In this Native Instruments video, Jeremiah Savage, the creator of Sonic Fiction, explains the unusual concept and creation process of his science fiction-inspired software instrument.

Native Instruments’ Sonic Fiction is a new KORE-Powered instrument that combines field recording with advanced synthesis to create hundreds of otherworldly sounds.

Native Instruments Sonic Fiction retails for $79. Description:

Expanding on sound design paradigms established with Jeremiah Savage’s previous ACOUSTIC REFRACTIONS collection, the sounds in SONIC FICTION are inspired by imaginative Science Fiction scenarios and concepts. Unusual, complex acoustic sources ranging from volcanic mudpots to television static were carefully captured in extensive field recording sessions, and combined with the vast synthesis and sound processing capabilities of ABSYNTH, KONTAKT and KORE. The result is an array of previously unheard, charismatic instruments that are both alien and organic in their sonic character, but also highly playable and of profound musical value.

SONIC FICTION provides 100 KoreSounds with eight morphable Sound Variations each, resulting in 800 individual sounds. Concise parameter assignments allow for immediate, intuitive sound tweaking in KORE 2 and KORE PLAYER. Full musical metadata for all presets also makes SONIC FICTION integrate seamlessly with any individual collection of KORE-Powered instruments.

You can find out more about Sonic Fiction at the NI site.

Here are the details:

Create your own samples, add them to an audio track in wav format and submit the track to this Soundcloud group Want To Be A Professional Sample Producer it’s that simple.

Even if you don’t enter the competition we welcome your comments on whose samples you think are great and thanks to Soundcloud’s amazing  interface, commenting couldn’t be any easier. For new Soundcloud users you will need an account to both submit your samples and comment on the entries. Registration and a personal account are 100% free.

Details below.

Competition Rules

• Producers must submit a minimum of 10 samples contained within one audio track and submit their entry to this sample competition group.
• Audio tracks must be in wav format.
• Samples can be in any style you wish, one shots, music loops, drum beats or even sound fx .
• Samples can be added to the audio track either in isolation, looped or as a musical track showcasing the samples.
• All genres are welcome from Tech House & Minimal through Drum & Bass and Breaks. If you can produce it we want to hear it!
• Producers may submit as many audio tracks as they wish.
• All samples submitted must be the producers original work and must not violate any common law or statutory right of any third party including, without limitation, contractual rights, copyrights and rights of privacy or publicity.

Here are the entries that have been submitted:

For LiFT Studios Broadcast 023, Haig Armen talks with Dasz Garncarz, a synth & interface designer, about the challenges of interaction design and his work on the Nord Modular G2 synthesizer.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This is the awesomely creeptacular Between, a short film by Tim Bollinger.

Listen for how effectively the sound design amplifies the creepiness of the visuals.

Director/Screenwriter/Producer/Editor: Tim Bollinger
Cinematographer: Daniel Meinl
Sounddesign: Michael Fakesch designingsounds.com

via Oliver Chesler

Spectrasonics has released Trilian – their bass monster-synth.

You can get the full details on our previous Spectrasonics Trilian post, but these videos offer a very deep introduction to Trilian by Spectrasonics’ founder and sound designer Eric Persing.

More below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Trilian Synth Demo

Click here to view the embedded video.

Trilian Acoustic Demo

Click here to view the embedded video.

Trilian Electric Demo

This Ableton Live tutorial looks at making lush pads.

Puremagnetik has introduced Waveframe for Ableton Live 7 & Ableton Live 8.

Waveframe is designed to be a great tool for sound designers and programmers. The huge library of simple waveforms can be used to construct complex soundscapes and instruments.

Two and four-voice templates are included in the library as standalone Live Racks. Open the templates in a new track and drag your waveforms from the Waveframe Library into the voice chain. Then add effects and modulations to tailor your sound.

Waveframe Features:

• Over 1700 waveform samples
• Over 30 waveform rack devices
• A selection of preset pads, leads, basses & more
• Tightly integrated native Ableton effects & controls
• Easy hot-swapping between waveform devices

System Requirements:

• Requires Ableton Live 7 or 8
• 500 MB of physical RAM
• 300 Megabytes (MB) of free hard disk space

Description:

Utilizing the same “Transwave” concept, Waveframe contains a collection of pre-programmed patches, over 30 waveform devices and over 1700 “frame” samples. Waveform frames can be modulated via retriggering within a patch. This gives a natural sounding progression over time as each waveform spectrum evolves through its phases.

By employing features only available within the Ableton Live environment, Puremagnetik has reconstructed the Fizmo architecture from scratch. From over 30 unique waveform groups, a generous selection of presets have been programmed that employ many of the same features as the original Fizmo. And just like on the original, each voice group is highly individualized giving patches a complex, evolving and rich tone.

via Puremagnetik:

Waveframe is a an advanced wavetable synthesizer designed exclusively for the features of Ableton Live. Based on the Ensoniq Fizmo, Waveframe contains over 1700 wavetable samples, over 30 waveform Live Racks and a generous selection of performance patches.

This is another absolutely amazing video from sound designer/composer Diego Stocco:

Few weeks ago I visited a luthier looking for instruments parts, I had an idea in mind for an instrument I wanted to build. My curiosity was to hear the sound of violin, viola and cello strings amplified through the body of a double bass. I came up with a quadruple-neck experimental “something” that I thought to call Experibass.

To play it I used cello and double bass bows, a little device I built with fishing line and hose clamps, a paintbrush, a fork, spoons, a kick drum pedal and a drum stick. I hope you’ll like it!

Thanks to luthier John Wu for providing me the parts, even though I warned him that I was probably going to create a “monster” : )

You can see more details at Stocco’s Behance portfolio site. See Stocco’s Vimeo site for more examples of his musical sound design.

Here’s another Photosounder demo – this time looking at how you can turn fractal images and other photographs from around the world into new sounds.

About Photosounder

Photosounder is a one-of-a-kind image-sound editing program for Windows & Mac. It is unique in that it opens images and sounds indiscriminately, treats and processes them as images, and synthesizes them as sounds.

Sounds, once turned into images, can be powerfully modified to achieve effects and results that couldn’t be obtained in any other way, while images of all sorts reveal the infinite kinds of otherworldly sounds they contain. Ultimately, knowing how sounds look and how images sound, you’ll be able to create images that sound like what you want to hear, or like what you couldn’t imagine to hear.

Here are some ways Photosounder can be used:

• Turning a sound upside down (bass sounds become treble and vice versa)
• Complex soundscapes using extreme time stretching
• Creating instruments graphically and arranging them into a beat
• Transmitting photographs through sound
• Performing operations between different sound files, such as subtracting an instrumental from a song to isolate vocals
• Isolating or removing an instrument from a complex sound
• New effects such as piano chorusification or time-pixelation of sound
• A new take on more classical sound effects such as sound reverb
• Highly quality and flexibility processing such as denoising
• Creating new sounds from photographs or fractal images
• Synthesizing spectrograms created from other spectrographs, such as printed spectrograms of bird calls in books
• Pitch shifting, pitch interval stretching, sound rotation, time-frequency domain compression
• Vocoding

via Photosounder

This video demonstrates how you can do basic vocoding using Photoshop and Photosounder (an application for Windows & Mac that translates sounds to images and vice-versa):

• The carrier signal (a saw wave) and the modulator (HAL 9000’s voice) are turned into images using Photosounder.
• Then in Photoshop, the voice is vertically blurred as to fuse the different harmonics together, then it’s pasted on top of the image of the saw wave by multiplication.
• The result is then loaded into Photosounder in lossless mode with the sound of the carrier as a reference signal, giving the vocoded voice as a result.

Why use Photoshop as a vocoder?

This is an example of how Photosounder lets you use image-editing tools to look at sound design in a new way.

More details are available at the Photosounder site.

via Photosounder

The First International Kyma User Symposium is scheduled to be held from the 8-11 October 2009 at the Niu Espai Artistic Contemporani in Poble Nou, Barcelona.

Current and potential Kyma practitioners are invited to attend an in-depth 3 day interactive conclave devoted to the technical and artistic aspects of the Kyma sound design language.

The preliminary program includes master classes presented by Carla Scaletti and Kurt Hebel, the creators of Kyma, papers and demos presented by Kyma practitioners and professional users , plus a program of concerts, installations and performances in the Niu art space of Poble Nou.

Cost: €80 for the workshops and concerts.

Symbolic Sound Corporation’s Kyma X is a powerful visual programming language for music and sound, originally created in 1987 and still going strong today. The Kyma sound design environment is used by composers, researchers and sound designers for realtime sound generation and manipulation.

Organisers: Station 55 Productions in co-operation with Niu, Symbolic Sound, TC Electronic Spain and the LEM Festival

via USO

Arthur July demos the ARP Quartet synthesizer.

The ARP Quartet was made by Italian synth manufacturer Siel as the Siel Orchestra. ARP sold the synth as the Quartet.

The ARP Quartet specialized in four synth sounds: strings, brass, organ and piano, and offered 6-voice polyphony.

If you’ve used the ARP Quartet (or Siel Orchestra) leave a comment with your thoughts!

According to the original brochure:

The Brass section on the Quartet offers a choice of two brass footages (8′ and 16′), in the form of Trumpet and Trombone voicings. Because the Quartet’s preset voices are mixable, the Brass section can be combined with other preset voices. A brass chorus with delayed vibrato or string and brass orchestra are just two of the many polyphonic effects that can be created in this manner. The Brass section features independent control of attack and sustain.

The Quartet’s String section includes Cello and Violin chorus voicings, plus a choice of percussive or solo settings. Again, the String sections can be mixed with other sections to produce a pop organ, using percussion, solo, or organ and strings. The attack and sustain of the String section may be varied by using the String Section’s independent attack and sustain sliders.

Two Organ voices are preset on the Quartet. The Organ and the Celeste can be played either independently or in combination with other instrumental sounds. The pop organ patch on the Quartet takes on an added dimension when the Celeste is added, producing a rotating speaker effect. Double footages on the Organ setting produce a full, rich tone unparalleled in the Quartet’s price range.

The Piano section offers the Musician a choice between Piano and Honky Tonk, either or both of which can be mixed with the Quartet’s other sections. With the Piano section, a musician can produce both a 4′ and Grand Harpsichord, with variable sustain.

Twelve LED status lights let the musician know which functions are in use at all times. A foot switch permits prolonged release on all selected voices. An optional optical volume pedal is also available for the Quartet.

The Master tuning control is conveniently located to the right of the keyboard. The Quartet is manufactured in a sturdy aluminum frame with genuine wood endblocks..

Resources:

• Till-Kopper has great photos and details on the Quartet
• ARP Quartet manual
• Synthmuseum entry

This set of videos features Richard Devine demonstrating the techniques that he and Josh Kay used in capturing sounds for the sample kit Richard Devine – The Electronic Music Manuscript.

Click here to view the embedded video.

via Nonima1984:

I do not own copyright to this video, but I have uploaded it to generate interest in Richard Devine’s samples and for Richard Devine fans.

Sound designer and composer Diego Stocco created this beautiful showcase of his work, Music From A Tree.

Stocco explains his technique:

In the garden of my house there’s a tree with lots of randomly grown twigs. It looks odd and nice at the same time. One day I asked myself if I could create a piece of music with it.

To tune the tree I picked a fundamental note and tuned the twigs by trimming them with a pencil sharpener. I used two Røde NT6 and a NTG-2 as microphones, combined with a customized stethoscope.

I recorded the tracks live on a Pro Tools LE system. I didn’t use any synthesizer or sampler to create or modify the sounds. All the sounds come from playing the tree, by bowing the twigs, shaking the leaves, playing rhythms on the cortex and so on.

To tune the tree I picked a fundamental note and tuned the twigs by trimming them with a pencil sharpener. I used two Røde NT6 and a NTG-2 as microphones, combined with a customized stethoscope.

More information and photos at Stocco’s Behance page.

Amazing work. Leave a comment with your thoughts!

Roland V synth GT tutorial – sound design

via minelekke:

Roland V synth GT tutorial – sound design

This sound design tutorial, via NicksTutorials, looks at creating a Jungle Bass sound in Ableton Live.

Part 2 of the Jungle Bass tutorial below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

via oubliettezombie:

In this video I use field recordings to create a bass patch that might be used in a Jungle or Drum’n'Bass production.

I go over some basic intermodulation between LFO’s, describe the Saturator effect’s controls, use the morph parameter to create an interesting filter curve, and more. Additionally, I show two effects that were released with Live 8: The Limiter and the Frequency Shifter.

Download the Live project file here (you need Live 8 or later with Sampler).

Creating A Shepard Tone Using Ableton

Here is a quick rundown of one way to create a Shepard Tone style effect using a Ableton Live and Operator.

Click here to view the embedded video.

via cosmcosm:

This isn’t the perfect way to create a Shepard’s Tone, but it gives a good rundown of the type of process involved in creating such an effect.

This video can be downloaded in Hi Def from my main website, http://www.TomCosm.com

The Ableton Live file that I created is also available from my website, so you can download and see for yourself.

More info on Shepard’s Tone can be found here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepard_tone

Motion Pictures Editorss Guild has published an interesting interview with sound designer Ben Burtt, a four-time oscar winner for sound effects.

Burtt reveals some of the stories behind the sound design for J.J. Abram’s Star Trek movie:

EGM: We’ve talked about the library of sounds you created for J.J. Abrams’ upcoming Star Trek. Can you talk about how you re-created some of the iconic effects for the movie? Let’s start with the hand phaser.

BB: In the original series, the steady blast of the phaser was derived from the hovering sound of the Martian war machines made for the 1953 version of Paramount’s War of the Worlds. The original was made with tape feedback of an electric guitar and a harp. You can achieve a very similar sound on a Moog synthesizer by modulating a steady sine wave with pink noise. The phasers in the new movie are more like the blasters in Star Wars in the sense that they are flying bolts or tracer bullets, rather than a steady beam. The steady sound just wasn’t the right way to go because the visuals are so different, so I made something that recalls it, but features a Doppler effect and is shorter and sharper. My sounds were added to those that had already been supplied by Mark P. Stoeckinger and Alan Rankin.

EGM: And the Photon Torpedoes?

BB: That sound can be traced back to the Paramount Pictures library; it even turns up in some 1940s Bob Hope comedies, so no one can say for sure how it was created. My ears tell me that it was an impact on a spring, maybe picked up with a contact mic. I reproduced mine using a very long spring, capping it and putting a contact mic on it, and combining that with a cannon blast. I also created a derivative of that for the phasers. It recalled the style and feeling of the original, while translating well in to the very different visuals of the movie.

EGM: What about the Enterprise Warp Drive?

BB: The original warp drive sound was a very musical tone that ramped up and down in pitch, with all kinds of hum and distortion, and it was undoubtedly produced with a test oscillator going through a plate reverb chamber. I wanted to go back to that musical idea, and get something with an emotional feel to it, so I reproduced that sound in exactly the same way in analogue fashion, using a 1960s-era test oscillator that was once in the physics department at my old school, Allegheny College. I went back there and actually found that oscillator in a basement, and brought it back with me to use on the movie.

EGM: What about the transporter?

BB: There are several different elements to it in the original version, including, once again, a rising oscillator tone as well as a “singing” ethereal tone. The transporter in the movie looks and functions a little bit differently than the one in the series, but I wanted to recreate the feeling of the original’s shimmering, ringing tone. So I came up with something that was reasonably close, using bar chimes and a lot of reverb.

See the full interview at Editorsguild.com.

OT: Stink Digital and Director Adam Berg created this amazing interactive campaign for Philips’ new CINEMA 21:9 TV.

Berg was tasked with highlighting the 21:9 proportions of the Philips TV, and did it in a wonderfully tangential way, with mindblowing bullet-time imagery and some very nice music and sound design by Michael Fakesch.

The YouTube version of this suffers from low resolution, so check out the original.

oubliettezombie demonstrates how to turn your thumb into a pad synth sound:

In this video, I take the sound of my thumb moving around on the microphone (Shure SM57) and turn it into an atmospheric pad sound.

The most important step in this process was scanning through the recorded sound and setting the loop points in such a way that the source sound became more interesting. After that, things like filters, envelopes, FM, etc. can be applied to really give it life.

All manner of found sounds contain individual waveforms that are far more exotic and complex than the basic waves found in synthesizers. Sometimes this is desirable, sometimes it is not.

If you know of other interesting examples of sound design, leave a comment!