Shake Rattle and Rumble (Now includes Small Grain Debris Vol I)

Quake ready

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Nearly one year in the making:

This sound effects library started out with some huge sounding recordings on a ferry in a storm, a late night in December 2011.

During the winter and spring of 2012, recordings of moving vehicles (Van on cobblestone stone and van on bumpy road) were made, together with the first test recordings of “objects placed on subwoofer”.

The last recordings, which went into the Shake Rattle And Rumble sfx library, were the “Person shaking” tracks.

Great efforts were put into getting a versatile amount of objects, and even more, getting the right, and different sounding, objects. This was surprisingly challenging, as things sometimes are when you dig into them.

Each session, was great fun, and inspired me to find either more material to shake, or new places and vehicles, which made things vibrate.

The 110 tracks in this library are:

60 individual tracks of “Person shaking objects” (bookshelves, drawers, cabinets, boxes, metal, glass and bottles, baskets, plastic, a laptop and even a hospital bed)

27 individual tracks of “Objects shaking on a subwoofer” (wood, metal, glass, toys, and porcelain)

16 individual tracks of “Van on cobblestone/Bumpy road”

4 individual tracks of “Ferry in high seas” (apx. 9 minutes in all)

3 individual tracks of “Road roller passing house”  (which, literally made everything inside the house move)

Video of Road roller passing house: ROADROLLER PASSING HOUSE THE SHAKES

 Track list of the complete library can be found here:  T R A C K L I S T

All in all, Shake Rattle And Rumble is  2,3 Gb big (Unzipped), and Consists of 110 files, all 96K 24bits.

Recorders used: Soundevices 702, and  Protools Hd

Microphones: Sennheiser Mkh 416, DPA 4060’s, and 4061’s

All tracks named and Metadata tagged

Story behind the creation of the SFX Library

Late 2011, I was contacted by sound designer Peter Albrechtsen from Tonemasters/Tonemestrene, who presented me with a new Danish feature called You And Me Forever, which needed a lot of different sound recordings done.

Peter always makes me think differently, when doing recordings for features and documentaries, and has made me a strong believer in recording everything I hear, big and small.He has the ability to use everything I send him, in one way or another. I truly admire him for his very talented approach on sound, and how to use sound as an effective storyteller.

Along alot of atmospheres needed for the feature, Peter asked more specifically for the sound of a building shaking, as it was being torn down by heavy machinery.

One of the end scenes in the movie, had visuals of the characters watching an abandoned building being demolished, as well as a scene where the characters only hear the rumble off screen, so I was in great need of something close to the real thing, as well as the sound of an interior building being shaken without telling what was actually happening.

What to do?

A few days later I was on a big ferry with my family, going to Sweden. Staying near the duty free shop, I suddenly heard what sounded like metal plates, and liqueur bottles vibrating at the same time. Below these sounds, there was a constantly deep frequency rumbling.

As the captain speed up, the ferries engine made the whole interior rumble like it was falling apart. I have been on this small trip many times before, but had never heard the interior sound like this (or maybe I was´nt listening the same way before).

I immediately knew that I had to get in contact with the shipping line who owned the ship, so I could record this.

A week later I was invited to board a late departure (as it would have fewer travelers aboard). The whole day had been quite windy, and as the evening came closer, the wind picked up even more. This meant that the captain had to use even more power to get through the relative small strait. This only made the sounds of the hull even more huge.

The need for these recordings from Peter, inspired me to do a whole sound effects library of nothing but shaking, rattle and rumbling sounds, so I began trying out different methods to get various object to make a sound as if a earthquake was happening.

Besides the ferry recordings, I recorded a van driving on a bumpy dirt road, and cobble stone. By coincidence, I also recorded road rollers outside my studio. They were flattening the road, which literally made everything in the house move!

Methods and Techniques

Personal shaking:

Later on, I started thinking about shaking things around me by hand, and record this process. I actually thought that this would be as easy as just grabbing a drawer or a metal box, and shake the living out of it. I was very fast proven wrong at this.

Challenge number 1: Shaking an object, without it sounding too unnatural, or “human” is difficult. Keeping a certain rhythm is even more diificult.

Challenge number 2: Not doing the exact same rhythm is very difficult.

Challenge number 3: Shaking an object for more then 30 seconds is REALLY hard (by object number 2 or 3 is was already exhausted) (good workout though!)

Challenge number 4: A lot of objects does not sound very interesting when being shaken

Nevertheless I think I found some interesting objects for my “By-Hand” shaking recordings, and this group is also the biggest in the library with 60 files.

Subwoofer Rattles:

Next up I wanted something completely different sounding, so I went on with the technique of placing metal boxes, toys, plastic, wooden boxes etc. on a subwoofer, and then control the frequency of a sine wave in Kyma, with a Wacom tablet pen. (Thank you  Jean-Eduoard Miclot who inspired, showed and explained me the technique). This way I was able to get a more subtle rattle from the things placed on the sub, and the track length could go on forever, without my arms and chest being completely busted.