Building Your Sound Library

[ScoreByDeville]

How do you all go about finding the sounds you need? Or the sounds you'd like to use?
Do you sample sounds from older sources like a lot of producers do in general music?
Besides hiring bands and orchestras...

There are different sounds used in different genres that don't sound like they were created by an instrument. Are there certain places that are frequented by composers? Do you just use your own instruments?

How to find different sounds for film

 

[IndieBudget]

LMMS , a musician buddy, a Tascam recorder, Hydrogen drum machine, Audacity & Sounddogs.com

 

[butterbescotch]

See scores for Hollywood Films. At least that's what I do.

 

[rocksure]

How do you all go about finding the sounds you need? Or the sounds you'd like to use?
Do you sample sounds from older sources like a lot of producers do in general music?
Besides hiring bands and orchestras...

There are different sounds used in different genres that don't sound like they were created by an instrument. Are there certain places that are frequented by composers? Do you just use your own instruments?

How to find different sounds for film

As you have said, not all sounds used in music are created by an instrument. There are many ways of creating "whooshes and swooshes" for example. You can use a synth, or you can record and manipulate them in other ways to get the sound effect you want.
Using soft synths you can often find many useful sfx. Using a mic and recording them yourself is another option. Many sound effects are created by layering several sounds together, and /or processing them with all sorts of different tools. Often the most unexpected things are used in the creation of sound effects. Sometimes quite by accident. The other day I accidentally got two pieces of audio equipment clocking at different sample rates. Not desirable! However, the result was an unusual undulating electrical hissing kind of sound emanating from my speakers. I grabbed a condensor mic and my portable recorder and recorded it before correcting the clocking issue. After processing the recorded files with a doppler effect, I ended up with a whole series of cool sounding space ship approaches and departure sound effects that I never would have had if there hadn't been a mixture of a "Happy accident" and some knowledge and experience on how to process sounds to get the kind of sfx that I knew would be useful.

Also, try sound effects libraries like the one on our http://rocksuresoundz.com website. If you are short of a particular sound that you want, by searching this and other sfx libraries you should find many of the sounds you may need, without having to make them or record them yourself.

 

[JoshL]

Other than orchestral sounds, I tend not to use much in the way of samples. If I do, I'll record them myself, or manipulate audio from the film I'm working on. As a rule, I never sample melodic passages or drum loops, but that's mostly just because I'm a control freak! I tend to think of scores in a linear fashion, rather than loop based, including percussion. Most sounds and textures I want I use synths and instruments for. Usually hardware (I try to keep the computer free for the orchestral stuff).

When I use non-instrument sounds, I tend to record them myself (see above re: control freak), and I tend to record them as I work on a project. I don't really keep a library of sounds, as such, as that I try to approach every project as fresh as possible. But that's just my approach...as with non-film music, there is no one right way to do anything!

That said, if you haven't, investing in a good orchestral library should be high on your priority list. Even if you could afford to hire an orchestra (I've been doing research; it's crazy expensive), it'd be good to have an audio demo as you are revising the music. A good library will have a wide set of instrument articulations, so with some work, you can make it sound pretty decent.