Sound designer Diego Stocco has created a new video, A Fisttul of Leaves, that demonstrates how to transform the sound of a leaf blower into a complete track.
At the 2016 NAMM Show, Stocco was demoing the Spectrasonics’ Omnisphere and how it lets import and use your own audio samples.
As an example, he used a sound that he says “has been tormenting my life,” his “sonic enemy,” the “infernal machine that ruins the life of many musicians” – a noisy leaf-blower.
Stocco demonstrates how to import the leaf-blower sample, and then transforms it. He shows how to use Omnisphere 2’s “innerspace” effect, which takes the sonic qualities of one sound (in this instance, a harmonium), and apply it to another sound. He also explores using LFO’s to module effects to make sounds that evolve over time.
As always, with Stocco’s videos, he demonstrates how with some creativity, you can take some pretty uninspiring source material and do amazing things with it.
thats just Weird
Damn this is hard to watch.
I feel like he’s trying to sell me Spray Hair or that coating spray that makes your truck into a submarine.
Not a biggie, but noticed it anyway: the article text is slightly inaccurate. Diego uses two separate effects to process the leafblower sound:
1. Harmonia, which is not actually an audio effect, but plays additional copies of the sound at different pitches & levels.
2. The actual Innerspace effect, which does indeed apply the sonic qualities of one sound to another, but according to the video at least, it doesn’t have anything to do with a “harmonium”. 🙂
I look forward to the video where he shows how to make music by sampling the finest fabrics that are invisible to the hopelessly stupid or people unfit for their position.
Although he may have doing this all along.
The rise of the celebrity sound designer…? Bring it on. Also, yes that soundstrack is not just a leafblower, there are other sound sourciminis in there.