The Audio Resource & Sound Design Clinic

Ah, this is perfect! Thanks @TheAM-Dol !!! I also thought the violin was a bit meh. Sometimes it’s hard to know how ham to go when you’re supposed to be background music, but I can definitely give that some more vitamins.

It actually is a Kontakt library because my favorite condenser microphone super hella died. I’ll give more oomph to the expression controller and the velocities. If I remember correctly, I’m using a rounder vibrato key switch right now since fiddling doesn’t usually rock n’ roll the vibrato nearly as hard.

I hadn’t finished my EQ curve yet so I’ll definitely trial some more low-mid. Off the top of my head I can’t remember quite what I had built out so far. All I remember doing is easing off the highs a bit because it was a little nasally previously.

Will also widen the stereo field. It’s admittedly not super wide right now. I had the harp center since it’s the most percussive element, but it makes sense to treat this a bit more like a vocal piece.

Oh no...please use your articulations then.
I'm not sure what library you are using, but in my own library I can use key switches to changes between play styles, and both the volume and expression Midi controllers combined with velocity are necessary to create believable playing. Since this is a pretty gentle song, I also recommend limiting your velocity. Some libraries let you manually cut off certain velocities (For example, the max possible velocity is 110, so even if you set the Midi parameter to 127, it will only play up to the 110th velocity layer.) I often use this on my piano and my drums since it's real easy for velocity layers to get out of control (especially when you MIDI controller sucks as much as mine) And with drums I like to apply the random variation, but if things get too random you'll have weird jumps in the intensity of the playing. I realize there are no drums in this track, just food for thought on future tracks.


Yeah, I'd play around with it. Alternatively, maybe you could find a more bass-oriented instrument to subtlely fill out the low end. You harp is like...almost there, but I was something that kind of peaks into the bass range just a touch. It really should be subtle though.
Definitely rolling off the highs is a good idea. I'd let the natural "breathiness" of the reverb be most of your trebliness here, and roll off the trebles in the violin.


And for the record, it doesn't need to be wide either (we were stuck with mono audio for decades anyways, and most Bluetooth speakers now have the 2 cones so close together it might as well be mono), but especially when the arrangement is so small, I think it will help the instruments feel like they occupy a space in a chamber/studio if you give them each their own zone in the stereo field. With such a small arrangement, you fortunately get lots and lots of room to play around with where the instruments are positioned, so I think the song would benefit from that.

Ms Littlefish explained that already really well. So no, I was not misunderstanding.

I think the music has an eastern vibe. It feels very colorful.
To me there is "too much going on at all times". It becomes calmer closer to the end but then that section is over and it is cut rather boldly/abruptly.

From my perspective more calm sections allow the colorful ones to shine more and they give the audience the opportunity to breath again.

Do you know what the piece is for?

Regarding the question: I did not have the program at that moment in time.

Alright, so I have been working on this fast travel system for my game. I will discuss more about how it works in my game's development thread when the monthly update rolls around, for now, I just want to talk about some of the sound design stuff I did.



More positional audio! Woooo!
So this fast travel system uses a lot of filtered white noise. White noise is always an effective sound effect.
I built the patch in Massive, as usual.


Massive and the noise patch I made. Oops, did I forget white noise is a little boring by itself so I have subtly mixed some oscillators in because why not?

For the ambient noise that emanates from the fast travel point, I used the filtered white noise built in Massive, and then added a later of Zenology in for the chimes. Originally I just wanted some regular ol' wind chimes, but while browsing the patches in Zenology, I really like this little FM-synth style chimes.
The notes are in the key of Fidel, but are played randomly. They are also side-chained with white noise from massive, so they pulsate in time with the noise.

When you step onto the pad, this is using an altered version of my filtered white noise patch (the other one has a slow attack, quick decay. This one has a fast attack and slow decay).
One thing I have done to help add some meat to a lot of my sound effects is to layer in a 909 kick drum. The frequency sweep used to create the 909 sound is really effective at adding a sub-bass punch (which, by the way, if you didn't listen to the video with a device that has a low bass response, then please watch it again on something more appropriate :LZSwink:)


Microtonic and the Vintage Tonic 909 patch with the ADSR modified.

Technically what was used to add in the bass was not a 909, but actually Microtonic using their Vintage Tonic sound patches with an emulated 909. The reason I chose to use this is because Microtonic is designed specifically for drums, which makes finer tuning of the ADSR curve much easier to get the right kind of punch in the bass.

You'll also notice that the UI sounds become all reverby when it changes to the white void. This is not actually an effect being rendered natively (although I think if I added FMOD integration into the game it would be possible), instead this is faked. A plugin I use allows me to change the UI sound effects, and any other effects that are not UI based have had an alternate version rendered with the heavy reverb applied. You can see in the video, I actually forgot to change one of the sound effects. When the text boxes asking where you want to go appears, you head a "Bee-do". I forgot to switch this one to the reverby version.


It's the delay used on the cancel sound effect. Why? I don't know. Needed a picture to break up the wall of text.

Next is the cancel sound; if you decide not to fast travel, the world is returned to normal. Once again, this is just using the same filtered white noise from Massive (I did increase the resonance on the filter for a little more "whooshy" type effect.)

When the player makes a selection, an animation plays.
Funnily enough all of the sound effects in the animation are quite old - some of the first sound effects I made for the game. "dragging" sound effect as the cursor moves is from dragging my finger nail through comb teeth, then filtered with a phaser. Obviously the mouse clicks are just mouse clicks (sampled from my real mouse!) and the pop is a syringe with the plunger being pulled out.

Ah, and I guess I should explain the ambient sound in the cave itself. This is also not audio work I did recently.
The sound itself is a sound I recorded several years ago, when we had a fierce typhoon blow through, it made the windows in my apartment howel quite frighteningly, so I had to capture it! The cave itself is using that recording, but I slowed/pitched it down a lot and did a little bit extra processing to it.

@TheAM-Dol I don’t if you expected a huge like…big brain response but I just really like these and it just gave me a ton of ideas when I start making more sound effects. Very helpful explaining your ADSR, by the way. I really, really love the idea with the 909/kicks. I don’t think I would have thought to do something like that but the impact and effect it gave is really amazing. It sounds really satisfying in the headphones but even in the iPad speakers it gives a great grip. Makes it sticky when consuming all these noises at the same time.

I’m also extremely happy I’m not the only person that runs for an audio recorder (and me, a weather nerd, the camera) every time there is a notable weather event. I’m kinda bummed I missed getting audio of a rare (in Michigan) hail storm ricocheting on the back of my house because I was very much video taping a weak whirlwind in the front of my house and these were extremely difficult choices for me to make LOL.

I truly love what you can do with just changing pitch and speed. My earthquake noise is legit just a box fan.

Yeah, the 909 was somewhat of a happy accident.
I was working on a sound and felt frustrated I couldn't get the right amount of bass punch in it, and I was like "well...fk it, what if I just drop a 909 in for fun?"
And it worked. I'd love to share that sound - but can't at the moment.
For awhile I used Zenology's 909 samples. They have some good TR drum machine samples, which makes sense since Zenology is by Roland who made the TR line of drum machines. However, Zenology's ADSR curves sort of lack granularity. It's like 1 step in the attack already feels like too much.
So, for this sound I decided to use Micro Tonic instead for the bass punch. Micro Tonic is a modern (well, "modern" it release probably a decade ago) software drum synthesizer, so it provides a ton of options for getting the transients of the drum just right. In this way, I was able to use their 909 recreation, and then modify it to get the right transient on it.

Well, I procrastinated myself out of participating in the game jam, but this was the main title music I made for it.

The title was Fin-elf Fanta-sleigh, so hopefully the various homages are recognizable :stickytongue: (and violin by myself).

I think this works really well for a title screen! At first…at first I was taken off guard because I was all, “dat’s Final Fantasy,” but now it makes sense LOL. Your violin playing sits perfectly in here. Timing and phrasing is all really good.

I think the only real feedback I have is in some of the instrumentation, because the composition is pretty much perfect for the purpose it’s serving.

So. The instrumentation. It’s a little top heavy. The only grounding force is the cello pizzicato but it’s a little thin. I feel like a middle range is missing. Something as simple as mirroring that MIDI track with a viola and 2nd violin (G and D string stuff) could fill out those frequency ranges nicely. I think because the glockenspiel is playing a rhythmic part, that filling out the middle range will be extra good here.

As far as the glockenspiel, it may be the mix or the MIDI (hell knowing me it’s usually both LOL), but it does seem a bit wham bam. Could be the velocities or just where it’s sitting in the mix. Curious what the EQ situation is too. Of course, I think I recognize some of the libraries you’re using and I know I struggled with phrasing them too. XD

@ATT_Turan

Thanks, that's a good observation. I think maybe having some violas pizzicato the chords from the glock on quarter notes would flesh it out a bit.

Not that I have any real need to do more work on this (unless there's another Christmas event next year and I make a sequel to an unreleased game! :stickytongue: ).

Aight, yall convinced me to set up a soundcloud to share my game's completed™ tracks. ill be adding stuff to it slowly, but id like some thoughts on one ive been working on recently.

its to be the battle theme after the halfway point of the game. It has most of the motifs i wanted it to have without it losing itself and just being the other songs, but id like to hear what people who havent been listening to it for the past god knows how long think about it overall as a standalone track


I use Reaper to put my tracks together. Im still trying to get a better handle on the soundfonts i have available, but many of the midi instruments are very finicky with their velocities and end up having entirely different tones when im not careful

Yay! A new friend in the thread! @Robro33 I do not currently have headphones on and am currently listening with my iPad. So, y’know. Disclaimer. XD

There is a lot of a good groove and energy (seriously pretty funky ~the good kind~) going on. Overall, really good on the chords and tonal color of the piece but I do feel like the space and position of the mix is causing me to lose some of the voices that are carrying out some of the polyphonic elements. The flute especially.

In particular, the trumpet is very forward and the flute is way in the back. What’s the reverb and panning situation on the track so far? It really could be in part from the MIDI sound fonts as you already pointed out. Some of them really are “all or nothing” when you start using the velocity and/or controller data.

The up-beat is definitely nice and fitting for battle music.

My favorite part was probably 2:08 - 2:27 where you get a break from the intensity and just hear a soothing chord progression.

It's good that it's long so there is some variety here and there, otherwise I can see this get repetitive after a while.

i had gone through a number of instruments when I was still putting things together, but the flutes were a bit cursed at the start. They used to create a weird sound when some other instrument was playing in a certain octave and panning then towards different ears didnt help it, so my quick solution was to just make them quieter. at some point ive stopped using that instrument, but i kept the volume on the flutes. ill try bumping them up and see where that gets it.

The trumpets cant go much lower than they are right now though through my vst . theres a point with the velocity where the attack on it just nosedives, and it straddles that line on both sides most of the song. For that one, i might have to bump everything except the trumpets up a touch and lower the entire project a bit.

EDIT: i never noticed that Reaper's track volume handles sound differently than my vst's track volume. the vst's is basically a global multiplier for the midi velocities while the default reaper one is an actual volume slider. Im usually reluctant to touch the vst one because that means the sound on the instruments tend to change too throughout the entire song, but i see thats not an issue with reaper's volume slider
It still takes an ungodly amount of self control for me to try and keep songs concise :guffaw:. Theres others that are still WiPs (WsiP???) because they are in need of being trimmed, but sections arent being repeated very much. so "trimming" essentially becomes less of that and more "rewriting".
one of my major story bosses had a 14 minute song at one point that got split up into 4 separate ones. a few weeks later and now their lengths are 6, 7, 6, and 5 minutes each before looping, but only one of them is finished

It was surprise for me that this one mostly avoided that. it was nearly the opposite. i had a number of repeated phrases played on different instruments with slightly different melodies and cadences. It gave the feel that the song was going everywhere except where it should, so much got removed. I might have cut the 1:28-2:08 section in half if i was left alone for long enough

Hey Robro33

I like this track, its really energetic and you have a good mix of different elements. I like that besides the bass, you used other rhythmic elements to form a nice cohesive groove. One thing to keep in mind though, when the rhythmic elements are stacked up and playing super busy, there is always a chance of frequency masking.

So to explain frequency masking, its when 1 element's frequency clashes with anothers'. One example would be the drums, I could hear the drums playing at the start but as the track progresses further, there is a lot of masking especially on the kick drum, till the point I cant hear it anymore due to the other rhythmic elements playing. I could still hear some snares and hit hats, but the snares sound like they are partially being masked when the track gets busy.

Usually the intutive thing to do when you cannot hear something is to turn it up. However, in this case, if you turn up the elements in the drum kit e.g. the kick / snare, you might encounter a situation where you can hear them now that they are turned up, but you cannot clearly hear some of your rhythmic elements anymore. This is very likely frequency masking.

So for issues like this, EQ is your best friend. You want to use an EQ after your instrument plugin for those rhythmic elememts that are specifically not bass and not kick.
Put on a high pass filter (some EQs call it low cut filter), if you are confused, just remember you are cutting lows to let the high frequencies pass. For starters set it to 150hz -200hz, this will roll off the mentioned frequencies off the other instruments and you have this frequency range reserved for the bassy instruments and your kick drum. Put it on your flutes, trumpets, hi hats and everything else that doesnt have to utilitise the low frequency zone (20hz - 150 hz). Your track will sound clearer. It usually also helps with the final stages of production. We usually cannot hear it, but most of the time, even instruments like trumpets, flute, hi hats can contain some low frequencies. This is very important because during the mastering stages (the final stages of an audio production, where they add sheen, polish and magic and make your track radio ready), the low frequencies hiding inside can ramp up and eat away at your headroom.

Well, since we cannot hear them, might as well cut them off so they won't interfere with our master plan.



So kick drum usually the thump is at around 60hz, but different kick samples will have their fundamental frequency at different hz but 60hz is a good estimation, so good to put on an EQ and watch where it peaks at and reserve that frequency for it. To "reserve" the frequency, go to your bassy elements and make a small cut at the fundamental frequency of the kick. For example, if your kick fundamental is 60hz, do a -2db to -3db at 60hz on your bassy elements. Also good to put low pass filter (high cut filter) on your bassy elements, this does the opposite of the high pass filter, it lets low frequencies pass by cutting the highs. Adjust it as necessary, if your bass instruments play a little higher than usual, then make sure you carefully adjust it so it doesnt cut off too much when it plays higher.




As for snares, usually fundamental is around 200hz, but again different samples have different fundamentals, some have it around 150hz, so good to check. To unmask them, make sure to "reserve" their fundamental frequencies. For snares, i would use high pass filter at around 100 - 120hz.

Around 200hz - 500hz is the muddy zone, you can cut away some if certain instrumental track is muddy, I would also recommed to becareful in this zone, cause if you cut too much, it will sound like ur track does not have weight / body. Its hard to tell what is mud what is not, but practice makes perfect. If I were to describe it, I think my best attempt would be, if you ever hear someone speak with their hands covering their mouth, that sounds like mud.

Anyway I typed too much, too much information overload is not good when starting out. Happy mixing!

Oh I forgot to mention, if your track is meant to sound like that then forget everything I just said, its just feedback. At the end of the day, music is subjective, there is no right or wrong.

Dunkirk doing god's work. And by god's work, I mean my work. Everything is great advice.

I am quoting this portion for a couple of reasons.
First, I am not sure what you are using for sound fonts but it strikes me as weird that it would modify the velocities unless it is labeled as something else such as "intensity" or something. Gain is gain.

Generally speaking, I rarely touch the actual fades of the individual tracks.
It's better to use gain staging, which is to adjust the output volume of an effect before it goes into the next effect, since plugins may add additional gain or perceived volume.
Finally, I usually top things off with a channel strip. I prefer this because I have finer control of where the panning and gain reduction happens in the effect chain.
Personally I prefer Utility by Venn Audio : it's free and light weight without too many bells and whistles. My only complaint with it is that it's hard to precisely dial in the exact value you want, so if you are OCD about your knob values and hate seeing 2.1dB when you want 2 then it will drive you nuts (this is a very serious problem that affects millions ever day.)
(and doesn't affect Dunkirk with his 61.7 and 200.4 hz values in his screen shots :LZSlol: FIX YOUR KNOBS DAMMIT! IT'S LIKE AN ITCH I CAN'T SCRATCH!!!!!!)

As for muddy areas, I wanted to add that generally speaking a lot of instruments tend to have "enough noise" in that muddy range (200 - 500) so everything kind of bunches up there, which is why it's ideal to try to make small cuts in every instrument that might fall in that range. More often than not, songs will have a "favored bunching area"; we'll call that the as/hole of the song. The as/hole of the song changes song to song, but generally speaking I find 420 (blaze it :cool:) to be a pretty common place for the as/hole of my music. There isn't really a right or wrong answer to this though, by the way, so long as you are in that range, just check where all the underwear is bunching up around the as/hole and pluck the wedgie.

Actually I did this on purpose, to trigger the itch.
just as an example for Robro33, to show that it doesn't always have to be a standard 60hz or a standard 200hz. All the frequencies are meant just as a guideline. You pull the frequency node on the EQ around and you listen for what you think sounds good.

The guideline helps for starters, in a sense, they wont go pulling the node around blindly to try to listen for things that they don't know or cannot identify. At least, they have a range to start with and they zone in on things in that range. So like if pulling around and making tweaks at 63.1hz and 204.7 sounds like good, then it is all ok to keep it at that.

Just prepare some itchy cream for when it starts itchy.

Thanks for the detailed response! i tried out the EQ with the ranges youve shown on some of the channels in isolation to hear the difference and its almost night and day for much of them. it cuts out much of the "noise" in them that i thought i had to just deal with. Ive only used that plugin once before when following a guide on how to set up an 808 and i had never looked into its uses other than following what the guide said to do for the effect. this is definitely something ill keep in mind and play with going forward

I double checked and its as you say actually. im not sure what i did to believe that the volume knob in my vst was tied to the velocities as it was a long time ago, but now i know it isnt an issue. I know it was something i did when i was playing around with changing values within the midi editor mid song (not sure what theyre called. these at the bottom left.)
But i was sure it was it was volume. the knob in the vst was sliding with it in real time as it happened.

PS: I found it actually. one of the pianos in one of my soundfonts seemingly acts the way i described before with volume, but it seems to just be reacting really badly to volume in general? it gets very muffled and loses attack drastically as the velocities of the notes decreases past a certain point, which just seems normal at this point, but when using the volume knob to turn it down the same happens as well. just not to the same degree.

ill take a look at that and see what its all about. it looks handy. the individual left and right channel gains sounds like something convenient to have for one of the songs i was working on. i wanted a specific feel that i couldnt have gotten through panning a single track alone, so i had cloned it, made it quiet, and panned the clone hard from from ear to ear to get it

Yeah, EQ is really important. I'm definitely not a master of it, but a very large part of what makes something difficult to hear is not the volume, but the tones resonating off the main note tone. You can get some pretty quick results with the basics, but I think I'll be working on improving EQ and balancing frequencies for much time to come.

I also vouch for the Utility by Venn. @TheAM-Dol recommended that to me as well and I do find the freedom and flexibility of it very handy and convenient.

Besides EQ, I find that the way instruments are panned have a very significant impact on how much the levels actually need changed. Giving an instrument the proper space in the stereo field can often eliminate any need to adjust their volume.

Alright, so you'll probably see this song again in my game's development thread, but it'll be a while until I get around to posting my latest update, and I want to share this now!'

WARNING: This song is weird!


The context around the (intended) use case of this song helps it make more sense, but I realize as just a listener this is probably some pretty wild sh/t.
The goal of the song was to sort of capture auditory ADD. It is written in a 7/8 time signature which is part of the reason it feels so weird; the complex rhythm create the "beat skip" feeling in the rhythm which lends itself to the ADD-nature that is intended.
There are what I call "tickles" which are little arpeggios that will "tickle" you in the left or right channel; again to aid to the ADD-nature.
There is also an additional fun element; using one of my choir libraries, I create a little call-out, trying to get the character's attention: "Fidel? ... Fidel!?"
And thus; the song is the auditory representation of being inside the head of a small, energetic, yet dumb girl. highly excitable; easily distractable.



The mix may or may not be final. It's not suppose to be very bass heavy, but with the song utilizing a lot of trebly sounds, the bass needs to counter-balance the spectrum. I've sort of struggled to find that sweet spot of not-too-bass heavy but not having ear-shredding trebles.

The drums were actually built in MicroTonic. They were based on the 909 Vintage Tonic library, since 909's are already based heavily on frequency sweeps, it only made sense that the frequency-sweeping drum sounds I wanted to make should be derived from a frequency sweep base.
So, as a bonus, I decided to package up the drum patch I made for Microtonic. You, of course, need to own Microtonic to use the actual patches, but have no fear; you don't need to spend $99 just to use these drums. I rendered them out as WAV files for you to load into your favorite sampler in case you want to use them but don't own Microtonic. (Of course, if you own Microtonic it would allow you to further manipulate the patches)
You can download them here!

I think you nailed this representation, it really sounds like what it is. The bass itself feels to me like the amount of energy this girl has, it drives her. The trebles are how highly excitable she is. I think the balance is just right.

I do have a suggestion for you to try if you'd like to integrate the cellos portion that was cut out due to being too grounded. However, you don't have to if you are at that stage where you are finalising things as the music itself is fine as it is. Its just that I think its a nice little section that is uniquely different from the majority of the track and could do a good job of keeping the listener's interest.

I think a bit of the grounded feeling can be mitigated if some cellos were introduced to the track right before that portion makes its entry, it gives listeners some prep work. You can also filter it off to get the telephone effect on the cellos and have some of the percussion still play, because part of her mind longed to go home but then she is too easily distracted, as such the part that longed to go home sounded distant (filtered telephone effect), I think having it filtered also removes some of the grounding cause cellos have a very chesty sound. Once again, its just a suggestion, if you already have other plans then its fine.

Also props to you for the WAV files, its a really nice gesture. Thank you.