Hello! My name is Martin Månsson. I am the sound director of the game “Potato Pirates”. Last week I talked about how to make a sound effect for the “Potato Canon”, and this week I will talk about how to make a sound that sounds like a propeller on a plane. The game will take place during the 1920’s , so we will be using propeller planes as both the player avatar and as enemies (like the “Fighter Plane” which I was talking about a couple of weeks ago). So basically we needed a sound that would make the player feel like he or she was flying in a propeller plane. From the very second when I found out that we would make this game, I got this idea on how to make the wanted propeller sound.
But as what I’ve always been saying for the last couple of weeks: “We never prioritized sounds over the graphical assets”. The only thing I could do was to kindly wait until we had the needed graphical assets. So when the time came, I brought forward my microphone (The “Blue Snowball” which I talked about last week) and my electric shaver and went to work. Why would I use an electric shaver? That’s because it makes a vibrating sound. And even if the tune is very high, I have the power to pitch it and give it more bass with the help of the computer program “Audacity” (which I also talked about last week). I don’t know which kind of shavers that makes better sounds than others, but I believe that any electric shaver that makes some kind of vibrating sound will be of good use. But if you however feel that you someday will record sound with the help of an electric shaver, then remember this very important detail: Never forget to recharge the shaver before going to work.
When I finally got to record the sound that the electric shaver makes, I hold the shaver to the microphone (while recording of course). I didn’t move the shaver around at all, since I didn’t want to make the sound which I recorded to change in volume. No, I had to hold the shaver very still during a couple of seconds to make the sound as stable as possible. If there would be anything in the recording that’s irregular it would mean a disaster. If that irregularity would be implemented into the game it would be looped and played every 7-9 seconds. The player would notice that irregularity and that might drive him or her crazy. So the shaver needs to be hold still.
This is how the recording sounds like:
When the sound is recorded, I also had to edit it in “Audacity”. There I lowered the pitch to around the same tune as how I imagine a propeller plane has. I also raised the bass to make it sound a little more powerful. Furthermore, I lowered the tempo. That is because the speed of the razors sounds a lot faster than a propeller. The last thing I would ever do with this sound was to make the sound loopable (If that’s a word). I did that by cutting the sound in the beginning and in the end where it sounds exactly the same. Then I played the looped version and listened carefully if there was any irregularity at all. There wasn’t any irregularity, but it could as well have been like that since that is a common occurrence while trying to make a sound loopable. Technically, my job is done. But the sound itself is not done. The sound will now be transported to the programmers who will give the most fitting volume for the sound. As the sound is now, it is probably a little too loud for its own good and it is nothing anyone would like to listen to all the time while playing. But all we have to do is to lower the volume.
This is how the edited recording sounds like:
Next week will be the last blog post, so I hope I will have a last great piece of work to talk about.
Martin Månsson
martinmanssonblog 