Month: February 2024

In this session we were tasked with using the Foley studio to produce a range of sound effects. This is the first time I’ve encountered a method of producing fire effects. The sound was built from two objects, paper and cloth. We used the cloth to produce the main flame like effect while layering it with crinkled up paper which produced the crackling of the fire. It surprised me with how simple this effect is made and how realistic it sounded once I closed my eyes and imagined a roaring fire in front of me. Creating foley can be challenging when not considering the feeling of the source materials. Adding too much textual detail can take away from the resulting effect. It was also interesting to consider which microphones were used. We used a pair of AKG-C451 stereo pencil mics which have a cardioid polar pattern which is excellent for minimising background noise as they pick up sound from the front and sides.

A while back, while walking home one night I stumbled across a beaten up and vandalised Roberts radio on top of a bin. To my luck it still worked, through prior knowledge of routing my guitar through a bunch of pedals, I hooked up the old radio through them instead. Due to the prior mishandlings of the radio, the sound quality is harshly affected, however, I found trawling the megahertz to be a therapeutic experience.

In order to keep the clarity of the radio’s dry output, I used a minimal selection of pedals to modulate the signal. I found the best sounding results using this setup:

The whammy DT modulates pitch and harmonies, the Space Echo creates delay feedback and the freeze latches onto the signal and drones the sonic content. This is a clip from an improvisation session: