how to make sabre-rattling and the clank of heavy armoured knight?

Kitchen utensils - especially pans. :D

and what about the effects?

Im not sure of your financial situation, but if you have a bit of cash to put into your project, go over to http://www.sound-ideas.com ...They are a major distributor of sound effects packages, complete with commercial liscenses. Every month, they have "blue plate specials" which are seriously reduced prices on a few selected products...you can acquire some excellent sound fx libraries for $150-$200 US. These libraries are used in major film productions, commercial game development, radio, etc. I''ve been building up my library month by month and have a very strong library now. Is a great way to go if you can afford it.

Well, pre made sound effects are all well and good but it''s a sound designers job to create these sounds after all. Also, those sound effects are made very generically to suit multiple situations. The only way to really tailor a sound to a specific situation is to custom make it using a combination of the right recording equipment, recording in the right room, using the right instrument (by which i mean the subject of the sound, in this case a sword or at least something sword-like) and finally by mixing and processing the sound with skill using the necessary tools. You cannot recreate that with a generic, ''ready salted'' sound effect.

I used to use a lot of sampled sounds for my sound design (years ago), now i wouldn''t touch them with a barge pole because i know the difference spending some time and effort and creating these things yourself can make.

But in this context (and it really depends on what the sabre looks like and the action being performed) i''d use something like a thin, long kitchen knife struck against a much bigger and thicker knife like a butchers knife... but it really depends on how "Hollywood" (i.e. over the top) you want it to sound..... and only you can be the judge there..... Then compress it with quite a high ratio and filter out any unwanted frequencies.

Rob

Rob,

To a degree, its true, there are some sound libraries that just sound too vague to be used for much...you cant just copy and paste the sounds in the sound libraries. You have to be a good audio engineer to clean them up, eq them to make them sound more full, and then of course, snip them to exactly the right lengths to be loopable without making popping noises and whatnot. So even then, theres work to be done.

If you''re dealing with medieval weaponry, and insist on getting original recordings, take your portable recording device and go to a rennaisance faire before they open up and ask if you can record them practicing sword fighting. keep in mind, you''ll want a LONG mic cord, because you dont want to be stabbed by a blade. Also, if you need other sounds of the nature, find your local SCA group ((www.sca.org)) ..these guys are medieval re-enactors and have free practices and whatnot. jsut show up to a practice with your equipment and ask to record... you can get archery sounds, fencing, armor sounds etc...

Thats probably the best and cheapest way to get accurate sounds...the whole forks and knives thing worked great back in the day, but commercial games especially require something more.

I''m sorry i''m going to have to disagree with you there. I''ve been doing professional sound design for over six years now and one of the first things i learnt is that the real thing doesn''t necessarily SOUND like the real thing when mic''ed up and recorded. One of the reasons for this is that each element of a complex sound will be a different distance from the mic causing phase cancellations and will be recorded with a different frequency response due to the proximity effect. Another reason is that because of post modern culture we have adjusted to hearing things in films and games being very loud and full of impact... things don''t usually sound like this, take gunshots for example, real guns make more of a popping, snapping sound than the huge explosion you hear in games. This applies for sabre rattling and heavy armour too. Also, unless you have some sort of decent analog equipment you aren''t going to get a decent field recording of an impact sound because of the transient nature of these sounds, especially with a 16bit device, the resolution simply isn''t there.

The only way to get a true representation of a complex sound is to record each element close mic''ed and then mix the elements carefully together. How you create these elements really doesn''t matter, it is completely counter productive getting all elitist about the authenticity of the actual sound ''instrument'' what is important is getting the authenticity of the SOUND correct... and for that you can use anything. Of course in some cases there is a need to use the actual equipment depicted in the piece but this is rare and certainly not in this case.

And as for it being the case ''back in the day'' well that is plain rediculous, Foley and sound design really hasn''t been around for that long... infact the common benchmark for the first ''sound designed'' film was Apocolypse Now. People use the same techniques now that they did then too, it''s all about having a good ear and some imagination.


If you want a nice little introduction to recording Foley (basicaly action and movement sounds) go here:

http://www.marblehead.net/foley/


sorry about then length post

Sound Design decisions have been made for as long as sound has accompanied the moving image; millennia.

The ideology/philosophy/terminology of sound design was established in the 70s after the collaborative work of Murch and Coppola on Apocalypse Now .

Whilst Murch has the first sound designer credit, Apocalypse Now cannot be considered the first "sound designed" film - not with earlier works such as Citizen Kane , Once Upon A Time In The West and Psycho . The sad truth is that despite none of these films credit a sound designer (the term didn''t exist, neither did "the job"), they contain more sound design than the majority of films or games with a credited "Sound Designer".

Sound design is not designing sound, it''s designing for sound.

Creating sound effects may be part of a sound designers job, but it does not in and of itself constitute sound design. There are many people that do practice sound design, or are at least aware of what it is, who do not call themselves sound designers because of the bad rep that so-called "sound designers" have.

Vector - I suppose each person has his/her own ways of approaching it. One thing Im sure we can agree on is that sound design is an art. There are many different artists and art styles, just as there are many ways of approaching sound design.

Agreed, that a 16-bit recording device wont deliver the quality recording you''re looking for, but in this digital age, we are afforded ability to record using 24-bit devices.

Personally, whatever I dont find fitting from my pre-fabricated sound library, I record onto portable digital media using a battery-powered condeser mic. When uploaded to my program of choice (Sonar 2.2), I clean up whatever I need to, then run a few mastering tools and 90% of the time, get the sound I was looking for.

Yet, like I said, to each his or her own.

Maybe you should buy a sword and record yourself attacking a garbage can with it.