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I love that video of Ben Burt showing how he made winds for WALL-E by dragging that boxing bag around on a lino floor - see at 7 minutes in this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSf8Er2gV_Q
So what interesting things have you done to create wind sounds? (No fart jokes thanks)
I'm working on a short film Goutte d'Or at the moment and just made some spooky winds using howling wolves pitched down 2 octaves and same for dragging a heavy wooden couch around on a wood floor....
Forgive me if I go a little off topic but for the last few days I've been wanting to try something; make a really spooky wind sound with a voice element.
Here's what I did...
Open izotopeRX DeNoiser and train it using a voice recording (a crowd in a concert hall), then apply that to some wind.
THIS is the original wind, THIS is the crowd, THIS is the result
All the sounds are from the library at work, they've been relabeled so not sure which library exactly.
Might have to have a bash at your ideas too somewhen @Tim @Jay
Recently, I undertook the same task and ended up taking a different route - which was not entirely successful but, with more time spent, could be well worth it. I went through my library and pulled as many whispering fx as I could find and then used those as IRs for Altiverb. The idea was to process regular wind recordings through those IRs and come out the other side with "whispering winds". Again, time got the better of me and I wasn't able to fully realize my vision, but I'm keeping those IRs for another go round sometime in the future.
Great timing! I have been working on some eerie wind today. Its still a bit of a work in progress but seems to be coming out ok. I have been stretching some cable swishes (bet you've got a few of them lying around Tim) with paulstretch then adding a little bit of eq, reverb & delay to each individual swish.
Example
I always want to mix subtle flute notes, or bowed vibraphone, into my wind sounds. I don't know why, but I always want my wind to be musical.
Always having a recorder is half the battle; got some amazing wind sounds in a cabin on NZ's Queen Charlotte Track. Anywhere there are wires or small holes and high winds, set your ears to "stun."
Another classic is holding blankets or foam over air conditioners. This can create wind whistles you can "play," although one may have to filter out the machinery noise...but sometimes those whistles get loud enough to provide a decent signal:noise ratio.
Not my own trick, but I've always been impressed with how Richard King and crew created the windstorm sounds in the movie Master and Commander. They basically rigged a flatbed truck with a bunch of interesting props and took it out to the Mojave Desert, got it up to 70mph or so and recorded. Brilliant:
Magazine piece:
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/10/20/031020fa_fact1
Radio piece:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1505241
what a cool topic!
i have a studio door that when its half-cracked makes the craziest whining wind sound. I've been meaning to record it for years, but I'd better do it before we move out of this building. I'll post an update when I have it done.
I might be lending the thread a bit, but I'm looking for a particular type of wind and would like to know if anyone knows libraries which might include what I'm looking for. My last resort is to try to whistle or synthesize it.
What I'm looking for is this type of howling wind (00:10 onwards): http://www.soundsnap.com/node/10399. But that particular recording obviously has very bad quality.
white or pink noise tones with audiosuite EQs, pitch shift, and a slow doppler, and then i let UDK do the rest, oscillation, pitch variation etc.
I was going to create a desert wind loop for a fps videogame and decided to have a look around...
Thanks to the great solutions presented here I finally find the most suitable as follows: I have basically 2 tracks, one is a sound I recorded in my tent one very windy night on a very windy peak, I slowed it down with paulstretch (what an aweseome tool!!), eqed it enhancing around 90hz and 770hz, hicut above, the second sound is a pink noise track with a wide reverb and a narrow bandpass filter that I automated moving it very slowly and in small amounts at a time to avoid making it sound like a sci-fi laser.
That's it for now, as the game design goes on I'm planning to record some recorder's whistles and squeaks to be assigned to buildings corners and I already recorded some spelt flour rolling on a sheet, to simulate sand gusts to assign to certain areas.
