The N2FNH Sound Effects Library! Part 3A: Sometimes it's better if you record it yourself!

Back in 2004, on the weekend of MNOAOS Zachary's birthday, we held a small party with some of our friends at the house. Late in the afternoon, while Zach was engaged with his new presents and old pals, fellow hams Bill W2XOY and Jeff WA2AIB offered up some extemporaneous content for the then-relatively new Random Access Thought. Bill documented his thoughts on something referred to as "The Communicator Citizen Band Radio" while Jeff reflected on how it was he got interested in medium wave AM radio DXing when he was a kid back in the early 1960's.

For Jeff's feature, I needed two elements: a hollow wintry background wind, which I already had on hand, and the sound of an AM radio being tuned, which I did not already have on hand. So I spent about 20 minutes mining my existing stock libraries but could not find any interesting samples of AM radios being tuned. In fact, most of what was available were 1930's vintage floor consoles or just clips of squealing heterodynes. Out of minor annoyance, I grabbed a nearby Sangean SG-796 AM/FM/SW portable, held it up to the microphone, tuned the radio myself and recorded the sound.

This was the effect I wanted, but while listening to the playback, as short as the blips of radio voices were, I could hear comments concerning President George Bush and one or two other contemporary references. Since this was to a be more of an ambient effect, coupled with the fact that it was supposed to be the early 1960's...and given that I was too lazy to edit any further, I played the sound in reverse. The resultant effect was so pleasing that I have relied solely on this sound-played-backwards since then for any radio being tuned. Thus, if one of my characters, say Mother Radio, is tuning a shortwave radio, this is the recording you will hear. But this same sound has also been customized and mixed with heterodynes and other kinds of radio noises to make each use more unique.

Thunder recordings abound in commercially available sound effects libraries. There is really nothing more fun than using the original thunder sounds used in the 1931 Universal Pictures classic motion picture Frankenstein, but on occasion, you may want something a little different and while each library may offer a wide selection, usually they are very intense, explosive clips. Since summertime thunderstorms are a frequent occurrence here in little old Albany, it was easy to capture a few of my own using my cheap forty-nine dollar RadioShack analog cassette tape recorder.

Because of the audio characteristics associated with the C49DRSACTR, recordings of thunder will mix well with in-the-field audio recorded using the same device. For Field Day this year, Zach and I got together with the Schenectady Museum Amateur Radio Association during which time, a few roving thunder boomers trenched on by, While I was able to capture the sound of the downpour, I was not able to get any thunder. Not a problem! I already had various samples recorded with the C49DRSACTR in my library which would then match in terms of overall
audio quality.

Speaking of rain, my best rain recording I made myself again with the C49DRSACTR. I stuck a microphone out a laundry room window to catch the loud ploppy droppy sounds of bloated globular raindrops impacting on mud and stones between two houses. I prefer this sound over any of the CD quality samples I have elsewhere.

Same deal with a car's electric window motor. I needed this sound for a TWIAR TWIARi QSL Promo but none of the samples on hand had what I wanted. So! Out the door with the C49DRSACTR to my 1996 Pontiac Grand Prix. The electric window motors are over ten years old so they already have that really cranky, buzzy, not-so-new sounding sound which is exactly what I wanted.

When it came to getting a good drag on a cigarette for Cigman Krasnov, the forty five year old fail-to-launch, stay at home big kid, whose world begins and ends with fast cars and hot chicks, it turned out there were no cigarette selections in any of my libraries. A quick trip to http://www.sounddogs.com/ produced several offerings of cigarette drags but they were dismal. SO! Since I do not smoke, I whipped out a handy-dandy Bic Pen, took a wet but really quite fake draw and blew out some imaginary smoke. The actual drag sounded better when played backwards so this became the final cut.

Designing sound effects is not always the same as recording music. In many cases, I can get away with a comparatively low-quality recording because the raw recording is going to be reconfigured anyway with the end product sounding remarkably better than the original item.