The Sound Design section is a place where you can find
information about designing and using your own sounds for musical purposes. Here you'll
find articles about sound creation and links to tools you can use. At the present time,
this section is geared towards sound design using SoundBlaster AWE and SBLive! soundcards,
at least when it comes to the details of editing instrument parameters. Still, most of the
information found here can be applied to any decent modern sampler or synth.
A Sound, an Instrument, a Patch, a Program (or whatever you
like to call it), designed on a traditional sampler / synthesizer is built out of two
different entities, on two different levels : the Sample(s) and the Instrument
Parameters. To be able to design good sounds, you have to have the knowledge and
skill to create sound at both levels. This site will try to provide some of the knowledge
you might need, the skills will come from trying out the tools, experimenting and 'doing
it yourself'. Knock yourself out!
Articles
- The Art of SoundFont: A Step-by-Step Guide
- I've finally been able to track down a copy of
Jess Skov-Nielsens excellent article about soundfont creation. The article
was featured on the Creative Inspire webpages some time ago, but
mysteriously disappeared. It is a very good introduction to anyone
interested in creating their own soundfonts using Vienna. The link is to a
zip-file containing a PDF file as well as some samples that accompany the
tutorial. The PDF-file was put together from the original webpages by
Michael Coleman, webmaster of the GlowGeorge
website. You'll need Adobe
Acrobat Reader to read it. As mentioned above, the article was writen by Jess Skov-Nielsen.
I don't have his email address, but would really like to get in touch with
him, so if anyone knows how to reach him, please let
me know.
-
- Removing
unwanted Noises from Audio Samples
- Andreas
Sumerauer, the creator of the Early
Patches soundfonts ( "The Sounds of rare acoustic Instruments"
) has written a useful article showing us how to remove noises from audio
samples - using the CoolEdit
2000 sample editor. If you're interested in really vintage
instruments, or just into "Late Renaissance Techno", have a look
at his website,
which features free soundfonts from his great production.
-
- Soundfonts
and Cakewalk Pro 8.0
- This is a short tutorial on how to use soundfonts in your
compositions for you Cakewalk Pro 8.0 users. The article was writen by Chris Upfield.
-
- Cigar Music
- A quick start to audio compression
- Joost Boomkamp has written another good article. This one is
about audio compression, with images and sounds that illustrates the process. You'll find
another good article about audio compression at the Alesis
website.
-
- The Basics
of Digital Audio
- This article is an introduction to digital audio. It starts
with a thorough explanation of the fundamental terms of audio, like frequency and
loudness, moves on to the digital bit, and finishes with a step-by-step guide to recording
sound on your own. It is a must-read for anyone wanting to record and work with digital
audio. The article is written by Joost Boomkamp.
-
- Vintage
Synthesis on the AWE32/64
- There is a lot more to sound design than sampling a preset
sound from some synthesizer or sampler and creating an 'instrument' that just plays that
sample when you press a key on your MIDI keyboard. Ian Wilson has written an article about
what he calls Vintage Synthesis, where he describes how to use the AWE soundcard to create
new sounds, rather than just playing back samples of someone else's instruments. The
article is also a good introduction to sound design in general. Ian has created a
soundfont called 'Vintage Dreams Waves' that illustrates (or rather: auralizes) the
article. The Soundfont is available in the HammerSound SoundFont Library
(stored under the category 'Collections'). Ians website, Vintage Synth
Dreams, has more articles as well as more of his excellent soundfonts - well
worth a visit!
-
- Computers
and Music - Using SB soundcards, computer and E-mu SoundFonts
- This article, written by Kai Phil, explains how to use the
software included with the SoundBlaster AWE soundcard to make your own sounds /
soundfonts. People not familiar with using Vienna to create soundfonts will definetly
benefit from reading this article. [Original website]
-
- Basics
- Jim Aikin of Keyboard Magazine has written a series of
articles explaining synthesizers, samplers, sound creation and MIDI for those of you who
are new to the game. Since the restructuring of the Keyboard site, only one
article (describing the basics of MIDI) is left.
-
- Sound
Design[As of May 3. 1998, this link is dead due to massive
restructuring of the Keyboard website. Keyboard editor Marvin Sanders has ensured me
that these pages will be up in a couple of months...]
- Michael Marans, Keyboard Magazine, has written a series of
articles regarding designing sound, both at the 'sample' level and at the 'instrument
parameters' level.
-
- Physics and Psychophysics of Music
- For those of us interested in what is really going on, this
article is definitely worth reading. Among other things, it defines sound, explains
loudness, spectra, tuning, scales, and the process of hearing. Written by David Worrall at
the Australian Centre for the Arts and Technology, Australian
National University.
-
- Your Article
- .. could be here. If you think you've got some knowledge
regarding sound design that you'd like to share with others, send me a mail and maybe your name will be in gold (or
more probable: in white) on this page some day.
Tools
You are not on your own! There are several tools that will
help you create your sounds. You'll need tools to cover sample editing and creation, as
well as for editing the instrument parameters. A good place to start with sample editing
and creation is CoolEdit
from Syntrillium Software. As for editing instruments, AWE users are more or less stuck
with Vienna 2.3
from CreativeLabs.
The Shareware
Music Machine has a comprehensive list of software to create sound and music. Go and
take a look, there's a lot of great software out there...
The complete HammerSound website, including all text,
images and databases, is copyright (c) 1997-2000 Thomas Hammer
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