Week+3+-+Lab+3

Lab 03:  Making NEW sounds from CD SFX Library in ProTools MA571 Sound for Visual Media    Spring 2010   Due:  Next Week

Objective: Using sounds of your own choice from the SFX Library, you will be creating a total of 4 new sounds. Use ProTools and the Lab 2 printout to guide you in setting up a new ProTools session and importing sounds. Please call this new ProTools session: “your name_Lab3” and save it in your folder.

Assignment Specs: Follow the instructions below.

1. To make the 4 sounds that you will turn in, pick any pre-existing sounds from the SFX Library and process each of them separately to create 4 completely new sounds. Use any of these techniques that we talked about in class:

Layering Volume Adjustments Repeat Cut Fade In/Fade Out Time Compression/Expansion Reverse Pitch Shift Reverb EQ Pan

Note: Make something that you have never heard before. You can use any of the sound processing techniques. It can be mechanical (any kind of machine, transportation, space ship, etc), or biological (monster, alien, animal, creature, etc.), or anything that you can imagine.

3. ***Please keep a copy of the original sound next to the effected sound. ***  You can do this by copying the original and pasting a second audio file next to the original, or you can drag the audio file twice from the region list onto the track and put them beside one another.

This lab is about experimenting with sound. Have fun playing around with the different techniques and see what you come up with. We will be playing everyone’s sounds in class to hear the results of your experiments!

Due: February 10th

Handout:

AUDIO EDITING:

Layering You can have several sounds playing at the exact same time to create a brand new sound. Sound designers often do this to fill out a sound that is thin, or to add brightness to a dull sound, etc.

Volume Adjustments You can raise and lower the volume of an audio file. It can be one global volume adjustment for the whole audio file or you can create several points where the volume can raise and lower over the course of the sound. In Protools, the volume adjustments are automated once you’ve adjusted them. Automation means that it will then happen automatically.

Repeat or Loop This means that a sound is repeated several times in a row. Sometimes this can make motor sounds or repetitive pulse sounds, etc.

Cut This is one way of editing a sound by selecting different sections of it and deleting, which creates cuts all over the sound file. Sometimes you can create an interesting rhythm by doing this. And on a general level, cuts are used to take out sections of the audio file that are unwanted.

Fadeout In musical/audio terms, a fadeout is a gradual decrease in the level of an audio signal down to silence. In video, a fadeout indicates a scene that gradually fades to "black," the video equivalent of silence.

Fade In A fade in is when a sound starts with silence and grows louder.

Panning Comes from the term panoramic, which pertains to large visual scenes that can completely surround a subject. In audio a pan control is used to position an audio track somewhere between the left and right loudspeaker in the stereo sound-field. A pan control generally works by simply reducing the level of a track in one channel, which makes it appear louder in the opposite channel. Turn the pan pot to the left and that track comes out of the left speaker. Turn it to the right and it comes out the right speaker.

Time Compression/Expansion A process where a sound file of a given length is electronically sped up or slowed down so it will play in a shorter or longer period of time. When speaking of time compression or expansion it is generally assumed that the pitch of the material is not changed, so this isn't as simple as just speeding up or slowing down the playback device. In ProTools and other DAW’s, you can expand or compress the length without changing the sound’s pitch.

AUDIO PROCESSING: (through Audio Suite)

•	Reverse – Reversing a sound makes it play from the end to the beginning, rather than from beginning to end.

•	Pitch shift is a sound recording technique in which the normal pitch or tone of a sound is altered ("shifted") for effect or for other purposes. You can use pitch shift in a very slight way if say a vocalist is slightly out of tune or off pitch. Or, you can use a large amount of pitch shifting to change a sound to a completely different pitch, such as the voices of the Chipmunks as one example.

•	A reverberation, or reverb, is created when a sound is produced in an enclosed space causing a large number of echoes to build up and then slowly decay as the sound is absorbed by the walls and air. This is most noticeable when the sound source stops but the reflections continue, decreasing in amplitude, until they can no longer be heard.

•	EQ or Equalization – EQ alters the relative balance of frequencies to produce desired tonal characteristics in sounds. An equalizer has the ability to boost and/or cut the volume (amplitude) in specified frequency range. In other words, you can cut out or boost the amount of bass in a sound and or the amount of treble in a sound. The most widely used example of this is the bass, treble and sometimes midrange options in a car stereo system.