Week 4 - Making the most out of failure (with sound design examples)

Last week I spent a few days emailing back and forth with a couple of devs that are making a super cool game called Wizard of Legend. They were looking to hire a sound designer to help them out after their kickstarter goal had been met. I made my initial pitch by writing them a comprehensive email with all my thoughts about the game, what I could for them, my experience with indie fantasy games, and most importantly, I took a small clip of their gameplay which they had offered, and designed it from scratch. The main thing they wanted to see was the design of the magic spells. I made it clear to them that these would not be perfect by any means, but would give a good idea of what style to expect from me. I was doing a quick turnaround on these, with lots of room to polish and be creative, but I think they conveyed my ideas well enough:

They got back to me a few days later and said they found the sounds to be promising, and asked if I could do a couple different spells for them and also asked for my rates. So I did! I was actually having fun creating these as fast as I could, and with some quick critiques from a few sound designer friends, I put together these next two clips:

I know they're not perfect and I would do a few things differently. Regardless, I decided to send these last two videos off along with my rates.

A few days passed, and then I heard back from them again. This time, the dreaded email no one likes getting. Something along the lines of: we're really impressed by the sounds but after much deliberation we have decided that unfortunately they don't quite fit with the vision we have for the game.

I wasn't devastated or anything, but a little bummed for sure. They had mentioned they didn't want a full retro sound, and I know I could have tried something more blended between retro and what I have. Maybe something more tonal, or musical. But this is what I was feeling would work for the game, and it didn't pan out. Which is fine. I wish them the best and hope the game does well!

As for me. It kind of sucks, because it looked like a pretty fun project to work on. But I know it's ok to fail, and I know that not everything always works the way you want. And that more things are going to come in the future. So I try to look at the bright side of things. I was happy with how quick I was able to churn these out and still have them sound pretty decent. I picked up a couple little design tricks along the way, the type of stuff you only learn by doing. And I ended up liking them so much, I think I'm going to bring them in again, replace a couple things, polish them, and maybe use them as little demos for possible future clients that are pursuing a similar vibe!

Now I'm back to pursuing that next project, or even better, hopefully that full time in house position!

-Juan

Week 3 - Electromagnetic recording session with Robbie and Nate

A few weeks ago, Robbie Elias from 343 (makers of Halo) invited me to do a recording session along with Nate Marler (also from 343) using a couple of Elektrosluchs!

https://twitter.com/soundbend3r/status/761267720360906752

The glowing blue guys in the picture are the Elektrosluchs. They are capable of capturing electromagnetic sounds made by electronic devices by simply getting them as close to the source as you can. There's a lot of cheaper options to achieve similar results, but these specific ones are known to be some of the best at what they do. They capture the sound in stereo, with a great signal to noise ratio, and with a very extended frequency response. Plug them into your favorite handheld recorder using a simple 3.5mm cable and you're ready to go!

Robbie and Nate are pretty cool people, super chill to hang out with. Robbie was our host for this session, letting use his apartment, his recording gear, and most importantly, an amazing amount of cool electronic gadgets to record. Robbie also set up his super fancy camera to record the whole thing.

These are some of the things we recorded:

Super Nintendo, Original Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Playstation 2, Playstation 3, Sound Devices 788, Sound Devices 702, 2006 Macbook, external disc drive, power drill, electric fan, OWC 4 bay hard drive, Gtech drives, Lacie drives, Seagate drives, Western Digital drives, and a few other hard drives from the stone age.

Here's a picture of just a few of these things, mostly the drives:

More stuff:

And of course a few samples of what the inside of some of these machines sound like!

WARNING -  they can get pretty loud

We recorded about 12GB worth of audio at 24 bit, 96 kHz. A lot of really cool stuff in there that I'm excited to play with. I really recommend getting an Elektrosluch!

-Juan

Week 2 - Setting up and calibrating my Sound Devices Mixpre-D with my Sony PCM M10

To be honest, there is nothing complicated about this setup at all. With some basic signal flow knowledge, the manual, and some light googling to fill in some gaps, everything I'm about to show can be figured out fairly easily. But since I personally couldn't find instructions for this specific setup in a single place on google, I might as well do a quick write up so it exists for whomever has the need for it in the future!

What you'll need:

1. Two 3.5mm to 3.5mm cables. You probably already own some. If not, you can find an example of which ones I'm talking about here!

2. Sound Devices Mixpre-D with two working AA batteries inside.

3. Sony PCM M10 with two working AA batteries inside.

Ok, let's begin!

I. Grab one of the 3.5mm cables and plug one end into the Tape Out jack on the left side of the Mixpre-D, and the other end into the Line In of the M10, as pictured:

II. Grab the other 3.5mm cable and plug one end into the TAPE RTN (Tape Return) jack on the right side of the Mixpre-D, and the other end into the Line Out (Headphones symbol) on the M10, as pictured:

III. Turn on the Tone Oscillator [~] on the Mixpre-D (the little sine wave) and set your M10 to REC Pause with 24-bit depth. Now calibrate the REC Level on the M10 to -20 dBFS (unity gain), which should be right below the number 5 on the M10's gain knob itself:

IV. Now that you're properly calibrated, press the headphone controller to switch between monitor sources until you see the Blue LED labeled RTN come on. This means you can plug in your headphones into the Mixpre-D instead of the M10 to monitor your input signal and your playback!

That's it, you're good to go! Properly calibrated and getting that nice headphone signal straight out of the Mixpre-D.

At this point I'm figuring out how to keep the two devices together, probably using thick rubber bands. And maybe have some tape over the gain knob on the M10 so it doesn't accidentally move. Recordings made with this rig (plus the Sennheiser MKH 8060) coming soon!

-Juan

Week 1 - My first field recording rig (that's not just my handheld recorder)

A few months ago I decided I wanted to up my field recording gear to a better level than just taking my Sony PCM M10 hand recorder out on its lonesome. So I started doing a lot of research, asked questions, used my judgment, and ended up deciding on purchasing a Sennheiser MKH 8060 shotgun microphone, a Sound Devices Mixpre-D field mixer, a Rode Blimp microphone protector, and a KATA 3n1-33 DL modular backback to carry it all.

The idea behind the gear (gear which I plan on expanding as time goes) was to capture specific sounds out in the field in an isolated manner, which was something I felt was lacking from my M10 a lot of the time. I also planned to use it to capture some foley and monster vocals indoors with a cleaner, more focused signal than what the M10 was giving me.

The journey to the gear started with the Sennheirser MKH 8060, which I hesitated on whether to buy used or new. I found a pretty good deal on Ebay, but it was missing a couple of its accessories and the warranty. My hesitation was completely cleared when I found out Sweetwater was offering 24 month 0% interest financing, which made the mic come out to be about 50 dollars a month after my friendly Sweetwater rep knocked a small chunk off the original price. That led to me also getting a new Mixpre-D from them with the same financing deal, at 30 dollars a month.

I was lucky that my birthday was coming soon, which meant that Jane (my fiance) would get me the Rode Blimp and the KATA backpack as early birthday presents (she's pretty great).

The first bump in the road came in the form of a defective Mixpre-D. The headphone knob was acting weird, and my suspicions were confirmed when I realized that pressing it didn't activate the blue LED that's supposed to signal that the RETURN is active. I contacted Sound Devices and a really nice man by the name of Danny Greenwald emailed with me back and forth trying to troubleshoot the issue, until he finally came to the conclusion that yes, the device was actually defective. He gave me the option to send it in for repair but I opted to return it to Sweetwater for a new one instead. Sweetwater barely asked any questions and shipped me a new one right away, as long as I returned the defective one. Within 4 days I had my new one come in, which I tested to my happiness and satisfaction! Great customer support from both companies, for sure.

After dealing with that, my Rode Blimp came in, which thankfully seemed to be in perfect working order, and fit my Sennheiser MKH 8060 great.

By the way, the Mixpre-D uses batteries fairly fast. I believe two AA batteries will power it for roughly 4 hours, so it's definitely a good idea to invest in some rechargeable batteries. I went with some Eneloops and bought a Powerex recharging station, both from Amazon.

Next up, the KATA backpack. It's advertised as a photographer's backpack, but I found a blog by a field recordist who really likes it for carrying audio gear, so I went with it. It costs about 75 dollars, which compared to all the pro level custom audio bags out there which seem to start at 150 minimum, is actually a lot cheaper. It's a really nice high quality backpack that comes with a bunch of velcro modular cushions that you can arrange into your own personal maze inside the main body of the bag. I decided to remove all of those since I was going to need the majority of that space to fit my Rode Blimp, along the rest of the goodies. By default, the bag comes with a shelf-style pocket nested at the top, good for carrying certain things, pictured here:

But if you need more overall room, you can unzip it and strap it to the side, opening up the main body from top to bottom, like this:

The main body opens from either side, all through the bottom, and then onto the other side. Here is one of the sides open, showing the guts of the bag:

And here is a rough look into how it fits all the main components of the rig:

I'll end up using some of the modular cushions to isolate some of those pieces from each other so they don't bump around. It's also really cool that the straps in the back are modular too, which lets you carry it either as a normal, 2-strap backpack; a criss-cross around the back backpack, or it lets you unhook and hide away one of the straps, making it so just one strap goes across your chest, which also lets you swing the bag around and to the front if you ever have the need:

Now I'm trying to look for a smaller pouch/messenger type bag that I can throw the Mixpre-D and the M10 into, for whenever I want to walk around with them and record. On my next blog I'll talk about how to properly connect and calibrate the M10 to the Mixpre-D to be ready to record at proper levels!

-Juan