, but isn't whether the woosh is actually appropriate more of a concern? WHY vs HOW?
    – user49
    Jul 19, 2012 at 8:37
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Still one of my standbys - I heard Frank Serafine mention something similar in an interview when I was just getting interested in film sound - Take any good percussive sound with a decent tail (say a metal hit), reverse it and then either add reverb for a new tail, or crossfade it with the original tail... Voila!

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One very simple and very basic technique would be to take a transient sound with a long decay, duplicate it and reversing the duplicate and then combining the original and the reversed region in a way that their peaks meet. This is what I did for a few arrow whooshes on my last project and it worked pretty well for me..

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I like a mic well shielded, and using different sizes of wooden chopping boards. Moving perpendicular to their large surface area.

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I second the use of the breath. The way I do it is just take a dynamic mic (as it doesn't pick out ambient noises if you don't have an expensive studio) and breath in it in various intensities. On the audio track I have Native Instruments Absynth as effect processor and just by tweaking the presets you can get really crazy (and quality) swooshes, but obviously by studying the patches you notice it's just a matter of layering reverbs and delays and trying a variety of settings so you can do it very well without the software, just using whatever FX you have .

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CDs are nice, and taping over the hole and changing the angle will create different whistling sounds.

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Hello,

I'm really new here, also a newby sound designer (and really happy to find this place :)

I was experimenting with some techniques to make an auto generative whoosh patch weeks ago, using absynth and Usine. Not a great thing, without too much external samples, just some real time pitch variations.

Maybe could be useful for you,

http://az-rotator.com/?p=106

Thanks

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A few years ago, I was working on a Kung Fu short that needed some quick swishes and whooshes (as Kung Fu movies will). Not wanting to go into a library, I ended up grabbing my cats' feather toy with a 3' plastic rod and whirled it around in front of a microphone. It worked great, and is a method I still use when I want quick swish/whoosh sounds.

Also, I suggest checking out this video posted on Designing Sound a few years back.

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There are so many ways to make whooshes! I like to use a sampler (Kontakt is my fave). Use a nice long sound effect (wind works fairly well), and a filter, and set the knobs to midi learn. Then you can "perform" the whoosh by playing with the knobs on your midi keyboard in real-time. If your sampler has built-in fx you can get some pretty neat sounds. In the case of Kontakt, it has many built-in fx including doppler, verb, delay, distortion, etc.

Alternatively, you can pop an explosion sound into kontakt, set it to play in reverse, turn on loop mode to play back-forth until release, and set your loop points to not play the transient of the explo.

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We released a Reaktor Instrument on http://meltedsounds.com It is called Whoosh and enables you to design complex whoosh and pass by sound effects. But full version of Reaktor is needed. Cheers Tilman

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Take a directional mic and record some interesting sound source by whipping it by quickly so that you get your own doppler effect/whoosh. Worked pretty well for Ben Burtt too ;)

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Just two days ago Jean-Edouard Miclot posted this item in another forum:

Hey guys, I finally found some time to implement Charles's technique in Kyma. I made the tools available for download should you want to experiment with it and maybe expend its features...

Here's the link: http://jedsound.com/blog/?page_id=1020

Thank you, Jean-Edouard Miclot

Perhaps that'll give you some ideas of how to create whooshes.

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New product for creating Swooshes...

http://meltedsounds.com

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