How To Start Using A Foley Sound Library In Your Music
Do you keep hearing about foley sounds and and wonder what all the hype is? Or maybe you've seen them used in music production but are confused...is this a film technique or a music technique?
The truth is it is both and in this article we're going to demystify both as well as get into some things you can do today to start using recorded foley sounds in your music.
It will elevate your productions and help you stand out with a unique voice, so lets get into it!
What Are Foley Sounds In Music Production?
The term foley comes from the film industry. A foley artist is generally the person who records sound effects that enhance the film's experience, named after Jack Foley who invented a lot of the techniques.
Door creaks, the snap of a match lighting, footsteps, a big impact, the click of a lock, or the zing of someone sliding down a rope are all examples from movies where sound effects really enhance what you're seeing on the screen.
However, in music, foley tends to overlap with what some people refer to a field recordings or found sounds.
This basically means sounds of not traditionally musical things you record outside the studio in the world somewhere. The clink of a coffee cup, the ambient noise of an airport, the sounds of a contact mic pressed to your computers fan motor—really whatever you want.
Why Would You Use Foley In your Productions?
Now that you know what foley is in a music context, why would you want to use this?
Simple. These kinds of samples add a certain texture and vibe to a track that can be really really tough to re-create with traditional music instruments.
Many sounds that are "bad" by standard definitions can be really interesting musically in the context of other things. A bright, clean sound appears more pure if you put it next to something covered in dirt.
You could for example, use a foley sample of actual dirt. How would you synthesize that? Sounds like a pain in the ass. It's easier to just go outside where dirt is abundant and bring a microphone along.
This kind of sound effect can be deeply personal because no two people are going to approach it the same way. This is a great quality to fold into your work that makes it more you.
How To Record Foley Sound Effects
Need Free Foley Sound Effects? Making Them Might Not Be As Hard As You Think!
Can you use a beautiful high end tube microphone to capture your foley sounds in pristine, perfect form? Yes of course you can.
Can you instead use your dying iPhone that now has a very unique polar pattern due to it accumulating 6 years of pocket lint over the internal microphone? Also yes. Sometimes to greater levels of success.
The second option might actually be cooler because its more quirky and hard to reproduce. If you can make it work, it will help make your sounds more unique to you and your music. And don't forget that you can do a lot with modern software to remove noise and shape the tone of the sound.
Think Like A Foley Sounds Effects Artist
If you lookup video of how a film foley artist works, it's remarkably low-tech a lot of the time.
Need to sound like a bird flying away? Get some feathers. A gate opening? Get some other rusty metal that squeaks.
Where it gets more interesting is when foley artists need to create sounds for things that don't or can't exist in real life. They have to imagine what something would sound like if it did.
This video of the sounds used in the movie Dune are good examples of how this is put together, sometimes using or building odd objects to make sounds people don't typically hear in real life.
This help to create a unique sound world in the film to make fictional things feel believable and authentic.
Using Cinematic Foley Techniques in Music
You can use this same techniques in a musical context to build your own sound world. Some more cliché examples are things like sirens, various weapon sounds and "romantic" sounds.
We would encourage you to think outside the box here, even deliberately do the opposite of what is common in different genres of music.
Here is how to get started making foley sounds for your next project using only a phone:
Make a list of the common percussion sounds that are used in most genres of music. Kicks, snares, hi hats, pitched drum sounds are a good start.
Start experimenting with sounds around you that loosely sound similar. A low bump against an object for example can be used as a kick or short, higher sounds might work well as the basis for a hi hat or snare.
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Record a few different variations of each sound, download your recorded sounds into your DAW and start sequencing them like you would with any other sound from a sample pack. See how they feel with more traditional instruments or as a layer.
If this first attempt isn't successful, don't be discouraged!
The act of putting this stuff together will teach you a lot and if you keep repeating this over time, you'll improve with every iteration.
Don't get it twisted, this is actually somewhat challenging work but its also a skill you're developing so it's supposed to be a challenge. Anything worth doing isn't going to be too easy.
The fun part of doing the work is by developing your own process for creating foley sound effects, this will help make your productions more individual.
No two people do this the same.
Over time you'll accumulate a collection of sound effects that are only yours. And you never know, sometimes a sound from a few years ago you didn't know what to do with will suddenly become useful as your skills grow.
Common Foley Sound Effect
Here are some more ideas for foley effects that you can try to incorporate in your next song:
Foley Textures - Beyond Vinyl Crackles
Its a cliché in many genres to incorporate ambient sound effects like vinyl crackles, nature sound effects, or crowd noises, but the musical principle behind it is not!
Using some sustained sound with an element of randomness has a lot of possibilities and can help avoid moments in a track where you want to avoid a complete silence but not fill things in too much.
Some ideas to get you started are:
Machines or small toys
Sounds that are very loud in real life, mixed very quietly. Like a jet taking off, a major city block during the day, the brakes of a train screeching.
very quiet sounds, amplified and compressed to be much louder than they normally are. Even something as simple as running your fingers along a surface can be musically interesting in the right context.
Wood, Footsteps, and more
Sounds that are clear in origin like ceramics, metallic, wooden, or someone doing something as simple as walking on an interesting surface like gravel or leaves can be compelling and add a distinct feeling to a track.
Odd Rhythms
Sometimes you can find interesting rhythms by looping a foley sample that on its own doesn't appear to have a beat to it, but it reveals itself when repeated.
Jingling keys or stirring a cup of coffee are both examples that often will work well. One production trick is to start with a looped sounds like this and program more traditional percussion around it to come up with rhythms that you normally would not think to write.
Pitched Sounds
As you go about your life, have your ears open to objects that have a clear, singable pitch to them.
Those tend to make great objects to sample because you can repitch them and write melodies or chords with them. Some people will even build fully playable Kontakt Instruments with things like this.
Free Foley Sound Effects vs. Paid Options
While this article has some ideas to get you started with foley sounds and making them yourself for free, we aren't going to dress this up—it's a ton of work.
Especially if you plan on making a large library like we have. Our foley sample pack STONEWIRE was recorded entirely inside a hardware store with a field recorder, which resulted in over 8,000+ raw sounds that we had to sift through, process, pick favorites, and organize.
Whether you decide to use our STONEWIRE sample pack or another company's collection of foley sounds, it is also sometimes useful to have examples of how to do things. This is why we decided to also include processed loops and the full Ableton Live 11 session so you can see exactly how we did the sound design.
If you open the session in Ableton you can literally just mute the effects until you get back to the original starting sound and study how we arrived at the final result.
Get Started With Foley Sound Effects Today
Hopefully you found this helpful and are inspired to start working with foley sound effects by making them yourself or using ours.
We use foley sounds to synthesize interesting new sounds every day, so its a very fruitful skill to add to your music production skill set. The possibilities with it are truly endless.
