A Guide For Using Machinery Textures in Sound Design For Music Production
If you've never experimented with using mechanical sound effects, foley samples of machines, or tried to manipulate these kinds of field recordings for musical purposes, you might be surprised at where it takes you creatively.
You will train your ears to listen for interesting qualities in sounds that you might have missed before, learn a lot about recording that will carry over into how you record traditional instruments, and work your creative muscles by being forced to think outside the box with what a sound could be and not what it is.
Let's jump in the specifics of how to get started working with mechanical sound!
Finding good mechanical sound effects
Mechanical sounds can be very helpful in sound design because they tend to loop well, have a complexity to them, and certain machines being fairly noisy are good candidates for manipulation with different filtering techniques.
Things like clicks, pops, rattles, and whirring sounds are pretty common in a good sfx library. One quality you should look for that isn't talked about as much is sounds that let you create unusual sonic perspective. You can take something that sounds absolutely huge in real life and make it sound pretty small as a sound effect.
Similarly, you can sometimes take a sound from small, relatively quiet machines like tiny servo motors, then record and process them in a way that makes them sound absolutely gigantic by placing recording mics very close, using EQ boosts in the bass and low mids, and lots of compression later.
The key is to mostly be on the lookout for interesting textures and always be thinking about what a sound can be not necessarily what it is right now.
How To Properly Record Machinery Sounds
We wouldn't obsess too much over the perfect set of mics or the perfect room. When recording machines you usually don't have a ton of options to treat the room, you're often recording in the environment where the machines are used.
Good mics like a flat set of Earthworks are a good choice, but sometimes mics that color the sound can be interesting too. When recording machine textures for sound design and sound effects, we're a lot more concerned about things being interesting instead of technically perfect.
Sometimes the wonky screwed up recording is WAY more interesting than the perfectly EQed, pristine version.
You can do tons with a simple and cheap field recorder or even just using your phone's recording app.
Mic Positioning: Close Mics vs Room Mics
Sometimes putting a mic really far away from the machine source is good because you're capturing both the machine sound as a whole as well as the resonance and ambient sound of the room. There is certainly a place for this.
However, particularly with larger devices, it can be exciting to try placing mics very close and move them around to different parts of the machine. Depending on the microphone position, you can often find significantly different sounds on different parts of the machine. They're exactly like musical instruments in this way.
You can also experiment with multiple mics in different places. If you're going to do this, it's helpful to have a recording device that can invert phase for situations where you have mics on opposite sides of the device.
Eliminating Room Sound Completely
As we mentioned, there is certainly a place for recording machine sounds that are distant and incorporating room ambience.
But what about completely ditching room ambience to see what that gets you? This will take things to a completely different place. One way to achieve this after the fact with software is to use de-reverb plugins like those offered by iZotope's Ozone Suite. This will introduce aliasing when applied heavily.
But remember these kind of recordings for music production and sound design are a lot more concerned with interesting sounds and not perfect sounds. Maybe the aliasing sounds cool! If it does, why not use it? There's no reason or rule not to.
Another technique is to eliminate the room sound at the time of recording. In addition to using very close mic placement, you can go even further by using contact mics and placing them on different parts of the machines you are recording. This will yield basically no room sound and can sometimes pick up sounds on the machine you didn't even realize were there.
If you want to try the contact mic method, try recording the internal sounds of the computer you already use. Between the fans, keyboard, and various electric signals rattling around inside it, there's a whole world of unusual sounds inside your computer that you can record...back into your computer for further processing.
Multi-Microphone Setups
The ideal setup if you can manage it and don't want to comprise is to use all the techniques mentioned with a multitrack recorder.
If you want to maximize the number of sound effects you can make from one session with a machine, you could place ambient mics at a distance in 2-3 places. Over the device as a stereo pair and a 3rd mic as far away as the room will allow is plenty.
Then, you can place movable close mics near interesting parts of the machine as well as take a contact mic and move that around various places on the machine to see what kinds of less obvious mechanical sound effects you can capture.
Creating Unique Sound Effects From Your Machine Recordings
Now that you have a concept of how to approach making recordings of machine sounds, the next goal should be to use them to create extraordinary sound effects.
Start by experimenting with pitch alteration or changing time rate. One cool detail of using mics with a very high frequency response over 20kHz is you can take recorded sounds way way above what humans can hear and pitch them down into a range we can hear. There's a lot of interesting stuff up there you might not have realized you recorded!
You can also of course filter, modulate, distort or apply granular effects to you sounds to transform them into something completely different, then just write music with whatever comes out of that process. This is exactly what we did with our foley sample pack, STONEWIRE.
Research and Explore DIY Devices
Another approach to take when trying to create intriguing sounds from machine recordings is to try your hand at building odd machines explicitly for the purpose of recording unique sounds.
A common version of this amongst composers is to attach resonant objects to a metal or wood box of some kind then find interesting ways of activating parts of the "machine". Everything from plucking it to striking, bowing, or breaking it are up for grabs! There really are no rules as long as what you're hearing is compelling to your artistic sensibilities.
Layering Sounds and Transforming Them With Signal Processing
Most people tend to think of audio effects as a refinement or modification of what is already happening.
But what if you thought of your effects as a kind of synthesizer instead? The starting recording is effectively the "oscillator" section and the effects you add after it transform the sound into it's final result.
Even with the very basic types of effects like changing their pitch, stretching time, filtering, distortion and modulation effects you can radically reshape a sound into something completely different. With most modern DAWs it is also very easy to layer multiple effects chains and trigger then like you would a traditional synthesizer so the possibilities here are endless.
You can experiment with layering sounds in difference frequency ranges or by different levels of activity and rhythm.
What To Know About Capturing Various Machinery Sizes
The size of the machine you plan to record can have an influence on what equipment you use.
Smaller devices have the challenge of it sometimes being difficult to fit microphones in the places you'd like. Very large machines sometimes are hard to capture in their totality if you're dealing with something the size of a bus or boat motor.
For smaller devices, capturing all their detail and nuance is best achieved with contact mics and small maneuverable mics that are physically smaller. We like Earthworks mics a lot for this purpose because they're small and very neutral sounding mics.
Working with larger devices might simply require more cables that you'd normally have on hand. Beyond that it may be valuable to have mics with a few different polar patterns and roll offs. Larger machines can produce huge amounts of low end sometimes, so having the option to switch to an Omni polar pattern to reduce proximity effects or engage a bass roll off switch can be helpful if excess bass frequencies are messing up an otherwise interesting recording.
Should You Use Downloadable Mechanical Sound Collections?
There are tons of these and you can even include a decent chunk of our foley sample pack STONEWIRE in this category.
If you find a collection of sound effects that you like and it's royalty free, we don't see a reason not to use it most of the time. The only thing that would make us think twice is if it was not royalty fre.
One thing to consider with free collections of mechanical sound effects is that lots of other people are likely to have them too, so you should have a plan for making these sounds your own with how you process them. You don't want to use unprocessed source material that's exactly the same as what others are using with no variations.
Summary
Capturing, processing and looping mechanical sound effects offer a lot of possibilities for creating your own sound effects and doing very musical sound design.
Getting the perfect recording if mechanical sound effects is a lot less important than capturing interesting sounds. This is why with even a phone or cheap field recorder, you can get achieve surprisingly good results. Interesting beats perfect every time.
That said, if you can make recordings at a high technical level, you should try to do that. Use different microphones, experiment with different placements and keep an open mind. Sometimes really strange mic placement will yield amazing results.
Then like we did with the STONEWIRE foley sample pack, you can use modern plugins and processing to transform these recordings into a unique collection of sounds.
Frequently Asked Questions
What makes mechanical sound effects important in sound design?
Sometimes the best sound design ideas can come from unlikely sources, for example by taking a traditionally unmusical sound and finding a way to make it work in a musical setting. Mechanical sounds in particular can be used as percussive one shot samples, loops or even melodic elements. They will have a different texture and character than a traditional instrument, so they can be a good way to come up with new ideas.
How does the placement of the microphone affect the sound recording of machinery?
Microphone placement in any setting makes a huge difference whether you're recording a typewriter or a robot or a guitar. All the same principles of audio recording apply. If you move your mics further away, the sound will tend to get darker and capture more room ambience. Positioning mics closer or using contact mics will capture more detail and high end. In some cases you can also experiment with the proximity effects of cardioid microphones which will enhance the bass frequencies.
What are the benefits of using multiple microphones in recording machinery sounds?
Multitracking machines and industrial sounds is a great option if your recording setup can support it because it gives you the most flexibility to manipulate sounds once you are back in the studio. You can use the mics in isolation, you have alternative options if there was any issues with any of the individual mics, and you have the option of more sophisticated mixing techniques like automating the levels of your various mics to achieve interesting spatial effects.
