90 Second Sound Design - White Noise Transitions and Movement

Better Whooshes, Fast

Sometimes you may need to create a lot of transition effects very quickly. I think many sound designers have different tricks for doing so, and certainly generating white noise is a common one. Recording props is great but that can definitely be time consuming just trying different things and getting performances just right.

By adding two simple steps shown in the clip, I have a way that I manage to create a ton of high quality movement or whoosh effects.

Re-Record the Source

I use white noise as the primary example because it can be shaped into all kinds of things to start with. It’s also simple enough to generate white noise and leave it at that.

As shown, I take my source recordings send them through a speaker. Then I proceed to move my portable recorder around in all directions at varying speeds. By just adding this simple step, you’ll get a natural doppler effect. Starting with this natural effect will only make your movement effects sound more realistic. I spent maybe 30 minutes recording different sources here.

Branching out from White Noise, you can really Re-Record whatever you want. I chose to stick with some drones and noise artificially generated with the Eurorack synth rig at work.

Processing Tips

This is where fun starts. Although a discussion for another time, I really like Unfiltered Audio plugins for designing my transition effects. One reason in particular is the input follower.

As shown in the video, I use the input follower to modulate different effects and parameters. This allows the natural motion captured to directly drive what is going on. Using an input follower will also save you the time of manually automating things when you’re on a crunch.

Conclusions

Creating movement and transition effects is always fun, especially trying out different processing techniques and experimenting other ways. Hopefully the approach I’ve shown will give you some cool ideas of your own!