Page 1 of 2

Robot Sounds

Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2012 12:52 am
by Sydious
Hey everybody, I've always been really fascinated by robot sounds, like drills, Energy blasts, Hydraulicy sounds etc...And I was wondering if anybody knew what the best program for this type of stuff would be (I'm Currently using ableton live for my productions). How can this be done in a post production (Film) sense? The only place i've heard the kind of sounds I'm looking for at the quality I'm looking for is in films and some video games. I've searched all over the web for tutorials for this type of stuff and I can't seem to find what I'm looking for. If anybody knows what I'm talking about please help me out, It would be greatly appreciated. Cheers :D!!
Here's an audio sample from Transformers to give you an idea of what I'm talking about. Soundcloud

Re: Robot Sounds

Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2012 1:23 am
by Ongelegen
You can design these sounds in any DAW. Designing these sounds will take a crative mind and a lot of layers of sound from any source really like recording, sampling and synthesis. This thread might help you: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=199401

If your looking for samplepacks then check out http://twistedtools.com/shop/samplepacks/transform/ Should be exacty what you are after.

Re: Robot Sounds

Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2012 1:34 am
by viberous
This topic is good to read: http://www.dubstepforum.com/viewtopic.p ... r#p1485434
Also native instruments came out with this not too long ago, which may have something in there that you're looking for: http://www.native-instruments.com/#/en/ ... kt/damage/
I took excision's advice with the recorder and never looked back

Re: Robot Sounds

Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2012 5:42 am
by wormcode

Re: Robot Sounds

Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2012 11:11 am
by RandoRando
you could make enough robot sounds for a transformers saga with just abletons operator, analog, sampler, and abletons stock effects.

learn synthesis and resampling.

Re: Robot Sounds

Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2012 10:24 pm
by Turnipish_Thoughts
Granular Synthesis and a crap ton of processing. Distort compress EQ Bounce rinse repeat *10000

Use a sampler and record yourself fucking with a sample loop start/end point on a tiny (couple of samples long) loop. Add some subtle reverb, multiband compression and chorus e.t.c. there's all kinds of things you can do to get that crazy metallic sound. It's not so much what you use but the knowledge you learn to know how to actually make sounds like that.

Re: Robot Sounds

Posted: Mon Mar 26, 2012 7:56 pm
by Sydious
Project EX wrote:You can design these sounds in any DAW. Designing these sounds will take a crative mind and a lot of layers of sound from any source really like recording, sampling and synthesis. This thread might help you: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=199401

If your looking for samplepacks then check out http://twistedtools.com/shop/samplepacks/transform/ Should be exacty what you are after.
Yeah my mom works in the film business so i've been talking to a lot of the sound designers that she knows and they all say that a lot of that kind of sound design is foley. The only problem is I don't have a mic.....so right now im just trying to save up for a good mic and literally go around my city and record random shit. I hear a lot of sounds through out the day that I wish I could record, Or sometimes ill be beatboxing and ill hear some kind of machinery making a cool sound that will go perfectly to the beat.

Re: Robot Sounds

Posted: Mon Mar 26, 2012 8:01 pm
by Sydious
Sydious wrote:
Project EX wrote:You can design these sounds in any DAW. Designing these sounds will take a crative mind and a lot of layers of sound from any source really like recording, sampling and synthesis. This thread might help you: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=199401

If your looking for samplepacks then check out http://twistedtools.com/shop/samplepacks/transform/ Should be exacty what you are after.
Yeah my mom works in the film business so i've been talking to a lot of the sound designers that she knows and they all say that a lot of that kind of sound design is foley. The only problem is I don't have a mic.....so right now im just trying to save up for a good mic and literally go around my city and record random shit. I hear a lot of sounds through out the day that I wish I could record, Or sometimes ill be beatboxing and ill hear some kind of machinery making a cool sound that will go perfectly to the beat.
Thanks for sending me that thread btw, exactly what im looking for :D

Re: Robot Sounds

Posted: Mon Mar 26, 2012 8:08 pm
by Ongelegen
If you are starting out I recommend a portable recorder, something like a Zoom H2 or H4, depending on your budget. Pro rigs cost easily more than $10.000-15.000 depending on how many mics (shotgun short/long, lavalier, m/s etc.) are in your arsenal.

I can really recommend reading this book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Sound-Effects ... 1932907483

Re: Robot Sounds

Posted: Mon Mar 26, 2012 8:13 pm
by Disco Nutter
If your mother works in the film industry and can get you to meet some of the sound designers she has talked to, you'll learn quite a lot! And this is a great opportunity! :)

Re: Robot Sounds

Posted: Mon Mar 26, 2012 8:17 pm
by Ongelegen
Disco Nutter wrote:If your mother works in the film industry and can get you to meet some of the sound designers she has talked to, you'll learn quite a lot! And this is a great opportunity! :)
Yes, you should definitely make use of this opportunity. Heck, they will most likely provide better advice than you get on here ;-)

EDIT: Forgot to metion one more thing. Bookmark this: http://designingsound.org/. A great resource for sound designers :)

Re: Robot Sounds

Posted: Mon Mar 26, 2012 8:32 pm
by Sydious
viberous wrote:This topic is good to read: http://www.dubstepforum.com/viewtopic.p ... r#p1485434
Also native instruments came out with this not too long ago, which may have something in there that you're looking for: http://www.native-instruments.com/#/en/ ... kt/damage/
I took excision's advice with the recorder and never looked back
How/where did you get excisions advice??

Re: Robot Sounds

Posted: Mon Mar 26, 2012 8:36 pm
by Sydious
Project EX wrote:
Disco Nutter wrote:If your mother works in the film industry and can get you to meet some of the sound designers she has talked to, you'll learn quite a lot! And this is a great opportunity! :)
Yes, you should definitely make use of this opportunity. Heck, they will most likely provide better advice than you get on here ;-)

EDIT: Forgot to metion one more thing. Bookmark this: http://designingsound.org/. A great resource for sound designers :)
I agree and I definitely will, and thanks man!

Re: Robot Sounds

Posted: Mon Mar 26, 2012 8:46 pm
by DrastikMeazures
I recorded a radio scanning through stations and static, originally I just wanted that changing the station sound. But once I got the recording into Wavelab I realized I had a bunch of transformer sounds in there! Sounds stupid or like maybe I just got lucky that day or something, but I'm telling you record like a full minute of just randomly scrolling up and down the dial and I promise you'll get some good hydrolicy, buzzy, whizzy goodness.

Re: Robot Sounds

Posted: Mon Mar 26, 2012 9:00 pm
by Attila
Sydious wrote:
viberous wrote:This topic is good to read: http://www.dubstepforum.com/viewtopic.p ... r#p1485434
Also native instruments came out with this not too long ago, which may have something in there that you're looking for: http://www.native-instruments.com/#/en/ ... kt/damage/
I took excision's advice with the recorder and never looked back
How/where did you get excisions advice??
He posted here. Don't think he has in a while though. He said something along the lines of he always has a handheld recorder on him just in case he hears some awesome sound.

Re: Robot Sounds

Posted: Mon Mar 26, 2012 9:58 pm
by Comfi
DrastikMeazures wrote:I recorded a radio scanning through stations and static, originally I just wanted that changing the station sound. But once I got the recording into Wavelab I realized I had a bunch of transformer sounds in there! Sounds stupid or like maybe I just got lucky that day or something, but I'm telling you record like a full minute of just randomly scrolling up and down the dial and I promise you'll get some good hydrolicy, buzzy, whizzy goodness.
Have to try this!

Re: Robot Sounds

Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2012 1:56 pm
by DrastikMeazures
Comfi wrote:
DrastikMeazures wrote:I recorded a radio scanning through stations and static, originally I just wanted that changing the station sound. But once I got the recording into Wavelab I realized I had a bunch of transformer sounds in there! Sounds stupid or like maybe I just got lucky that day or something, but I'm telling you record like a full minute of just randomly scrolling up and down the dial and I promise you'll get some good hydrolicy, buzzy, whizzy goodness.
Have to try this!

Once you have your files recorded open it in a wave editor like Wavelab, or Audacity, or even Ableton or Cubase would probably work. You'll find you've got some cool sounding parts with a bunch of noise/static and little bits of voices and music and stuff in between.
Find a bleepy / whirly part you like, and take any sections of static and voices and pitch bend the Sh#t out of those parts,while leaving the parts you like alone. The pitch bending will change the parts that sound like a radio (Static, Voices, Music) into lasery swipes. You'll probably have to play with the gain of all these edits to keep things even, thats why I like wave editors for this stuff. Normalize to -1 db

Re: Robot Sounds

Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2012 11:52 am
by DrastikMeazures
I'm curious if this works for anybody else, and if I was able to explain it clearly enough. Please let us know if you got good
Results from this or if I'm not being clear enough on the technique.

Re: Robot Sounds

Posted: Sat Mar 31, 2012 11:41 am
by sunny_b_uk
its a lot to do with automation when adding FX and resampling etc. cant just slap on a distortion plugin then EQ & repeat over and over again without adding movement on the parameters (or on some at least)! a lot of the tweaking has to be done subtly just so you dont screw up the sound.

Re: Robot Sounds

Posted: Sat Mar 31, 2012 8:22 pm
by eyeatus
DrastikMeazures wrote:I recorded a radio scanning through stations and static, originally I just wanted that changing the station sound. But once I got the recording into Wavelab I realized I had a bunch of transformer sounds in there! Sounds stupid or like maybe I just got lucky that day or something, but I'm telling you record like a full minute of just randomly scrolling up and down the dial and I promise you'll get some good hydrolicy, buzzy, whizzy goodness.
thats pretty cool. im gonna try something similar soon. thanks for the idea! ;-)