editing creating monster sound audio effect

dlevanchuk

dlevanchuk

I'm trying to create a sound of a monster creature by combining human yell and a seal, but can't figure out how to blend both together so it doesn't sound like a human trying to yell with a seal... (which would be interesting to watch :weird:)
Waht would be your approach in creating creature sounds?

I'm using pro tools, by the way..
 
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What plug-ins do you have? (DeHumanizer is pretty cool, BTW.)

Record your voice doing the monster vocalization you want. Now learn it backwards (only takes a couple of minutes). Now reverse it and pitch it down.


Why a seal? How about - anything! A walrus, a bear, big cats, a hippo, a rhino, primates... The list goes on. The big problem is finding an animal library comprehensive enough so you can build vocalizations. (Think Chewbacca - there are a couple of YouTube vids and numerous articles on how his voice was done.)

Record yourself doing the monster vocalization, cut the animal sound effect(s) to get close, use VocAlign.

Cut together the animal sound effects and then perform them yourself.

Mix animal and human vocalizations and compress the living shit out of the mix. Sometimes it's fair, often it's garbage, once in a while it's gold.

Oh, nothing says you can't crossfade between animal and human sounds.

See if you can get an actor to come in; they often have a different perspective that can be a lot of fun. Have them grunt, groan, scream, breath heavy, gargle, and anything else that you can think of.


There's just too many ways you can go about it. Get creative and have fun. Be stupid, try crazy things. What's cool about sound design is that your "failures" go into your library for future projects and no one ever hears what you did "wrong."
 
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dlevanchuk said:
Waht would be your approach in creating creature sounds?
Click to expand...

Sound Effects Design is a highly specialised area of audio post, all the tools mentioned by Will and Alcove are the "stock in trade" tools of the SFX designer, plus a number of others. There is no right or wrong way of doing it, it's a highly creative art, so ultimately what is right or wrong is defined by whether it sounds right or wrong. Not the answer I'm sure you were looking for but that's the way it is I'm afraid.

The specific issue of layering sounds to create an apparently single SFX likewise has no single answer. There are many variables which affect the perception of two sounds appearing to be one: The mics used for the original recordings, the recording environments, the distance of the source sound from the mics, etc. The tools required to achieve the task and how those tools are employed therefore varies entirely according to both your original source sounds and exactly what you want to end up with.

It should be mentioned that there are circumstances where two sounds just cannot be layered to convincingly sound as one. With some specialised (read; quite expensive) tools, most of these circumstances can be overcome by an experienced pro. Without those tools and that level of experience there's obviously going to be many more of these "no convincing solution" circumstances. Primary basic tools for this task are as mentioned, EQ and Compression, plus another which hasn't been mentioned and maybe worth a try, reverb. I'm not talking about the reverb applied in the re-recording/mixing process to make the SFX appear to be in the on-screen environment, I'm talking about a tight "ambiance" type reverb applied to all the layers. Using a small amount of the right tight ambiance reverb can in many cases help to tie the individual layers together and still allow the addition of final mix reverb. So, it's certainly worth experimenting with some of the ambiance presets in your reverb plugin (D-Verb for example). In all likelihood the solution, if there is one (!), will be some combination of EQ, compression and a small ambiance reverb.

G
 
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dlevanchuk said:
I'm trying to create a sound of a monster creature by combining human yell and a seal, but can't figure out how to blend both together so it doesn't sound like a human trying to yell with a seal... (which would be interesting to watch :weird:)
Waht would be your approach in creating creature sounds?

I'm using pro tools, by the way..
Click to expand...


Have you had any success in creating your sound effect?
There have been some very good suggestions already given, so I won't repeat them. I will just add that when creating sfx like monsters by layering sounds, while there are many possible approaches to doing this, I have discovered that even small shifts in the timing of the layered sound effects in relation to each other can make quite big differences to the outcome of the final sound effect, as can experimenting with the volume of each layer in relation to each other. Having created a fair number of monster and creature type sound effects myself I have used all sorts of tricks to get just the right sound in the end. Besides compressors, reverbs, EQ's etc, I have also found the Waves Enigma and Ultrapitch plugins can come in handy too if you have access to them.
 
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