Action Sound Design 2 Electric Boogaloo

Hey guys!

Espen has another action sound design video for you.

It is a long one for sure, but hopefully some good tips/tricks in here!

New Keep Forest instrument, I’m using the FREE version in this video.

https://keep-forest.com/store/libraries/225380

How I approach action sound design

The video above is Espen’s. Here’s how I go about the same thing in my own music.

Rather than spending hours browsing libraries for the perfect sound, I take something I already have and mess with it until it’s mine. That’s where the fun is in action sound design. My building blocks are pings, hits and risers.

Take a ping. I’ll load up something simple, like a glockenspiel, play a single note and bounce it to audio. Then I start changing the shape of the waveform. I compress it hard with a quick attack and a longer release, add a limiter to push it further, then drive it with a saturation plugin such as Decapitator. For space I reach for a plate reverb, because unlike a convolution reverb it doesn’t sound like a particular room, so you get size without colour. Always add tiny fades at the start and end of each region so you don’t get clicks.

With drums I’m happy to break the clean mixing rules. Compression, distortion, clipping and EQ all become tools for character. I layer different drum sources, pan them around, use reverb, pitch shifting and amp simulation to colour them, and put reversed hits in front of sections as little introductions. Then I bounce the results and recombine them into new rhythmic motifs.

Once the parts are in, I trailerise the track with massive hits and taiko rolls at the big drops. The most important thing at this stage is to give each section room to breathe. If everything is crammed together, the builds don’t land and the editor has nothing clean to cut with.

For more on this, How to create Stutter Risers is another short video from Espen, Risers: The Easiest Way to Create Tension in Your Music gives seven ways to make your own risers, and Epic Hits covers layering samples to create hits. My Action Sound Design course goes through pings, drums, risers, basses and braams step by step.

Happy composing!Rich