Extreme found sound processing
There are a number of reasons why you might want to apply heavy or extreme processing to found sounds, and these reasons will dictate the kind of effects you’ll want to use. Firstly, recordings captured using a microphone aren’t heavily treated in the same way as sounds from professional sample libraries, so your self-captured snippets may require extreme corrective processing to help them sonically compete alongside conventional instruments.
Undesirable bass frequencies, microphone rumble, excessive treble and piercing resonances can be removed with a parametric EQ; be judicious with high- and low-pass filtering, and use a spectrum analyser to give you a visual idea of what’s going on in terms of frequency content. Likewise, if your recordings lack highs and/ or lows, don’t be afraid to apply liberal boosts to lacking frequency areas – you’re moulding untouched raw material here, so you may need to push things harder.
Once you’ve corrected and enhanced a signal’s tone, heavy-handed processing will give untreated sounds the personality and ‘oomph’ they need to stand out amongst other elements in a modern mix. Try squashing your recordings with heavy compression or limiting – our favourite plugin for this task is D16 Frontier (free in
Plugins), a characterful limiter that adds tasty saturation as you push it harder.
Sonic variety
As you’ll probably be using the same microphone or device to record a wide range of signals, it’s likely that these sounds will all exhibit similar characteristics, which can lead to sonic homogeneity when several are combined within the same composition. This means you really need to impart your own ‘stamp’ on the sounds – which is when the real fun starts! If a bed of ambience is too subtle, accentuate its harmonics by pushing the signal through an aggressive distortion or saturation plugin. Does your shaker recording need extra bite and presence? Apply a coat of bitcrushing or sample rate reduction to impart an extra dimension of aliasing and treble grit. Alternatively, if you need to virtually ‘age’ something, vinyl-emulating effects such as Audio Thing’s Vinyl are a great way to make recordings sound like they’ve been lifted off an old record, DJ Shadow-style.
You can also turn short, simple sounds into complex rhythms or riffs using delay. For example, Logic’s bundled Delay Designer is ideal for this, as it allows manual tuning of individual delays – check out H20 by Jamie McHugh to hear how this creative plugin transforms the sound of a single water droplet into an energetic lead riff.
Depth and width
Another interesting way to enhance or disguise found sounds is to apply effects to separate components with automation. Take our large layered snare from our earlier tutorial – we applied bitcrushing to the attack portion, but then automated the plugin’s Mix control to remove the effect over the longer reverberating tail. Another great effect to automate is a transient shaper, as you can precisely sculpt a signal’s volume envelope by differing amounts throughout the course of a loop.
When it comes to making the most of your sonic material, reverb is another versatile tool. Use it to add subtle width, or crank up the size and decay time to design lengthy, cavernous washes of FX, allowing our ears and brain to hear the signal’s frequencies for longer.
Finally, there are plenty more creative processes to explore. Try flangers or phasers on found sound hi-hats, stereo wideners on ambience beds, ring modulators on percussion hits, and sidechain pumping on… well, everything! These kinds of effects are fairly common in a normal mix, of course, but can revitalise bog-standard found sounds in countless exciting ways. Experimentation is key!