# How can one create this sound?



## Walid F. (Apr 20, 2014)

Calling sound designy people to help me!

Yeah. How? How does one create this specific organic, spooky sci-fi sound? I'm thinking something that has to do with automating sampling rate, bit rate and frequency on a synth or sample or something. 

Any ideas on how this sound can be created, would be super cool guys!

It's the centered background sound in the very beginning, that sound of a tiny crustacean robot or whatever it is!



W.


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## Jetzer (Apr 20, 2014)

Do you have a synth or some noise generator? 
I would start with that, put some filter over it and modulate the cutoff. 

I think playing around with that could get you somewhat close.


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## Walid F. (Apr 20, 2014)

There is some white noise with a lowpass filter on that sound that comes in, in a gated way. Stutter effect type of thing.

But this sounds very organic in some way, not sure what type of filter could be applied on what type of synth.


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## tonecarver (Apr 20, 2014)

Might try using a flowing burbling water type of sound through filters and a granular/glitch tool, like Reaktor or something from Glitchmachines. 

http://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/synths/reaktor-5/
http://www.glitchmachines.com/


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## gsilbers (Apr 20, 2014)

im gong to go with

http://folktek.com/instruments/electroc ... ist-garden

or 

http://www.symbolicsound.com/cgi-bin/bi ... ny/WebHome

or some sort of modular patch.


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## Walid F. (Apr 20, 2014)

tonecarver @ Sun Apr 20 said:


> Might try using a flowing burbling water type of sound through filters and a granular/glitch tool, like Reaktor or something from Glitchmachines.
> 
> http://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/synths/reaktor-5/
> http://www.glitchmachines.com/



Will try something like this!! Thanks.



gsilbers @ Sun Apr 20 said:


> im gong to go with
> 
> http://folktek.com/instruments/electroc ... ist-garden
> 
> ...



Those were indeed some weird *ss sounds haha. Very cool. But not quite yet what I'm looking for.


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## Lex (Apr 20, 2014)

step sequencer with glide + LFO-pitch +/- 48 + LFO-cutoff + bit crusher/sample reducer


alex


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## Guy Rowland (Apr 20, 2014)

Alex's ideas look good. I'm sure I hear extreme bit crushing at the end of the chain.


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## Walid F. (Apr 20, 2014)

Lex @ Sun Apr 20 said:


> step sequencer with glide + LFO-pitch +/- 48 + LFO-cutoff + bit crusher/sample reducer
> 
> 
> alex



Time to learn a thing or two about these things I guess... Also have to buy something that can do this. A cheap but powerful synth plug...


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## wmctavishmusic (Apr 20, 2014)

Yeah, definitely some step sequencing here, applied to pitch, filter cutoff, bitcrushing/distortion, and probably a few other parameters. Could be made in Massive for sure. Might take a stab at it later and post results if you like


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## Walid F. (Apr 20, 2014)

wmctavishmusic @ Sun Apr 20 said:


> Yeah, definitely some step sequencing here, applied to pitch, filter cutoff, bitcrushing/distortion, and probably a few other parameters. Could be made in Massive for sure. Might take a stab at it later and post results if you like



+++! Like like like!


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## germancomponist (Apr 20, 2014)

Zebra.


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## Walid F. (Apr 20, 2014)

germancomponist @ Mon Apr 21 said:


> Zebra.



Not the cheapest for me right now - but I will most certainly get this synth plug as soon as I can. Hearing loads of good rep about it and the possibilities of it. And it's quite cool that you can buy some of HZ's patches too for it.


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## wmctavishmusic (Apr 21, 2014)

Here's a quick go at it. With more time one could probably get it pretty darn close

https://soundcloud.com/wmctavishmusic/metroid-noise


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## Jimbo 88 (Apr 21, 2014)

Sounds like a loop of someone rubbing a rubber balloon and running it thru an amp simulator to me...


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## synthetic (Apr 22, 2014)

Sounds like granular synthesis to me, using very small grains. Check out the second demo on this page: 

http://madronalabs.com/products/kaivo

I've also gotten stuff like this out of S-layer for Reaktor. Check out Richard Devine's demos in the audio tab:

http://twistedtools.com/shop/reaktor/s-layer/

Amon Tobin is another guy who is very good in this style of IDM/sound design. Check out his albums "Foley Room" and "ISAM."

Aside from granular, you could make these kinds of noises with a moderately-sized modular synth. But that is a giant money pit that you should avoid.


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## tonecarver (Apr 22, 2014)

Heres a quick try: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/31931508/Metroid-insect/metroid-insect.mp3

This uses Water Bubble samples from Ongelegen's Binaural samples (http://www.ongelegen.com/soundpacks/binaural_collection) passed through Glitchmachine's Fracture (http://www.glitchmachines.com/downloads/fracture/) using the II_RobotSoeakLevel6 preset, followed by some high pass EQ.


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## Walid F. (Apr 23, 2014)

*double post* Why can't I delete my post?..


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## Walid F. (Apr 23, 2014)

wmctavishmusic said:


> Here's a quick go at it. With more time one could probably get it pretty darn close
> 
> https://soundcloud.com/wmctavishmusic/metroid-noise



This sounds too rhythmic and mechanical. Some things in it were quite good sonically, it's just the actual sequencing I guess. The original sounds like an organic being almost. Thanks for helping :D!



Jimbo 88 said:


> Sounds like a loop of someone rubbing a rubber balloon and running it thru an amp simulator to me...



My thoughts exactly haha!



synthetic said:


> Sounds like granular synthesis to me, using very small grains. Check out the second demo on this page:
> 
> http://madronalabs.com/products/kaivo
> 
> ...



Like, I've looked into granular synthesis for things like this, but it just seems that they are too uniform in some way. This seems more like some constant note or sample that is being twisted in pitch, bits and sample frequency... God, this is harder than I thought. AND it's IMPOSSIBLE to contact Nintendo composers, really. How can it be this hard to reach them?



tonecarver said:


> Heres a quick try: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/31931508/Metroid-insect/metroid-insect.mp3 (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/319 ... insect.mp3)
> 
> This uses Water Bubble samples from Ongelegen's Binaural samples (http://www.ongelegen.com/soundpacks/binaural_collection) passed through Glitchmachine's Fracture (http://www.glitchmachines.com/downloads/fracture/) using the II_RobotSoeakLevel6 preset, followed by some high pass EQ.



Ok now we're getting somewhere. The signal dies out, so maybe change the sample to something more constant, like a note that is changing a bit in pitch and timbre. It's however the same issue where it sounds too mechanical, digital and "dead" like pretty much any granular/glitchy stuff. Metroid Prime's sounds like a real insect, with some occasional distorting effects.

Wondering if it's really in this field of granular sample distorting... Those always sound so fake to me when I want something organic, like this intro Metroid sound. 



tekkentool @ Wed Apr 23 said:


> It's gonna be about your samples not just what you're doing to them too, you'll never quite recreate them exactly but if there's one tool I'd recommend here over any other it's probably be Camel Audio's alchemy.
> 
> Absolutely fantastic synthesizer in it's own right but the options you have for sample transformation in spectral and granular synthesis and the control over them is immense.
> 
> ...



I will never be able to exactly create that sound, but I want something that can come really close at least. And to know how to create it... 

That's awesome man, way to sell me that plug-in ! 

Thank you so much guys for helping out. This is really fun too.

W.


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## Walid F. (Apr 23, 2014)

synthetic @ Tue Apr 22 said:


> Amon Tobin is another guy who is very good in this style of IDM/sound design. Check out his albums "Foley Room" and "ISAM."



IDM/glitch actually sounds exactly like it could be the field of which this sound has home! I need to look more into this.

Thanks!

W.


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