Continuing from the last article regarding fireworks sound effects, Part Two looks closely at microphones for recording fireworks samples. While mostly microphone choice is about the best quality and most accurate possible recordings, its important to consider obstacles and dangers with the recording location, such as weather, crowds and your own security.

Microphones Used for Recording Fireworks

The following four microphones were used for recording fireworks sound effects; Firstly, the Takstar SGC-578, a shotgun microphone for dialogue and sound effects. Secondly, the Takstar PCM-6100, an instrument microphone mostly for orchestral and piano recordings. Thirdly, a compact stereo condenser microphone that ships with the M-Audio Microtrack II. And lastly, a Sony lapel condenser microphone.

All four microphones gave acceptable and usable recordings, but in regards to quality and convenience of recording, they are very different microphones. To understand the fireworks recordings below, we need to take a closer look at each microphone.

Note: All samples below are straight from the audio recorder and have been normalized for easier listening. The process of mixing samples will be explained in more detail in Fireworks Sound Effects – Part Three.

Shotgun Microphone

The Takstar SGC-578 is a decent location sound effects microphone with a bright, clean middle range. Its two polar patterns make it useful for choosing between directional and more ambient sounds. Its large size and the essential use of a shock-mount make using this microphone less convenient than the other smaller microphones. Whilst its bright mid-range delivers clear and results full of presence, its gradual roll-off above 5K misses some of the nice ‘fizzing’ sounds heard from many fireworks. It also seems to be lacking a good low-frequency response compared to the other microphones.

The first fireworks sample was recorded with a cardioid pattern.

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Whilst the second fireworks sample was recorded with a hyper-cardioid pattern.

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Instrument Microphone

The Takstar PCM-6100 is an instrument microphone mostly for orchestral and piano recordings. Apart from its peak at around 9K it has a reasonably flat response.

Stereo Microphone

The M-Audio Microtrack II ships with a compact stereo condenser, that with its mini-jack, conveniently plugs into the recorder. Surprisingly, this microphone offers a very wide and accurate frequency response, with an adequate stereo image. There is a noticeable proximity effect, though when recording ambiance or the high sound pressure sources such as fireworks this is not a noticeable issue.

Lapel Microphone

This very small microphone is designed for speech recordings and so has a very good mid-range response for fireworks recordings. Most small capsule condensers, like the lapel and the stereo microphone, also have a bright high-frequency response making them highly effective for capturing the complex characteristics of fireworks.

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Final Thoughts

Microphone choice for recording fireworks samples is dependent on many factors. Of course quality is of utmost priority but its not always easy carrying a larger microphone, especially in crowded or dangerous locations. While small capsule microphones can provide excellent results, it is an ideal situation to have several microphones and spend the time recording enough samples that you can later go through and edit.

For more on mixing and editing fireworks samples, read through Fireworks Sound Effects or keep an eye out for the next audio industry article by Spencer Sternberg.

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Fireworks are, without a doubt, an amazing and incredible sight, but how about the sound of fireworks. How can we recreate the sound of fireworks and what are some of the obstacles we might face when given the task of recreating firework sound effects.

The fire lights the wick and the tension builds. The time before the initial charge shoots into the air is like slow motion. First, there is the light, shortly followed by what can only be described as the most colorful sound imaginable.

What lays in this article not only encapsulates the creation of effective fireworks sound effects, but also the illustration of how powerful quality recordings can be for creating unique sound effects.

Recording Fireworks

The first stage of any kind of sound effect creation is the recording of a high quality sample. It is an incredibly important point to make, that recordings need to be the highest quality they can possibly be. Later, when you mix and add effects to these recordings, you will be seeking the greatest amount of audio information you can get your hands on. Take for example two pictures; one is a low light blur of a night scene, the other is a crisp, well lit picture with huge amounts of detail. Later, when you take information from one of the two pictures, it goes without saying that the second picture will give you more to play with, more to experiment with, and more to deliver with.

So here is the first part of sound effects creation; the recording. Recording technique follows the same principles, whether you are in a studio or outside in the rain. The most important factor in capturing a high quality recording is to get as close as you can to the sound source and to limit external noise as much as possible. You should always strive to find the best signal to noise ratio, that is, the lowest level of preamplifier gain for the sound source you are seeking.

In some cases, you cannot get close to a sound source, and in this case you may be better off to opt for a lower level gain recording to limit noise from the equipments preamplifier. Try to remember, that a sound effect may well be mixed with other sound sources in the final mix, and therefore your overall level does not always need to reach unity gain.

Always limit external noise as much as possible. Mixing techniques can always improve a well recorded sound’s perceived loudness, but noise in a recording can give you many troublesome problems, the most prominent being that noise reduction techniques can, and often do, alter the equalization and perception of your original recording.

To illustrate the differences in sound recordings, this article offers three sound examples. One is taken from a digital camera, the second from a MOTU Ultralite firewire sound interface, and the third from a portable hard-disk recorder; the M-Audio Microtrack II. It is immediate the quality difference between devices and microphones.

Recording Number One: Digital Camera Audio

The first audio example comes from a Canon Powershot A540 recording in movie mode. You can’t expect much from a digital camera microphone, combined with the format limitations of an 8bit, 11Khz sample rate recording. However, this sample has been included for comparison with the other recorded samples.

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It goes without saying that the sound lacks any decent representation of the original sound, but more importantly, leaves not much to work with when mixing or creating new sound effects. If you try to boost the frequency range of a sound that does not even exist in that range you’ll be boosting emptiness.

Recording Two: Takstar SGC568 Condenser Microphone and the MOTU Ultralite

The second audio example comes from a Takstar condenser microphone passing through a MOTU Ultralite recording interface. Immediately, it is noticeable the brightness and clarity in the mid-range, initially due to the wide response of capturing audio through a high quality preamplifier. Don’t be easily persuaded though, as the Takstar is missing some precious lower frequencies.

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Recording Three: Microtrack II

The third audio example comes from the Microtrack II, and even though the immediate picture is a much deeper, fuller sound, this is due to the microphone, which is a stereo lapel microphone. It has a much higher response to lower frequencies than the Takstar condenser and portrays the sound of fireworks in a different way to the previous recording.

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It is important to note, that different microphones capture sound in different ways, and as a sound engineer, it is your responsibility to know and understand the differences in a microphone’s ability to reproduce sound. In the most favorable case, you will have access to the best microphone you can, and it will capture the widest range of sound possible at the time.

Creating Sound Effects from Fireworks Samples

Moving on, we arrive at the next part of this article; taking sound recordings and using sound editing techniques to create new sound effects. Here is a sample that we will use to create a new sound effect. The sample was taken from the second sound recording and is very short in duration.

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By adding a basic reverb effect, some slight pitch shifting and time stretching, and multiband compression, the sample takes a whole new light.

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This is simply an example, and could have taken any direction; it could have become a sharp, fast drum sample or a high-pitched screech. This sample simply illustrates that by experimenting with a few basic sound editing techniques, new samples can be quickly and easily created.

By taking this second sample and then affecting it with even more time stretching and pitch shifting, a completely new sample has been created.

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Time shifting and pitch shifting are powerful sound editing techniques to use and should always be experimented with in the fullest. There are two important factors to pay attention to however, and they are unwanted pitch movement (when time stretching) and ‘flanging’ discoloration (both evident in time stretching and pitch shifting). Flanging, in the majority of cases is unwanted, unless of course you are seeking that effect, as it completely changes the sound from its original form.

It seems that when time stretching and pitch shifting, parameters need to be adjusted on a case by case basis, and that a large amount of tweaking is needed in all cases. Apply and undo with full confidence in experimentation, until you have arrived at the sound you are happy with for the task at hand.

Finding Sound Effects

It can be hard to find well recorded samples, to be used for manipulating and creating new sound effects, if you don’t know where to look. However, with the great expanse of the Internet, searches are more powerful and it becomes much easier to find samples. If you are looking online for sound effects, try to get the highest quality you can as this will make a huge difference to your final creations. You might have amazing icing for your cake, but if the cake is old and stale inside then it won’t take long before people find out!

Spencer Sternberg has fireworks sound effects available on Istock.

Final Thoughts

“Was I reading about fireworks, or about making sound effects?” you may be asking. The answer is of course, both. This article illustrates the importance of good quality recordings and how they improve the practice of making sound effects. Like all kinds of audio recording, having the microphone as close to the source as possible with the lowest level of external noise, is your primary goal. This allows your original recording to either be used as is, or also gives you powerful samples to work with in sound editing.

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Some time ago, I was given the task of making sound effects for a martial art sequence. A short, simple looking fight sequence, that ended up needing a whole lot more sound design than I could have imagined. And so here lies the essence of making sound effects; make more than you think you need.

Like any project, the first stage should always be research. It is two-fold; how will the sounds be created, and what is my audience expecting to hear. Both are equally important. In addition to the standard categories of foley sound effects, such as footsteps and prop sounds, I found that sound effects for martial arts consist of at least two unique categories. These two unique categories are hits, and movement.

The Sound of Watermelons

With reluctance, I pressed the record button, picked up my cricket stump, and slammed the large watermelon that was lying in front of me. “Cracckk!” A most peculiar sound was created, and recorded.

In my research, I found that quite commonly, smashing watermelons with sticks is the way hit sound effects are created for martial art sequences. That is, the sounds that we have become accustomed to hearing when one character is hitting another. It is the combination of a sharp initial crack and the wet, slushy sound of the watermelon splintering. Not the imagery you would like to be thinking of. It raises a good point however, and perhaps the most important point in this article; sound is not what it looks like.

If a film’s production relied entirely on the location sound recorded together with the footage, a film’s sound would come across as empty, bland and without any power of suggestion. Take for example, the sound of one person’s fist hitting another person’s face (and the actors hadn’t even done that!) The sound is if anything, extremely low in amplitude and completely without the emotional energy needed to move an audience. Now while an audience is in the most part concerned with the visual element of a film, a film’s sound should be unobtrusive and go without notice, whilst having the most profound emotional effect it possibly can.

While I was having watermelon juice sprayed all over me, I was considering what all this should mean to an audio practitioner. When faced with a piece of film on the screen, how am I going to decide what props to use and record. What microphones and microphone techniques will produce the most emotive sound. That, I have found from experience, can only come from thorough research and experimentation.

At the time of recording these hit sounds for the martial arts sequence I was working on, I only had my hands on two microphones; a Rode NT3 and a very basic interview microphone I had picked up at a camera store for $40. Obviously the NT3 is a far superior microphone but there were some interesting discoveries when using the $40 interview microphone.

Both microphones were placed on stands in a fairly dull sounding room around fifteen to twenty centimeters from the watermelon. Pop screens were placed in front of each microphone (in the hope of protecting the microphones from watermelon spray) and fed into a small Yamaha 4-track tape machine. The output of the 4-track was then sent to a computer with a basic sound-card and into the multi-track program Samplitude Studio. First, I recorded for around a minute with only the NT3, giving the watermelon plenty of solid hits, adjusting the input gain on the 4-track with each hit. Then, I followed the same process with the interview microphone.

When listening to the recordings, I found that the NT3 had far better lower and mid-range frequency response, while strangely the interview microphone had a much sharper higher frequency response. Being a shotgun microphone, the interview microphone most likely had a large peak in the upper mid-range frequencies. The hit sounds had a very fast attack with no decay whatsoever. Satisfied with the recordings, I moved on to recording the movement sounds.

The Sound of Ferns

Movement is the second unique sound effect associated with martial art sequences and it was here that experimentation was needed. I thought about how the movement of a martial arts actor needed to be portrayed. They need to elicit the idea of speed, swiftness and power. What I needed was a ‘swoosh’ sound. I took a walk around the garden and pondered how I could create a ‘swoosh’ sound. It didn’t take long to come across some dead fern branches lying on the ground, and when I moved them quickly through the air, heard the perfect sound I was looking (or listening!) for; ‘swoosh!’

When it came to recording the ferns however, I found the process more difficult than recording the watermelon hits. The level of the sound source was very low, and adding gain to the microphone input added a lot of room noise. I think in this situation, a microphone with a wider polar pattern such as an omni pattern, or even a stereo microphone such as the Rode NT4, would have captured the overall sound better. In the end, I decided to use both microphones simultaneously, spread about twenty centimeters apart and facing about forty-five degrees away from each other. This seemed to capture the fast movement of the fern and give an adequate sound pressure level.

A Note on Recording Technique

Recording sound effects follows the same recording techniques as recording music, and while this topic is another article in itself, it should be briefly mentioned here. Most importantly, the limiting of external noise when recording sound effects is essential. Try not to forget, that for every new track you are adding to a film’s soundtrack, you are adding noise that could, and mostly will, cloud the final soundtrack.

Limit the amount of noise by only using as much gain as is necessary to record your sound, try to get your microphone as close as you can to the sound source, and try to only use equipment that operates with very low noise. Where appropriate, try to use noise reduction effects before you present your final audio mix to your editor.

In the case of this article, ideally I would have benefited greatly by having a more sensitive studio condenser with changeable polar patterns and a good quality preamp and compressor. In that way, I could have found the optimum microphone placement and recording level, without encountering clipping or distortion occurrences.

The Power of Mixing

When making sound effects, be it for martial arts sequences, the ambience of a spacecraft, or the complex sound of a war scene, sound effects mixing is an art in itself. Never forget the power of layering, positioning and the use of audio effects. There are a multitude of options when it comes to audio mixing software and there are some amazing open source programs available online. Basically, a program that offers multi-track mixing, some array of audio effects, and the ability to output to various audio formats should be sufficient for most sound effects editors.

For the project I was working on, I was using Samplitude Studio, which is a very powerful multi-track program, that has a long list of features beyond this article. The fern recordings needed to be louder and brighter so I made good use of the program’s built in noise reduction plugins, combined with multi-band compression to make the recordings louder, without introducing too much noise or distortion. Not all the watermelon recordings were usable as the first few hits clipped and were very distorted. Some room reverb was added to match the scene of the visuals and soften the samples, slightly distancing the perspective of the sound.

An incredible amount of subtle variation can be created by simply having different combinations of the same samples, at different levels and panning positions. By using Samplitude Studio’s pitch-shifting and time-stretching plugins, I was able to not only improve the movement samples, but I also came away with around thirty new movement samples. I went back to the watermelon samples and used the same technique. This gave me a much larger library of samples, giving more variation to the fight sequence audio. There is nothing worse than having the exact same sample for five strikes in a row. Even if the audience doesn’t notice it, someone will.

The samples created were then carefully synced to the visuals in the video editing program Final Cut Pro. There were more than one-hundred and twenty unique hit and movement samples in total, edited and created from variations of only around twenty original samples. Foley sounds were added later by another sound editor.

Final Thoughts

So comes to the end of the article ‘Making Sound Effects’. Always remember to experiment with different combinations of sounds and effects, and try to listen to your mixes on other systems to hear how they sound in different environments.

Never forget the importance of research. It brings understanding about technique and perception, which are two of the most integral factors in creating effective art.

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