Sound design

It struck me that quite a few people here are into sound design. Being a graphic designer that is also into music this is something I am interested in and would love to get more into. I saw some youtube videos from Ryan McAllister with some sound design projects that were quite interesting. Does anyone have any foley or other tips?

I think I have some good e-books I can share if anyone is interested...

soundonsound.com

Share please.

this looks cool.

http://nickstutorials.com/free-tutorials-and-resources/

just torrenting a mess of the paid ones lol.

when I was in school I did a lot of a foley work. really wish i still did it as often it's just one of those things you have to have a lot of patience for. foley is a hard thing to give tips on, as a lot of industry secrets are sort of hidden family recipe kind of things. the concept is simple: always listen to sounds and draw comparisons to other sounds. for example, in a movie, it's not practical to properly record a car crash in a studio environment. so what can you do to get that sound? well in the sound design world you use something called a "crash box". what this is is a large metal can full of glass, nails, shards of metal, whatover nasty stuff you can come up with (fairly large chunks are key here). then you set up all your fancy mics (make sure to get varied mics at varied distances and all that so you have a selection after) and record yourself shaking the hell out of that can, capturing all the nice smashes and shatters and what not. comes pretty close actually, with the right processing and everything sounds much better than the real thing (another important thing about foley/sound design: go big, make your sounds bigger than life, that's what movies are about).

this is what foley is, finding alternative ways to the same end result. another "tip" I like is using fruits and vegetables to create gory stabbing sounds and gross human meat stickyness sounds. hell it's pumpkin carving time, why not throw a shotgun mic on the process of hollowing out the seeds and shit? you'll be surprised at the ideas you'll get listening back on the recording.

biggest thing with sound design foley is to always be creative, always accept the process of trial and error and don't get down when shit doesn't work out. nice thing about it is there's no right or wrong way to do it, it's all about just doing whatever you can to achieve a sound. just listen to the sound you are going for, or imagine it in your head, and break it down into all it's little parts, the attack, the sustain, the decay, the frequency range(s), etc. and use that critical listening/thinking to structure how you are going to go about layering your sounds to achieve it.

Nice start McAllister, Must try to get some sleep, I WILL return to this thread soon and there better be some more cool stuff to learn/be interested in.