a. Input

In most mixers the very first stage is the input. The input varies whether we are in recording mode, in which case the input will usually be a microphone or line input or whether we are in playback mode, in which case the input will be the audio clip or clips in the currently active playlist.

b. Inserts

The next stage your signal is going to run into are the inserts or insert section. This is where you can add effects to your audio, such as equalization, compression and whatever else may be available. Inserts are often referred to as an access point, allowing you to add one or multiple processors in your signal path. In most DAWs, the signal goes from the first insert to the last from top to bottom.

c. Pre-Fader Send

After the inserts, a pre-fader send is the next option for your signal. This is where you will send a copy of your audio to another section of your mixer, using a bus. A bus is a path that allows you to move one or multiple signals to a single destination on another section of the mixer. Sending out a signal at this point of the channel strip means the amount sent will be irrespective of the main fader, therefore changes in volume across the track set by the main fader will not affect the amount of audio going out on the pre-fader send. The amount of signal sent is only dependent on the level of the send and, of course, the level of the signal after the insert section.

If you were to send vocals to a reverb processor at this stage, fading out the vocals would not affect the level of the reverb, and you would eventually end up with reverberation only after fading out the vocals.

d. Volume Fader

The next stage is the volume fader, which controls the overall level of the channel strip or audio track. When the volume fader is set to a value of 0dB, known as unity, no gain is applied to the overall track, and all the audio is playing at the post insert audio level. Raising or lowering the fader by any amount will change the current gain value by as much.

Often it is here that you will find panning, to place the audio output in stereo or surround space, depending on the format you are working with.

e. Metering: Pre-Fader vs. Post Fader

Next to the volume fader, you will usually find a level meter. Please check with your DAW’s manual to find out exactly how the meter is measuring the level (Peak, RMS, LUFS etc.). Some DAWS will allow you to change the method for metering. Irrelevant of the method employed, you have the option to monitor signals pre-fader or post-fader. By default, most mixers will have their meters set to post fader mode, which means the fader will display the level after the volume fader and will therefore be affected by it. When monitoring pre-fader, the meter will display the level of the signal right after the last insert, giving you an accurate sense of the level at this stage. It’s probably a good idea to at least occasionally monitor your signals pre-fader, so you can be sure your signal is clean coming out of the insert section.

Please refer to your DAW’s documentation to find out how to monitor pre or post-fader.

f. Post-Fader Send

Next we find the post-fader send. The level sent to the bus will be impacted by any changes in the level of the volume fader. This is the most commonly used type of send. In this case, if you are sending vocals to a reverb processor, fading out the vocals will also fade out the level of the reverb.

g. Output

Last, we find the output, which determines where the signal is routed to next, by default usually the master bus, where all the audio is summed. Often the output of an audio track should be routed to a submix, where multiple audio tracks that can or should be processed in the same way are mixed together, such as all the ambience tracks in a session or the dialog, music etc.

It’s probably a good rule of thumb to make sure that no track be routed directly to the master fader but rather to a subgroup or submix. Routing individual tracks directly to the master will make your mix messy and difficult to manage.

You may have already noticed that DAWs often do not display the information on a channel strip in their mixer in the order through which the signal flows from top to bottom. If unaware of this, it is easy to make mistakes that get in the way of the task at hand.

a. Know Your Frame Rate

Frame rates for video are usually lower than the ones we work with in gaming. Frame rates ranking from 24 to 30 frames per second are common in video, film and broadcast. Find out what the frame rate is of the video you are working with, and make sure to set your DAW’s timeline to be displayed in Timecode format, rather than bars and beats.

Figure 6.2

Timecode is a way to make sure that each and every frame in a piece of video will have a single address that can be easily recalled and is expressed in the following format:

It is important to understand that, although expressed in seconds and frames, time code is a positional reference, an address for each frame in the video file.

Do make sure your DAW’s session is running at the same frame rate as the picture. Setting up our timeline to time code format allows us to move through our session in a frame by frame way, using the nudge feature. Nudging allows you to scrub forward and backwards through the video and allows you to find out exactly and easily where the sync points for each event are in the picture, down to frame accuracy. In some cases, you might need to use a nudge value to half frame for events where synchronization is critical.

The first frame of the clip should be lined up with the address: 01:00:00:00 in the timeline; any material such as slates that provide information about the video clip or countdowns will therefore start prior to the hour mark. Lining up the first frame of video with the address 01:00:00:00 is not a requirement but rather a convention and will make it easier to keep track of time.

Once you have imported the video, set up your DAW to the proper time timecode format and lined up your movie, you’re almost ready to sound design. The next step is to set up the routing and gain staging of the session.

Use the Dynamic Range

The term dynamic range in the context of a mixing session or a piece of equipment refers to the difference– or ratio – between the loudest and the softest sound or signal that can be accurately processed by the system. In digital audio, the loud portion of the range refers to the point past which clipping occurs, introducing distortion by shaving off the top of the signal. The top of the dynamic range in the digital audio domain is set to 0dBFS, where FS stands for full scale.

Figure 6.4 shows the same audio file, but the right one shows the characteristic flat top of a clipped audio file, and the fidelity of the audio file will be severely affected.

Figure 6.4

In the digital audio world, the bottom of the dynamic range depends on the number of bits the session or processor is running at. A rule of thumb is that 1 bit = 6dB of dynamic range. Keep in mind this is an approximation, but it is a workable one. A session at 24 bits will therefore offer a dynamic range of 144dB, from 0 to −144dBFS. This, theoretically, represents a considerable improvement over previous high-end large format analog mixing consoles. Any signal below that level will simply blend into the background noise and probably will sound quite noisy as it approaches that level.

Figure 6.5

Clipping therefore ought not to be an issue. Yet is often is. A well-mastered modern music pop track, when imported into a session, will already bring your master fader dangerously close to the 0dB mark. While it might be tempting to lower the master fader at this stage, refrain from doing so. Always address gain staging issues as early as possible. Lowering the master fader may lower the level on the master bus meter, but in reality, it lends itself to a session where you are constantly fighting for headroom.

There again, a better solution is to lower the level of the music track, ideally at the first insert, and push its levels down by 10 to 15dB, with the volume fader for both the music track and the master fader still at unity. This will give you a lot more headroom to work with while leaving the volume fader at unity.

If the music track now peaks at −15dB, it is still 133dB above the bottom of your dynamic range, which, if working with a clean signal where no noise is already present, gives you more than enough dynamic range to work with.

As good practice, I recommend always keeping the mixer’s master fader at unity.

a. Music, Dialog and Sound Effects

Delivery of stems is quite common and often expected when working with linear media. Stems are submixes of the audio by category such as music, dialog and sound effects. Stems make it convenient to make changes to the mix, such as replacing the dialog, without needing to revisit the entire mix. Having a separate music bounce also allows for more flexible and creative editing while working on the whole mix to picture.

It also makes sense to structure our overall mix in terms of music, effects and dialog busses for ease of overall mixing. Rather than trying to mix all tracks at once, the mix ultimately comes down to a balance between the three submixes, allowing us to quickly change the relative balance between the major components of the mix.

b. Inserts vs. Effects Loops for Reverberation

Effect loops are set up by using a pre or post-fader send to send a portion of the signal to a processor, such as reverb, in order to obtain both a dry and wet version of our signals in the mixer, allowing for maximum flexibility. The effect we are routing the signal to usually sits on an auxiliary input track.

Figure 6.6

Additionally, when it comes to sound effects such as reverb and delays, which are meant to be applied to multiple tracks, it usually makes more sense to use effects loops and sends rather than inserting a new reverb plugin directly on every track that requires one. The point of reverberation when working with sound replacement is often to give us a sense for the space the scene takes place in, which means than most sound effects and dialog tracks will require some reverberation at some point. All our sounds, often coming from completely different contexts, will also sound more cohesive and convincing when going through the same reverb or reverbs. Furthermore, applying individual plugins to each track requiring reverb is wasteful in terms of CPU resources and makes it very difficult to make changes, such as a change of space from indoors to outdoors, as they must be replicated over multiple instances of the plugins. This process is also time consuming and difficult to manage as your mix grows in complexity.

As a rule, always set up separate aux send effect loops for reverberation processors and delays used for modeling the environment. In addition to the benefits mentioned earlier, this will also allow you to process the effects independently from the original dry signal. The use of equalization or effects such as chorus can be quite effective in enhancing the sound of a given reverb. As all rules, though, it can be broken but only if there is a reason for it.

c. Setting Up the Mix Session

The structure suggested here is intended as a starting point, and ultimately every audio engineer settles on a format that fits their workflow and the needs of the project the best. Different formats for delivery may have different needs in terms of routing and processing, but we can start to include all the elements outlined so far into a cohesive mix layout.

Figure 6.7 represents the suggested starting point for your mix. From top to bottom:

Figure 6.7

d. Master Output and Sub Master

In this configuration, no audio from the mix is routed directly to the master fader. Rather there is an additional mixing stage, a master sub mix where all the audio from our mix is routed. The sub master is then sent to the master output sub master -> master output. This gives us an additional mix stage, the sub master, where all premastering and/or mastering processing can be applied, while the master output of the mix is used as a monitoring stage only, such as audio levels, spatial image and spectral balance.

Since all premastering or mastering is done at the master sub mix, our master outputs will be ‘clean’. Should we wish to use a reference track, this configuration means that we can route our reference track directly to the master out and compare it to the mix without running the reference through any of the mastering plugins as well as easily adjust the levels between our mix and the reference.

e. Submixes and Effects Loops

The next stage from the top is where we find the submixes by categories or groups for music, dialog and sound effect, as well as the effect loops for reverb and other global effects. All the audio or MIDI tracks in the session are summed to one of these, no tracks going out directly to the master or sub master output. Each of the group will likely in turn contain a few submixes depending on the needs and complexity of the mix. Sound effects are often the most complex of the groups and often contain several submixes as illustrated in the diagram.

Figure 6.8

The screenshot shows an example of a similar mix structure for stereo output realized in Avid’s Pro Tools, although this configuration is useful regardless of the DAW you are working with. The submixes are located on the left side of the screen, to the left of the master fader, and the main groups for music, dialog and sound effects are located on the right side.

• On each of the audio tracks routed to the groups a trim plugin would be added at the first insert, in order to provide the sound designer with an initial gain stage and prevent clipping.
• Each audio track is ultimately routed to a music, dialog or sound effect submix, but some, especially sound effects, are routed to subgroups, such as ambience, gunshots and vehicles that then get routed to the sound effect submix.
• Three effect loops were added for various reverberation plugins or effects.

f. Further Enhancements

We can further enhance our mix by adding additional features and effects to our mix to give us yet more control and features.

a. One Shot vs. Loops

There are many types of guns used in games, but one of the main differences is whether the weapon is a single shot or an automatic weapon.

Most handguns are single shot or one shot, meaning that for every shot fired the used needs to push the trigger. Holding down the trigger will not fire additional rounds.

Assault rifles and other compact and sub compact weapons are sometimes automatic, meaning the weapon will continue to fire as long as the player is pushing the trigger or until the weapon runs out of ammunition.

The difference between one shot and automatic weapons affects the way we design sounds and implement the weapon in the game. With a one-shot weapon it is possible to design each sound as a single audio asset including both the initial impulse, the detonation when the user presses the trigger, as well as the tail of the sound, the long decaying portion of the sound.

Figure 6.9

In the case of an automatic weapon, the sound designer may design the weapon in two parts: a looping sound to be played as long as the player is holding onto the trigger and a separate tail sound to be played as soon as the player lets go of the trigger, to model the sound of the weapon decaying as the player stops firing. This will sound more realistic and less abrupt. Additional sounds may be designed and triggered on top of the loop, such as the sound of the shell casings being ejected from the rifle.

Figure 6.10

b. General Considerations

Overall, regardless of the type of weapon you are sound designing and implementing, when designing gun sounds, keep these few aspects in mind:

• Sound is really the best way to give the player a sense of the power and capabilities of the weapon they’re firing. It should make the player feel the power behind their weapon and short of haptic feedback, sound remains the best way to convey the impact and energy of the weapon to the player. Sound therefore plays an especially critical role when it comes to weapons.
• Guns are meant to be scary and need to be loud. Very loud. Perhaps louder than you’ve been comfortable designing sounds so far if this a new area for you. A good loudness maximizer/mastering limiter is a must, as is a transient shaper plugin, in order to make the weapon both loud and impactful.
• Guns have mechanical components; from the sound of the gun being handled to the sound of the firing pin striking the round in the chamber to that of the bullet casings being ejected after each shot (if appropriate), these elements will make the weapon sound more compelling and give you as a sound designer the opportunity to make each gun slightly different.
• As always, do not get hung up on making gun sounds realistic, even if you are sound designing for a real-life weapon. A lot of sound designers won’t even use actual recordings of hand guns or guns at all when working sound designing for one.
• The sound of a gun is highly dependent on its environment, especially the tail end of it. If a weapon is to be fired in multiple environments, you might want to design the initial firing sound and a separate environmental layer separately, so you can swap the appropriate sound for a given environment. Some sound designers will take this two-step approach even for linear applications. That environmental layer may be played on top of the gun shot itself or baked in with the tail portion of the sound.

  

  Figure 6.11

• A simple rule of thumb for determining the overall loudness of gun is the ratio of the length of the barrel to the caliber of the bullet. The shorter the barrel and the bigger the caliber, the louder the gun.
• Most bullets travel faster than the speed of sound and therefore will create a supersonic crack. Some bullets are subsonic, designed specifically to avoid creating excessive noise.

c. Designing a Gunshot

One approach when sound designing a gun is to break down the sound into several layers. A layered approach makes it easy to experiment with various samples for each of the three sounds, and individually process the different aspects of the sound for best results.

Three separate layers are a good place to start:

• Layer 1: the detonation, or the main layer. In order to give your guns maximum impact, you will want to make sure this sample has a nice transient component to it. This is the main layer of the sound, which we are going to augment with the other two.
• Layer 2: a top end, metallic/mechanical layer. This layer will increase realism and add to the overall appeal of the weapon. You can use this layer to give your guns more personality.
• Layer 3: a sub layer, to add bottom end and make the sound more impactful. A subharmonic generator plugin might be helpful. This layer will give your sound weight.

When selecting samples for each layer, prior to processing, do not limit yourself to the sounds that are based in reality. For instance, when looking for a sound for the detonation or the main layer, go bigger. For a handgun, try a larger rifle or shotgun recording; they often sound more exciting than handguns. Actual explosions, perhaps smaller ones for handguns, may be appropriate too.

Figure 6.12

a. Specifications

A common starting point for cars is to assume a two gear vehicle, low and high gear. For each gear we will create an acceleration and deceleration loop, which the engine will crossfade between based on the user action.

This is a basic configuration that can easily be expanded upon by adding more RPM samples and therefore a more complex gear mechanism.

The loops we create should be seamless, therefore steady in pitch and without any modulation applied. We will use input from the game engine to animate them, to create a sense of increased intensity as we speed up by pitching the sound up or decreased intensity as we slow down by pitching the sound down. As the user starts the car and accelerates, we will raise the pitch and volume of our engine sample for low RPM and eventually crossfade into the high RPM engine loop, which will also increase in pitch and volume until we reach the maximum speed. When the user slows down, we will switch to the deceleration samples.

Figure 6.13

Let’s start by creating the audio loops, which we can test using the basic car model provided in the Unity Standard’s asset package, also provided in the Unity level accompanying this chapter.

b. Selecting Your Material

When working on a vehicle it is tempting to start from the sound of a similar looking or functioning real-world vehicle and try to recreate it in the game. Sample libraries are full of car and truck samples that can be used for this purpose, or, if you are feeling adventurous, you can probably record a car yourself. A little online research can give you tips about what to look out for when recording vehicles. This can be a very effective approach but can be somewhat underwhelming ultimately without further processing. Remember that reality, ultimately, can be a little boring.

Another approach still is to look at other types of vehicles, such as propeller airplanes, boats and other vehicles and layer them together to create a new engine sound altogether.

Finally, the third option is to use sounds that have nothing to do with a car engine – gathered via recordings – or synthesize and create the loops required from this material.

Always try to gather and import in your sound design session more than you think you will need. This will allow you to be flexible and give you more options to experiment with.

c. Processing and Preparing Your Material

Once you have gathered enough sounds to work with it’s time to import them and process them in order to create the four loops we need to create.

There are no rules here, but there are definitely a few things to watch out for:

• The sample needs to loop seamlessly, so make sure that there are no obvious variations in pitch and amplitude that could make it sound like a loop.
• Do not export your sounds with micro fades.

Use all the techniques at your disposal to create the best possible sound, but, of course, make sure that whatever you create is in line with both the aesthetics of the vehicle and the game in general.

Here are a few suggestions for processing:

• Layer and mix: do not be afraid to layer sounds in order to create the right loop.
• Distortion (experiment with various types of distortion) can be applied to increase the perceived intensity of the loop. Distortion can be applied or ‘printed’ as a process in the session, or it can be applied in real time in the game engine and controlled by a game parameter, such as RPM or user input.
• Pitch shifting is often a good way to turn something small into something big and vice versa or into something entirely different.
• Comb filtering is a process that often naturally occurs in a combustion engine; a comb filter tuned to the right frequency might make your sound more natural and interesting sounding.

Once you have created the assets and checked that length is correct, that they loop without issue and that they sound interesting, it’s time for the next step, hearing them in context, something that you can only truly do as you are prototyping.

d. Building a Prototype

No matter how good your DAW is, it probably won’t be able to help you with the next step, making sure that, in the context of the game, as the user speeds up and slows down, your sounds truly come to life and enhance the experience significantly.

The next step is to load the samples in your prototype. The tools you use for prototyping may vary, from a MaxMSP patch to a fully functioning object in the game engine. The important thing here is not only to find out if the sounds you created in the previous step work well when ‘put to picture’, it’s also to find out what are the best ranges for the parameters the game engine will control. In the case of the car, the main parameters to adjust are pitch shift, volume and crossfades between samples. In other words, tuning your model. If the pitch shift applied to the loops is too great, it may make the sound feel too synthetic, perhaps even comical. If the range is too small, the model might not be as compelling as it otherwise could be and lose a lot of its impact.

We will rely on the car model that comes in with the Unity Standard Assets package, downloadable from the asset store. It is also included in the Unity level for this chapter. Open the Unity project PGASD_CH06 and open the scene labelled ‘vehicle’. Once the scene is open, in the hierarchy, locate and click on the Car prefab. At the bottom of the inspector for the car you will find the Car Audio script.

Figure 6.14

The script reveals four slots for audio clips, as well as some adjustable parameters, mostly dealing with pitch control. The script will also allow us to work with a single clip for all the engine sounds or with four audio clips, which is the method we will use. You can switch between both methods by clicking on the Engine Sound Style tab. You will also find the script that controls the audio for the model, and although you are encouraged to look through it, it may make more sense to revisit the script after going through Chapters seven and eight if you haven’t worked with scripting and C# in Unity. This script will crossfade between a low and high intensity loop for acceleration and deceleration and perform pitch shifting and volume adjustments in response to the user input. For the purposes of this exercise, it is not necessary to understand how the script functions as long as four appropriate audio loops have been created. Each loop audio clip, four in total, is then assigned to a separate audio source. It would not be possible for Unity to swap samples as needed using a single audio source and maintain seamless playback. A short interruption would be heard as the clips get swapped.

Next, import your sounds in the Unity project for each engine loop, load them in the appropriate slot in the car audio script and start the scene. You should be able to control the movement of the car using the WASD keys.

Listen to the way your sounds sound and play off each other. After driving the vehicle for some time and getting a feel for it, ask yourself a few basic questions:

• Does my sound design work for this? Is it believable and does it make the vehicle more exciting to drive?
• Do the loops work well together? Are the individual loops seamless? Do the transitions from one sample to another work well and convey the proper level of intensity? Try to make sure you can identify when and how the samples transition from one another when the car is driving.
• Are any adjustments needed? Are the loops working well as they are, or could you improve them by going back to your DAW and exporting new versions? Are the parameter settings for pitch or any other available ones at their optimum? The job of a game audio designer includes understanding how each object we are designing sound for behaves, and adjusting available parameters properly can make or break our model.

In all likelihood, you will need to experiment in order to get to the best results. Even if your loops sound good at first, try to experiment with the various different settings available to you. Try using different loops, from realistic, based on existing sounding vehicles, to completely made up, using other vehicle sounds and any other interesting sounds at your disposal. You will be surprised at how different a car can feel when different sounds are used for its engine.

Other sounds may be required in order to make this a fully interactive and believable vehicle. Such a list may include:

• Collision sounds, ideally different sounds for different impact velocity.
• Tire sounds, ideally surface-dependent.
• Skidding sounds.
• Shock absorbers sounds.

There is obviously a lot more to explore here and to experiment with. This car model does not include options to implement a lot of the sounds mentioned earlier, but that could be easily changed with a little scripting knowledge. Even so, adding features may not be an option based on other factors such as RAM, performance, budget or deadlines. Our job is, as much as possible, to do our best with what we are handed, and sometimes plead for a feature we see as important to making the model come to life. If you know how to prototype regardless of the environment, your case for implementing new features will be stronger if you already have a working model to demonstrate your work and plead your case more convincingly to the programming team or the producer.

a. Primary vs. Secondary Sounds

Once you have established the basic role of the creature in the narrative, consider its physical characteristics: is it big, small, reptilian, feline? The appearance and its ‘lineage’ are great places to start in terms of the sonic characteristics you will want to bring out. Based on its appearance, you can determine if it should roar, hiss, bark, vocalize, a combination of these or more. From these characteristics, you can get a sense for the creature’s main voice or primary sounds, the sounds that will clearly focus the player’s attention and become the trademark of this character. If the creature is a zombie, the primary sounds will likely be moans or vocalizations.

Realism and believability come from attention to detail; while the main voice of the creature is important, so are all the peripheral sounds that will help make the creature truly come to life. These are the secondary sounds: breaths, movement sounds coming from a creature with a thick leathery skin, gulps, moans and more will help the user gain a lot better idea of the type of creature they are dealing with, not to mention that this added information will also help consolidate the feeling of immersion felt by the player. In the case of a zombie, secondary sounds would be breaths, lips smacks, bones cracking or breaking etc. It is, however, extremely important that these peripheral or secondary sounds be clearly understood as such and do not get in the way of the primary sounds, such as vocalizations or roars for instance. This could confuse the gamer and could make the creature and its intentions hard to decipher. Make sure that they are mixed in at lower volume than the primary sounds.

Remember that all sound design should be clearly understood or legible. If it is felt that a secondary sound conflicts with one of the primary sound effects, you should consider adjusting the mix further or removing it altogether.

b. Emotional Span

Often, game characters, AI or not, will go through a range of emotions in the game’s lifespan. These are often, for AI at least, dictated by the game state and will change based on the gameplay. A sentinel character can be relaxed, alert, fighting, inflict or take damage and possibly kill or die. These actions or states should be reflected sonically of course, by making sure our sound design for each state is clear and convincing. It may be overkill to establish a mood map (but if it helps you, by all means do), yet it is important to make sure that the sounds you create all translate these emotions clearly and give us a wide range of sonic transformations while at the same time clearly appearing to be emanating from the same creature.

The study or observation of how animals express their emotions in the real world is also quite useful. Cats and dogs can be quite expressive, making it clear when they are happy by purring or when they are angry by hissing and growling in a low register, possibly barking etc. Look beyond domestic animals and always try to learn more.

Creatures sound design tends to be approached in one of several ways: by processing and layering human voice recordings, by using animal sounds, by working from entirely removed but sonically interesting material or any combination of these.

c. Working With Vocal Recordings

A common approach to designing creature sounds is to begin with a human voice and emote based on the character in a recording studio. These sounds are usually meant to be further processed, but it is important to record a lot of good quality material at this stage. Do not worry too much about synchronization at this point; this is what editing is for. Try loosely matching animations, that is if any were provided, and record a wide variety of sounds. Your voice or that of the talent may not match the expected range of the character, perhaps lacking depth or having too much of it, but the raw sounds and emotions are more important at this point. Emotion is harder to add to a sound after the fact, and while it can be done, usually by drawing pitch envelopes and layering different sounds together, it is faster to work with a file that already contains the proper emotional message and process it to match the character on screen.

As always, record more material than you think you’re going to need. This will give you more to work with and choose from, always recording multiple takes of each line or sound.

Also make sure your signal path is clean, giving you a good signal to work with in the first place. This means watching out for noise, unwanted room ambiences, room tones etc.

Traditionally, large diaphragm condenser microphones are used for voice recording, but in noisy environments you may obtain cleaner results with a good dynamic microphone, though you might need to add some high-end back into the signal during the design and mix process.

Equalization in the Context of Creature Design

As with any application, a good equalizer will provide you with the ability to fix any tonal issues with the sound or sounds you are working with. Adding bottom end to a growl to make it feel heavier and bigger or simply bringing up the high frequency content after a distortion stage, for instance.

Another less obvious application of equalization is the ability to add formants into a signal that may not contain any or add more formants to a signal that already does. By adding formants found in a human voice to a non-human creature and sounds, we can achieve interesting hybrid resulting sounds.

Since a formant is a buildup of acoustical energy at a specific frequency, it is possible to add formants to a sound by creating very narrow and powerful boosts at the right frequency. This technique was mentioned in Chapter five as a way to add resonances to a sound and therefore make it appear like it takes place in a closed environment.

In order to create convincing formant, drastic equalization curves are required. Some equalizer plugins will include various formants as parts of their presets.

Figure 6.15

d. Working With Animal Samples

Animal samples can provide us with great starting points for our creature sound design. Tigers, lions and bears are indeed a fantastic source of ferocious and terrifying sounds, but at the same time they offer a huge range of emotions: purring, huffing, breathing, whining. The animal kingdom is a very rich one, and do not limit your searches to these obvious candidates. Look far and wide, research other sound designer’s works on films and games and experiment.

The main potential pitfall when working with animal samples is to create something that actually sounds like an animal, in other words too easily recognizable as a lion or large feline for instance. This is usually because the samples used could be processed further in order to make them sound less easily identifiable. Another trick to help disguise sounds further is to chop off the beginning of the sample you are using. By removing the onset portion of a sample you make it harder to identify. Taking this technique further you can also swap the start of a sample with another one, creating a hybrid sound that after further processing will be difficult to identify.

e. Working With Non-Human or Animal Samples

Perhaps not as obvious when gathering material for sound design for creatures and monsters is to use material that comes from entirely different sources than human or animal sources. Remember that we can find interesting sounds all around us, and non-organic elements can be great sources of raw material. Certain types of sounds might be more obvious candidates than others. The sound of a flame thrower can be a great addition to a dragon-like creature, and the sound of scraping concrete blocks or stone can be a great way to add texture to an ancient molten lava monster, but we can also use non-human or animal material for primary sounds such as vocalizations or voices.

Certain sounds naturally exhibit qualities that make them sound organic. The right sound of a bad hinge on a cabinet door, for instance, can sound oddly similar to a moan or creature voice when the door is slowly opening. The sound of a plastic straw pulled out of a fast food cup can also, especially when pitch shifted down, have similar characteristics. The sound of a bike tire pump can sound like air coming out of a large creature’s nostrils and so on. It’s also quite possible to add formants to most sounds using a flexible equalizer as was described in the previous section.

Every situation is different of course, and every creature is too. Keep experimenting with new techniques and materials and trying new sounds and new techniques. Combining material, human, animal and non-organic, can create some of the most interesting and unpredictable results.