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What sounds could represent bright, happy, joyful, youthful, naturalness?

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What's the context?

Children laughing comes to mind.

It can also be subliminally placed in the ambiences you choose. An ambience with lighter wind and happy birds for example. A happy news story playing in the background instead of a gloomy one. The kids laughing and playing outside next door. Etc. etc. etc., the list can go on.

I think I can help more if I know what context you have.

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  • I'm finishing a short with half the movie taking place in a memory of a green field/forest setting with two 16 years old and all the colors are vivid especially the grass which is everywhere and it is waving a little in the wind. The other half of the story is the old lady who as a kid, choked the other one to death in the field and she is confessing her crime to a detective at her house with everything packed and ready to go to jail. 8 minutes.
    – Chris
    Mar 7, 2011 at 20:49
  • I had thought of using electricity zaps to liven it up but I'm finishing up a decent mix and setting it aside for a few weeks at least. Didn't get around to using the zaps.
    – Chris
    Mar 7, 2011 at 20:52
  • Oh well you can liven up the dream sequences and make the present time cold and foreboding if that works out. Like add a lot of reverbed laughing of the characters and birds and happy sounds, and I think the musical score can do a lot of work on this as well. Does it have a score?
    – Utopia
    Mar 7, 2011 at 21:35
  • Maybe take the laughter and stretch it, then weave it into the atmos.
    – Dave Matney
    Mar 9, 2011 at 1:14
  • I had added handcuff sound snips to certain points in the future. I started adding nice chinky rock hits in the past. I was actually thinking about that laughter stretch Idea Dave. What do you think about using a grain fx plug for that like reaktor? I guess the timbre would still be there but would it lose most of it's meaning.
    – Chris
    Mar 9, 2011 at 1:25
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Try playing with contrasts.

Make the house with the old lady sound scary. Creaky floorboards, a little bit of scary wind, the house settling in the wind. A couple of dark drones / room tones to make a general feeling of being uncomfortable. Lots of reverb would also make the house more disturbing.

Make the field light, with a few birds, bees, crickets. Light gusts of wind in the waving grass (foley?). Like the feeling of lying in a field on a summer day and just listening to the wind and nature around you.

You can even take elements from the happy world and use them as transitions, like letting the light wind in the field turn into a gust and a shudder in the old lady's house. Or use crickets or insects as transition, where it goes from a natural lightness to something evil, crawling, scraping somewhere....

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  • I like the idea about scarying up the house with creaky floor boards. I have a drone but it is subliminally volumed and it def. adds to a creep suspense factor. Make the field light would be good too. I've found that in my newbiness and over excitedness for wanting to show off my skills I can tend to put too much sound in there like saying hey look at me and what i can do but always in the end i'll see how less is actually more and the point is not always to use a ton of sounds that will create the world.
    – Chris
    Mar 9, 2011 at 1:29

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