Tyre screech recreation

Question

Hi

I was wondering if anyone has any tips on how to recreate the sound of a car screeching to a stop.

Thanks

Answer 1

Find a car, drive it fast then apply the breaks very hard and voila! Sorry for the sarcasm. I had this connundrum a few years ago on a low budget animation. I ended up recording my brother in law skidding to a halt on a quiet country lane, a few takes was all that was needed as I then used pitching and time stretching to alter my 3 sounds to make more.

Are you needing those sounds particularly? If so then there's places like Soundsnap that are great for buying a few random sounds for very little money.

Good luck.

Ian

Answer 2

If you rub your fingers over a balloon you can get some very nasty screeches, so I guess dragging a balloon over a surface with some texture could produce something similar but give you more freedom to create longer sounds.

Answer 3

A hot water bottle (or anything with a rubbery surface for that matter) can be a good starting point. You can rub it on a wooden desk or something that has a very slick surface to get a screech out of it.

@wadiosound has a point when he says it'll sound cartoony. If I think about a tyre screech, not only do I hear the squealing, but there is definitely another lower pitched component, a bit more rumbly that might not only come from the tyre itself but from the structure of the car, the axel maybe, or the reflection of the road texture in the wheel-well...

Answer 4

This is a nice one...
http://deauditievedienst.tumblr.com/post/42278000168/foley-trick-how-to-record-the-sound-of-screeching
It's from Arnoud Traa, a Sound Designer/Recordist from Amsterdam.

Answer 5

I'm afraid anything you might try will sound a little cartoony. Depending on your production type, this may or may not work.

Your best bet is really to record it yourself. Fortunately, anyone with a daredevil mind and a car will be able to reproduced this sound.

The other option is SoundSnap (as Ian said) or SoundDogs. Both sites are great.

I hope this help.

Answer 6

Driving a car around and burning rubber can be expensive and dangerous. It will be the most realistic sound but it might not always have the dramatic impact you would be looking for in a scene. That's why foley artists have come up with methods to recreate similar sounds in a studio. What you need to think about are the qualities of the sound you're looking for - rubbery, squealing, screeching. How can you create those sounds yourself? As mentioned before you could use balloons and hot water bottles, but you could also try things like plimsoles and trainers, or wet crocs can work well too. How you process those sounds and mix them in post-production will have a big effect on how well they fit in. Think about pitch and reverberation. Also consider the surface that the tyres are in contact with...a little gravel or some debris might help to add realism.

Here Coaimhe Doyle, foley artist for Game of Thrones, demonstrates the use of a hot water bottle for the classic tyre screech (skip to 09:38 for the tyre sounds):