[sdiy] water noises?

[Dave Kendall]

One of the things that was interesting I found in the years when I did 
a lot of hobby portable DAT recording, and when I dubbed a lot of 
corporate stuff, TV and a few films, was that actual real recordings of 
weather are often  peculiarly monotonous and almost unidentifiable in 
many cases.
As an example, the sound of rain hitting a roof and steady wind are 
pretty much white or coloured noise. A waterfall is pretty much pure 
pink noise, the frequency spectrum changing, depending on how far away 
you are. In order to make these sounds work with video, or in isolation 
as pure audio to tell  a story or give an impression, some non rhythmic 
audio clues are needed. With rain, added individual "plinks" of 
raindrops made the overall effect so much more convincing, even if the 
surface they fell on wouldn't have sounded like that. OTOH, a recording 
of a small stream with stones in is pretty much a modulated sound, so 
has enough detail in it to be easy to recognise. The classic howling 
wind made with a synth white/pink noise source  through a bandpass or 
low pass filter is used so often in preference to a real recording, 
because the real sound is so much more boring. A recording of wind in 
pine trees I once made only works, because the wind changes speed 
constantly with the gusts, and the trees respond by creaking and 
moaning. The odd owl hoot helps too.

IMO the devil (and the successful illusion) is in the detail. :-)

Cheers,
Dave



On Apr 10, 2008, at 20:14, anthony wrote:

> What is the best way with synth DIY techniques to make sounds that 
> resemble the noises that water makes in various situations: like 
> falling over a waterfall (and hitting at the bottom, splashing in the 
> tub, water dripping into water, many bubbles coming to the surface of 
> water? I'm guessing that a number of techniques would be needed; some 
> sort of variation of a pink noise generator would probably be the 
> starting point of many of them.
>
> Running a random S/H, triggered by a moderately fast LFO,  sending 
> control voltages to a very resonant phaser makes decent popping noises 
> like water. But the thing I do this with is actually a digital phaser: 
> the Boss PH-3 set to step with the resonance set high. But the step 
> setting really isn't random. (But that phaser is awesome anyway...)
>
> And I'm talking strictly analog methods here. I'll bet Risset tones 
> could approximate water. But I've only seen them done in the digital 
> domain, although it seems possible to do it with analog (maybe much 
> like it seems possible to do a Fourier Transform in analog?).
>
> I remember Ken Stone saying his Modulo Magic unit could simulate 
> rising bubbles and such.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> cheers,
> aa
>
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