Warning Beware Radio Operator Baseball
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Most songs we write and record have instruments and/or vocals, but not one thing else. Let’s face it, the most exotic sound on most of our recordings is a tambourine. This is not inevitably a Bad Thing. After all, “instruments and/or vocals” takes in a gorgeous wide range, from Gregorian Chant to Smooth R&B and everything in between! But each now and then, just for the sheer novelty value, you ought to consider using numerous kind of sound effects in one of your songs. Some songs, like “Yellow Submarine” by the Beatles, are in a positive manner filled with scene-setting sound effects. Birds twitter allround “Blackbird” by the same band. More recently, digital mixmeister Beck and others have combined “found sounds” and other effects with musical samples to formulate audio collages in their songs. Of course, this is a technique where a little bit may go a long way. There’s no need to exaggerate it! As a songwriter, you may specify what sound effects will be heard when by adding notations like (alarm clock here) to your lyrics sheet, or at least having a firm idea of what specific effects will be applied where as you write the song. In this case, the effects would be considered part of the song. Alternatively, you may wait until you have your Producer hat on and determine whether and where to add sound effects when you mix the song. Here, the effects would be considered part of the arrangement. There are three main roots for sound effects: (1) sound effects CDs or websites; (2) TV shows, DVD movies, etc.; (3) personal recordings. With sound effects CDs or websites, you get pre-recorded sounds of all kinds, with a good deal of variations, labeled as to subject and duration. You need the sound of a car starting up and driving off? There were a dozen variations of this sound on one CD I found. Need birds, or crickets, or elephants? Again, labeled samples by the dozen may be found on sound effects CDs. And there are whole CDs of rainstorms, jungle sounds, etc., ready for use! Sound effects CDs may be found by the score at your local library – mine, a medium-sized branch, has drawer after drawer full of the things! For me, this beats the websites, which may be awkward to use and commonly make you remunerate for your samples. If you’re in a real hurry, perchance try online, but other than as supposed or expected just head on down to the library! Another genuinely neat (and cheap) source of sound effects is to record a movie or TV show as you watch it and then lift some of the effects you listen (or dialog – talking is a sound effect too!) by copying them over onto a cassette or whatsoever you use to import outside audio into your studio. Finally, one of my bestloved origins of sound effects is to record my own. With portable, battery-operated recording appliances like the Zoom H4 and others getting available, it is a simple matter to get CD-quality recordings “on the fly” of anything from your very own rainstorm or your cute pet kitty to the crowd at a football game. A warning, though. Once you get started thinking this way, it’s hard to stop. (I could record an oncoming train! I could record a volcano!) There are sounds all around you. Why not undertake incorporating a lot of of them into one of your songs? It works! |
HAM RADIO hat