To coincide with this week’s newsletter feature on sound effects, we spoke to Boom Library Sound Designer Michael Schwendler and Creative Director Axel Rohrbach about the process of recording sound effects both in the studio and on location and how they produced their recent releases…

Hi Axel and Michael, please can you take us through the creation of a sound effect, from recording right through to the point at which it’s ready to be used by the customer?
Axel Rohrbach: The first part is to organize a lot of things. What object do we want to record and how can we get access to it or find the right people having access to it. What kind of equipment do we need and what kind of locations are accessible. Do those locations need acoustical treatment before we can record there. What is the right time to do this and so on. After all that is set, we start to record the sounds we need.

Back in the studio, the editing process starts. As we release Construction Kits with more or less raw basic material on it, we first have to crop and de-noise our recordings carefully. Sometimes some slight but thoughtful EQ-ing has to be applied to get rid of annoying things and make it as usable as possible but still keep the recordings as natural as possible.

During the design process we first try to define what we want to have in the end. That makes the design process is a bit harder. We do not start experimenting without a goal and then just take the coolest recordings. We really have a defined output which has to be achieved to get a well organized and useful sound package. During the creative design process everything is allowed. Re-recording things, using all kind of plug-ins and methods and combing whatever we have recorded for the Construction Kit.

What’s the least interesting part of creating a sound FX library?
Michael Schwendler:” The worst part for me is editing noisy outdoor recordings. That can be a real pain in the ass and it’s often sad to see that a great recoding goes down the drain because there’s too much noise in it. And of course checking all the files, when the collection is complete. Just imagine that e.g. our Creatures Construction Kit contains more than 1200 sound files, each one with variations in it and you have to listen to a LOT of monster sounds for hours ”

Is there any particular hardware that you frequently use when recording your libraries?
Michael Schwendler:”Yeah, of course: Our recorder. It’s a Sounddevice 744T and most of the time we are recording with a pair of Sennheiser 8040. And we’re constantly upgrading. Axel just ordered a set of DPA’s and I’m thinking about getting a nice pair of large membrane mics for our Foley stage.

Since we last interviewed you, Boom Library has released Medieval Weapons, The Interface and Black Powder – for each of these, please could you summarise the recording process involved?
Axel Rohrbach:” Let’s start in the opposite order. Black Powder was a library that our Sound Designer Sebastian Pohle initiated. He made a contact to some guys who are in the saluting gun scene. They organized a suitable location and all permission so that we were able to shoot. We packed a pile of equipment and drove there to record those guns. Setting up the equipment took about 2 hours. Because of all the laws around here we were limited to a shot-count so we tried to limit the sound-check to one or two shots. That was a bit hard but as we’ve recorded guns before, we had a good feeling about how to set things up.

The Interface was recorded completely in the studio – or better in three different studios. We recorded basically everything that makes any click sound or real button. After sifting the recordings we made a list with what was missing and had to think about how to achieve those sounds. Apart from those studio recordings we did a lot musically oriented sounds as well. We produced small orchestral jingles, synthesized clicks or acknowledgement sounds like alarm and some arcade style feedback jingles.

For the Medieval Weapons we had a pretty good idea about what should be in the library in the end. However, we had some difficulties. Real swords don’t sound right, so we again organized tons of metal stuff to record axe, sword, dagger, armour, shield sounds – to name some. We bought some car-hoods for massive metallic shield impacts and a lot of wood stuff for the siege weapon elements. We started to record elements for the siege weapons because of two things. First we always love to have elements so that we can design sounds as free as possible afterwards. Having the right elements is just so much more flexible than a whole “scene” of a siege weapon shot. Anyway, we also recorded some catapults, but they just don’t sound like what you expect. That was the second reason why most of those sounds were recorded on our foley stage. Besides, we did some heavy outdoor recordings for large fire whooshes, bow shots with and without burning arrows and other things that were just to dangerous for our recording room.

Finally, what advice would you give to someone looking to record their own sound effects?
Michael Schwendler:”Get some gear and go for it. Learning by doing is the best you can do!”

Click here to read our 2011 interview “Introducing new sound design developers Boom Library“

Tags: axel rohrbach, black powder, boom library, medieval weapons, michael Schwendler, recording sounds, sound fx, the interface

This entry was posted on Friday, January 27th, 2012 at 1:14 pm and is filed under Samples. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.