9
Besides the obvious answer of extinct animals. My first priority would probably be to record ambiences without the presence of human civilization. No cars and traffic, no aircraft, no electrical interference from cellular and radio...just pristine nature.
7
For the more close-up crackling sound, get your hands on some styrofoam peanuts and a very quiet mic/room. Crank up the gain and gather a couple handfulls. Very slowly squeeze and release the bunches of peanuts — it creates a surprisingly realistic mimicry of the crackle and creak of ice. HERE is a sample. It's relatively untreated, but you could play with ...
5
shorts and a t shirt, to minimize clothing noise when doing a foot pass. clothing moves can be added separately. pants swishing noise can build up when doing multiple passes of feet.
5
A lot of Foley artists use sweat pants, soft clothes that don't make sound when rubbing together. Also take off any jewely, belts, etc.
5
My approach to this would be:
Search for appropriate elevator sounds. Maybe you will find the perfect sound with everything you need in a library. If you do, then great. If not...
Consider finding an elevator to record. There are still plenty of elevators like that around (at least here in the UK) if you know where to look. Hotels, restaurants and shops ...
5
For the sound of dog I actually normally just use a kind of heavy-duty gloves I've epoxy-glued paper-clips on. I was gonna try other things as well when it was still just gaffed on, like pieces of horn and different types of wood, but truth be told I found this configuration to be absolutely spot-on for what I needed instantly!
For the sense of weight, I've ...
4
depends on what the moves are.
if they're of shuffling, dealing, etc you may want to bring someone in that's had a lot of experience doing those things. card moves can sound dramatically different in the hands of a pro vs in the hands of an amateur.
4
Business Cards? Post-It Notes? Credit/plastic cards? These are just some ideas, but it also depends upon the action required. Break away from the literal sound playing cards make and think of textures and frequency variances. All the above props offer different tonality, brittleness, frequency characteristics. It's the juxtaposing of various carefully-...
4
As for the horse, you can watch a top artist doing it here.
The dryer, why not record a real dryer drum. Just open one up and spin by hand. I've done this before. Sweeten it with the metal box idea. Usually the simplest idea is the best.
Laser beam...you should probably do something that no one suggests...that way it's original :) Old school method would ...
4
The basic principle is called double tracking. You can read a good introductory article here: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/apr09/articles/doubletracking.htm
In the first example there is pitch difference and a strong spatial element being applied.
4
Well they are harsh sounds...
First make sure that what you do as step number one is to control the source, change material (paper/board type, different pen or chalk etc) until you get a sound you really like.
Authenticity is rarely important, fake it!
Second, mic choice can go a long way, try a dynamic mic. Stay away from regular dialog/boom mics, use ...
4
To get rid of harshness at recording try the following:
Record with a distance. Rarely do we hear a paper get torn from a distance of 20-30 cm. More so 50cm+++
Go off axis. This will get rid of directional and thus high frequency material a bit.
Try DeEssers or Multiband Compressors to get rid of peaks in the 4000 and 8000 Hz region
Use dynamic mics instead ...
4
It depends. If I know for sure there are no way anyone would see me, and I'm in my own studio - tee and boxers. In extreme cases also a thick Palestinian scarf (textured with skulls and crossbones for that extra audio push!) covering my mouth and nose to further reduce the risk of accidental breaths or such.
But mostly I use a tee washed with a lot of ...
4
Usually the smaller more intimate sounds will provide the detail, so you'll have those larger, slower, heavier wave sounds as the body and you can provide movement and texture and detail with smaller splashes, sprays etc mixed in.
3
Stick a contact/hydro mic in a plastic bowl of water and put it in your freezer and record the sound of it freezing OR once frozen take it out and pour water on it to have it start cracking. Sounds quite good, did it at University.
3
Hey Jay,
even though I don't live in the UK and can't help you with an actual recording, maybe this will help you in case you can't get a recording:
http://blog.trumpton.org.uk/2010/10/uk-dial-and-progress-tones.html
Hope it helps you
3
It almost sounds like some gunshots or thunder, with short decays, layered in with the punch sounds.
3
Generally when recording you're looking for the best signal to noise ratio possible. If you record something too low then need to turn it up later in post, you're also going to be turning up all the unwanted noise.
Personally I try to record as hot as possible without clipping or activating limiters. This may mean initially backing off the gain a little in ...
3
metal, glass, chimes, bells, that sort of thing. super high screechy stuff is the only stuff that really makes any sound up there.
alternatively try contact mics and electrostatic mics
3
I wouldn't be afraid to use any good recording I made for whatever purposes I needed them. Some of the greatest and most award winning photography in the history of the medium is of people in great pain or distress. That the photographer captured and then released the images doesn't detract from the art of what that was or from what that photographer was ...
3
look into brands like microphone madness etc. sometimes they repackage quality omni capsules (e.g. sennheiser mke2) for a lot cheaper due to them being slightly mismatched, or otherwise failing QC.
contact mics are another way to get some sounds - the character will be very specific and the cheaper the mics = the more EQ you'd need to apply, but the ...
3
This question is a bit out of context on a sound design q&a site, but easy to answer.
Whenever you re-encode an already encoded soundfile (mp3>export to mp3) you lose more 'sound' information. Look up 'lossy' and 'lossless encoding' on wikipedia and you'll understand it better.
Oh and in general it's easier for us to answer if you include more details. ...
3
While everyone has provided some great answers so far regarding the recording of these harsh sounds, no one has mentioned another critical answer: Performance.
If you're scribbling with the fury of a 5 year-old with a new set of crayons you're going to get some harshness, regardless of how you mic it.
3
Experimenting with a small hand fan can work maybe. And layering that with simple mechanical sounds can do the trick!
3
I'm not sure this qualifies as a full answer, but maybe a starting point...
To really layer it up, you need to add variation to what is being recorded, so assuming you can get it a bit like a taiko to start with...
Tuning
Vary tuning between takes. Some phasing might be OK, but a whole swathe of very similar pitches won't sound as big as highly varied ...
3
I'm not too familiar with Garage Band or Logic (I'm a Windows Cubase user), but your best bet is to simply record a child, but I'm assuming that's not an option. You can use just about any DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) to record your voice and using a blend of pitch shifting (shifting the lead vocal an octave or two down) and combining the newly modified ...
3
To be honest any mic can do Foley, I've seen Foley done with an sm57 which is historically an instrument mic. Foley has much more to do with technique than what mic you are using, 80% of Foley is the art and creativity. I have done Foley with an SE1 mic which cost less than £100. As such in an emergency as long as your Foley technique is good, everything is ...
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