The N2FNH Sound Effects Library 3B: Simple Sound Design!

I've gotten a lot of mileage from the basic everyday Microsoft Windows 98 ding wav. I currently use CoolEdit Pro Version 2.1 so when I produced a Random Access Thought on the JingTong general purpose handhelds, I needed a show and tell slideshow bell, like what you might have heard if you've been around long enough to recall those clunky junky 35mm slide film and vinyl audio record machines. The bell was the audio cue to jump to the next visual slide.

I would have used the Microsoft ding wav but as simple as it was, it was all too closely associated with PCs, so I downshifted the frequency of the bell by ten per cent. The original duration was maintained and the resulting effect was a dull and uninspiring sad little bell. But this was exactly what I wanted.

At another earlier time, I took the ding wav and time-stretched out to about four seconds. The DING became a DIIIIIIIIG. Then I passed it though a so-called CoolEdit Pro"Martian Echo" and the resultant effect was more of a DEE DOO DEE DOO DEE DOO. I then looped a lot of these DEE DOOS in sequence and they made for an appealing high tech background sound, especially when tossed in with other custom produced ambiances.

Bored one day, I took the DEE DOO loop file and adjusted the sample rate from 22.050KHz to 19,2000 KHz. Flanged it. Then, reversed the file. Flanged it again. Adjusted the sample rate back to 22.050KHz. The result was startling! A nifty very 1950's vintage vibrato-like outer space music effect. I use parts of this track now quite often.

I've produced a number of Random Access programs and promos which revolve around the theory of the Internet Tubes. I was able to assemble a unique mini-library of Internet Tube effects, going back to the DEE DOO noise as a source effect. But remember! The Microsoft ding wav was the source of all of these!

Two things I did to the files: First, I Dopplered them all, including the ambiances - I wanted an aural feeling that things on the super information highway burbling by at high speed, like cars and trucks zooming by with that distinctive sweeping high to low WHOOOOM. Second, the DEE DOO noise was subjected to extensive modification to shift the DEE DOO into a more brassy tinkling sound, as if the e-mail and file transfers flitting by were feverishly flapping their tiny metallic wings. Finally, these same sounds were passed through a so-called CoolEdit Pro"Tunnel Echo" which really made the flying wavs sound even more tinkly and brassy.

You've seen photographs of a house-sized ball of string with a man standing next to it. The Nutty guy started with a strand maybe an inch or two long when he was seven. Fifty five years later, there's a fifteen foot diameter cloth sphere in his front yard that the neighbors wish he would just roll away. But the theory is the same. Start out with something small and simple and you can build, assemble and construct things that look or sound nothing like the original, but of course, much better and far more exciting!

That's what creativity is all about!