Ben Burtt - Talks

collider has posted 4 videos of a presentation given by Ben Burtt on the making of the sound for Wall-E.
He demonstrates the sources of some of the sounds used within the film, including the system he used in conjunction with a graphics tablet to create the voice ofthe main character.

get paid for designing sounds

kreativ sounds are offering the opportunity to get paid for designing sounds.

if you have created quality sounds that are not enough to be compiled into a big product, but they are too great to be given for free and you are also willing to sell them for as much as the buyer wants we are very interested in helping you do it through our online e-shop.

Here’s what we are looking for:

* Thematic Loops Packs with at least 25 loops in Apple, Acid, Wav or Rex format;
* Synthesizers Sound Banks with at least 32 patches / presets;
* Reason Refills with at least 64 patches / patches for Subtractor, Malström, THOR, Combinator, NNXT AND / OR NN19. Note that in case of a ReDRUM refill it must contain at least 8 drum kits.



Note 1: The more sounds a product contains the chance to sale better and for a higher price is increased.
Note 2: If your product does not fit in the above categories, please drop us a line and we’ll see what can we arrange.

Important:

* The rates are 50% - 50% from the sale price! All the PayPal and promotion fees are supported by Kreativ Sounds!
* The minimum payment accepted for a product is 1 EURO (or the currency equivalent).
* Transparency in sales is absolute! You’ll receive automatic emails when one of your products is sold with the amount of money payed so you can calculate for yourself the profit made!
* The Payments are made through PayPal between 1-7 of each month with a minimum of 50 EUR in profits. If the profit for your product(s) exceeds the 50 EUR limit before the month ends, you can request the money any time!
* The product must contain copyright free sounds, patches or loops!
* If the product contains in full or in parts sounds, patches or loops from other products you created, please specify this!
* The product is non-exclusively distributed through Kreativ Sounds websites!
* The product remains entirely yours and you can retire it (if you wish so) after 1 Year accepting the distribution contract.
* Kreativ Sounds is committed to help you promote and create graphics for the product(s) at request, free of charge.

Auditorium

auditorium is an online flash-based music game.
The idea is to direct the flow of particle streams to "fill up" some auido level meters. By doing so you increase the volume of different audio tracks and produce a finished piece of music to complete the level.

The game uses flash-based audio and so this side is not brilliant - it only plays audio loops and these are quite obvious when they loop.
However, the game is still only a prototype and so the audio side of things may well get better as they developers continue to work on the game. Visually it's very good!

Wacom tablets

Here's a video of two australian academics in their research/rehearsal space discussing and demonstrating their use of wacom graphics tablets to control digital audio.

Getting one of these tablets working within maxmsp is pretty straightforward and you can use it in a variety of different ways...



link

EQ tips

audiotuts has little tutorial giving some tips to help you with the EQ-ing of tracks and mixes.
There's nothing new here, but EQ-ing can be a hard thing to get right and it takes a lot of practice to be able to quickly achieve the desired result.

The most important tip they give is:

"Don't fix it in the mix"

wii-theremin

speaking of taking yourself too seriously...

Here's a video where the maker of a wii-mote based theremin explains how it works. He's using the infra-red sensor of the wii-mote to determine the position of two markers (one on each hand). He then maps the position of one marker to pitch, the other to volume to create a theremin type instrument.
It doesn't have to stop there - the mapping could be done so that the two markers control any parameter of the sound - giving you expressive control over any sound.

Grainface laptop performance

Here's a video of a german laptop ensemble giving a performance.
The music is quite 'ambient' with long sustained tones and then short percussive elements introduced throughtout - there's also some vocoding going on.
Musically, it's not everyone's cup of tea and the performers do look like they're taking themselves a little too seriously at times. But they use wii-motes as gestural input devices to control the sound and the link between their actions and the sounds being generated is pretty obvious - so worth a look...