Hey folks,
You can skip the italicized section if you're in a hurry - that's background for the question.
I'm working on the second iteration of an art game. It's a cool project, you should check it out on my site (www.wraughk.com, navigate to Sound Work > Games > Deep Sea). The game works like this:
Player is blinded and wears a gas mask.
Gas mask monitors their breathing, and plays back bubbles as they breath out.-
Player must hunt down a seamonster by listening for it, but every exhalation/movement makes it harder to hear where the monster is.-
In my first iteration, which you can hear on the site, I produced a world that sounded underwater according to hollywood's rules of what underwater sounds like. Bassy. Filtered. You get the picture. One of the problems that presented, predictably, is lack of audio resolution and distinct sound design. What's sound design limited to < 1k?!?! Sucky sound design.
Inspired by a recent conversation on the filmsound.org listserv, I'm reworking the game to sound more like underwater actually sounds. High frequencies emphasized, not filtered, etc.
I'd like to ask you folks what your tricks are for getting that underwater-quality to a sound? It'll help me out a lot on this project. I'll start with some cool tricks I've learned on this project:
1) Use EQ to emphasize the resonant frequency of a sound.
2) Sounds transmitted through solids are closer in quality to sounds transmitted through liquid than sounds transmitted through air. Therefore, contact mics are awesome.
Now your turn!