Zero-G/Xfonic SoundSense Series

With the SoundSense series, long-time sample library creator Zero-G gives us a different take on “budget” collections. Each DVD contains a collection of loops and individual samples – including in most cases a small but tasty assortment of song construction kits – in a particular electronica genre. These collections list for $59.95 each, and are distributed in the US by Sounds Online. Here I’ll review four of the SoundSense collections: Trance Inducer, Technomatik, Ambiosis, and Chilled Grooves.

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Sony Sound Series: Platinum Theory Hip-Hop

This is one of the most inventive hip-hop sample libraries I’ve heard. Producer Henry Willis (aka lukecage) has crafted a set of 62 construction kits that show off the more experimental side of hip-hop, ranging from R&B to illbient. He’s taken a minimal approach to the art, providing 3-5 loops per kit that cover bass, beats, and additional melodic parts including a lot of piano.

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Big Fish Audio: Primal Drums

Ah, yes: Books and their covers. Given the title and the evocative woodcut-style cover art by Nancy Nimoy, here I was expecting an African-influenced percussion collection. Instead, this library contains 50 construction kits well suited for a film composer or adventurous ethnic-hybrid producer, providing alternately lush cinemaesque landscapes and urgent chase sequences. Although heavily percussion-driven and indeed tribal in flavor, there are also several melodic parts both percussive and instrumental, plus massive “pads” (sustained chords and other musical textures) to fill out the compositions.

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Modern R&B Music Construction Kits

One side effect of the maturation of desktop tools has been that our clients and employers expect us to do more - for example, an editor is often expected to also do some motion graphics and sound editing; a motion graphics artist may be expected to come up with the soundtrack as well. Fortunately, several desktop-based sound tools - such as Apple’s GarageBand and Soundtrack Pro, Adobe’s Audition and Soundbooth, Propellerhead’s Recycle and Reason, Ableton’s Live (my weapon of choice), and Sony’s ACID Pro (the pioneer of them all) - make it easier for a doodler with a good ear to create a soundtrack out of a box full of sound snippets. These snippets usually consist of musical phrases that may be repeated (looped) or strung end-to-end (here’s a short primer how).

These applications tend to ship with their own box of snippets; third parties also offer literally dozens of “music construction kit” sound libraries that contain collections of coordinated snippets which make it easier to create songs in specific styles. I rely on these myself, either using a construction kit to create a soundtrack in a style a client has requested, or mixing and matching between sets to create original compositions. For those who are new to this world, I’m going to share some reviews of construction kits I’ve encountered in hopes of helping you make informed decisions as to what might inspire your inner musical muse.

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Simple Soundproofing

We work at home. Our house has two levels; downstairs is half-jokingly referred to as “the studio complex.” We’ve set up one of the spare bedrooms down there as an audio room.

Most bedrooms are boxes with parallel walls, which in turn often cause problems with resonances and echoes in a room. Fortunately, the spare bedrooms in this house have some non-parallel walls, which help break up and diffuse the pattern of echoes, which makes them less annoying. Adding more hard surfaces such as computer desks and monitors can increase the amount of diffusion, but sound is still bouncing around. The result is akin to the reverberation present in what one would call a “live small room.” As we use a microphone placed about a foot away from our head instead of a headset mic (to cut down on the distraction, and also pick up sounds such as the keystrokes and mouseclicks), it picks up some of this room sound as well.

Although I personally like a little natural reverberation when I listen to a voice - completely dead rooms sound unnatural to me - a few have “commented on” the liveliness of the room sound in the voiceovers to our training videos, so I decided to see if I could tame the bouncing soundwaves a bit. I tried a cheap, low-tech approach first, then threw a little more money and work at it. I thought it would be fun to share my results:

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The Case of the Two Licenses

A question came up recently about what sort of licenses are required when marrying music to motion graphics (or any imagery edited or animated in time with music). It so happens there are two, which you may or may not need to worry about:

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The Missing Video: Sonicfire Pro + After Effects

A few years ago, SmartSound commissioned us to create video training on how an editor or motion graphics designer could start in their Sonicfire Pro intelligent stock music software to select a soundtrack for a commercial, edit the source clips in After Effects (or any NLE, for that matter) to match the music, and then go back into Sonicfire to massage the music to work better with the now-edited video and voiceover. This video is theoretically still available on SmartSound’s web site, but has become hard to find since they updated their site to tout their latest version (SFP5). As we think it still contains some very useful advice on how one can work more effectively with music and video, we got permission to re-post it here. Although it is specific to Sonicfire and After Effects, the concepts it contains have broad application (especially the middle section “Spotting and Editing to a Soundtrack”).

Click here to open the video in a new window (wait a bit while it loads).

The content contained in our books, videos, blogs, and articles for other sites are all copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.

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On Artbeats.com: Article on Mixing Audio

Every month for several years, we wrote a Tips N Tricks article for our friends at Artbeats.com. This month we wrote about how mix audio effectively to ensure the listener can hear the dialog without becoming distracted by the music or sound effects. There’s only a few simple rules you need to learn to make a huge improvement in the quality of your soundtracks. Remember: Bad audio can really distract from good video!

Click here to download a PDF of “Clearly Mixed” from Artbeats.com. (This is an update of our classic 1995 article on mixing, On The Level.)

The content contained in our books, videos, blogs, and articles for other sites are all copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.

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