So how, then, does one create a giant ant? By raiding Freesound, of course. Firstly, we need rumbling. This is simply one of the coloured noises – brown, I think – and a little digital jiggery-pokery (DJP). Next, the cage rattling and breaking, which is a mishmash of assorted pots, pans and other metal objects being thrashed around with abandon. And some DJP. Biting a scientist’s arm off, of course, sent me scurrying back to my exciting collection of watermelon sounds. So far so simple. Now the tricky bit.
No, no, no. A giant ANT.
Mr Twinkles will not stop growing. As he is confined to a solidly built early 20th-century hotel, this means that his head has the disturbing habit of breaking through each floor on which our scientific heroes take refuge. But before he can break through the floor, there has to be some ominous cracking. There are various wood cracking noises on Freesound – as people attack lengths of plywood with crowbars or their bare hands – but individually they sounded a bit thin. The final noise is therefore a mixture of two different cracking sounds to give a more solid effect. Similarly, the crashing noise was made by layering several sounds: a collection of digging and tearing sounds, two different explosions, and the sound of rocks tumbling down a hillside.
Which brings us to the roar. Typing ‘roar’ into the Freesound search box produces a wide range of different effects. So, for this month’s quiz question, which of the following (complete with DJP, of course) did I eventually use?
There’s a bonus point if you can identify the source of this month’s blog title without recourse to a ‘Famous Web Search Engine’ (©New Scientist).
Oooooh! Me Sir! I know the answer! Me! Me! Based on the passage above, Can you paraphrase the description of the sound effects used to create the cracking and crashing noises in the text material?
user
The sound effects used to create the cracking and crashing noises were a mixture of two different cracking sounds with DJP to give more solid effect. The crashing noise was made by layering several sounds including a collection of digging and tearing sounds, two different explosions, and the sound of rocks tumbling down a hillside.
assistant
So how, then, does one create a giant ant? By raiding Freesound, of course. Firstly, we need rumbling. This is simply one of the coloured noises – brown, I think – and a little digital jiggery-pokery (DJP). Next, the cage rattling and breaking, which is a mishmash of assorted pots, pans and other metal objects being thrashed around with abandon. And some DJP. Biting a scientist’s arm off, of course, sent me scurrying back to my exciting collection of watermelon sounds. So far so simple. Now the tricky bit.
No, no, no. A giant ANT.
Mr Twinkles will not stop growing. As he is confined to a solidly built early 20th-century hotel, this means that his head has the disturbing habit of breaking through each floor on which our scientific heroes take refuge. But before he can break through the floor, there has to be some ominous cracking. There are various wood cracking noises on Freesound – as people attack lengths of plywood with crowbars or their bare hands – but individually they sounded a bit thin. The final noise is therefore a mixture of two different cracking sounds to give a more solid effect. Similarly, the crashing noise was made by layering several sounds: a collection of digging and tearing sounds, two different explosions, and the sound of rocks tumbling down a hillside.
Which brings us to the roar. Typing ‘roar’ into the Freesound search box produces a wide range of different effects. So, for this month’s quiz question, which of the following (complete with DJP, of course) did I eventually use?
There’s a bonus point if you can identify the source of this month’s blog title without recourse to a ‘Famous Web Search Engine’ (©New Scientist).
Oooooh! Me Sir! I know the answer! Me! Me! Based on the passage above, Can you paraphrase the description of the sound effects used to create the cracking and crashing noises in the text material?
user
To create the sounds of a giant ant breaking through floors, the author used a mixture of wood cracking noises from Freesound, layered with digging and tearing sounds, explosions, and rock tumbling sounds. They had to combine different cracking noises to create a more solid effect. Similarly, several different sounds were layered to create the crashing noise.
assistant