My good friend started a podcast about the drama and secret lives of NFL players and asked me to do some sound design work for it. I jumped at the opportunity because I think having a podcast for non-football NFL gossip is original and interesting. Here’s all of the SD I’ve done for it so far
The following playlist is for a segment in the show called “The Final Goss” which is a pun combining the last boss in a video game with the final piece of gossip (“goss”) of the episode. He wanted it to sound something like the “Finish Him” in Mortal Kombat. I gave him 3 plain versions plus some versions with gongs and other actions like tea cups being smashed, punches, etc. For the voice I used myself for the actor, pitched it down, and added some reverb to give it a booming character effect. My favorite bounce is the “Final Goss with gong 3” version. Enjoy!
The next episode, my friend asked me to do sound design for a segment called “Pop Quiz”. This sound design was super fun because it gave me an opportunity to create game show sounds in addition to the intro dead pan teacher saying “pop quiz.” I decided to make the intro a little extraordinary by adding in a heartbeat which puts you in the anxiety ridden experience of being a kid who just had a pop quiz dropped on them.
I also had a lot of fun adding crowd reactions to the contestant getting the answer right or wrong, a suspense ambience with heartbeat, and (my favorite) the “time is up” buzzer. I also put a bonus demo of the first intro (more abstract) I made which the producer wasn’t fond of before I took a more realistic direction.
The next sound design I did was for a segment called “Drip, Drip, Drip”, which is about the NFL player’s fashion. The producer wanted something simple so I just throw together some drip/water sounds. I wanted to make it cave like, so I took some of the drip sounds, rolled off the top end, and added some reverb to them. The producer also wanted it to be rhythmic so I set a tempo on the session and snapped the drips to the grid (except for the cave sounds). The last water sound I wanted more like a ‘palunk’ sound of a big rock being dropped into water. So I slowed and pitched a drip down and it worked like a charm. Enjoy!
The next sound design I did was for a segment called “Feel Good Stories”. I wanted to make is calm and serene, so what’s better than a barber shop sound?! I’m a terrible singer, but I knew I wanted 4 voices. So I first worked out the 4 parts using a piano. I tweaked each part using midi so that it made sense in terms of which voice moving where. I used a simple ii – V(b9, v13) – I cadence as the blueprint. I recorded each part using my own voice and then fixed up the parts using Waves Tune (auto tune). I showed the demo to the producer who had asked for an sigh of relief in there, but he forgot to mention it couldn’t be longer than 5 seconds. So I recorded the auto-tune’d voices to 5 new tracks to make the warping work better, then shortened each voice and tweaked the formants parameter until it sounded realistic. There’s still some artifacts in there probably from the auto-tune/warp and the FFT it went through, but I think it’s good enough for production. Check out the demo and the final version!
The next sound design I did was for a Thanksgiving episode. Yum! The producer wanted turkey sounds. I didn’t have a turkey to record so I found some sounds on the interwebs. Turkeys sound pretty crazy but I didn’t want to confuse the listener so I just grabbed a classic turkey sound and sliced and duplicated the sound and pitched the duplicates so you can’t tell if it’s the same turkey. Pretty simple!
The next sound design I did was for a segment called “Touch Down”. This one was super fun because he didn’t have any specific directions. But if it were anything like the Feel Good Stories segment, it probably had to be short around 5 seconds. I knew I wanted a stadium vibe, an uproar, the sound of players playing, an announcer yelling “touch down” over the stadium speakers and my favorite; the DJ air horn sound. This required A LOT of layers. I wanted the listener to feel like they are on the side lines. I grabbed multiple stadium sounds where I found a spot where the crowd goes nuts, and I lined up the timing with the sound of someone getting tackled in a football practice sound clip that I found. I wanted to keep the QB saying “hike” in there, so I cut the football play to make it as short as possible while keeping it realistic. It sounded kinda like it could be a 1 yard rush into the end zone. Once I lined those up, I recorded myself acting like a announcer yelling “touch dowwwwwwn” and pitched my voice down to make it sound more football like. Then I found a airhorn sound and added in. But I wanted all the ambience to sound like they were in the stadium, so I added a lowpass filter to them since the further things are away, the less you hear the top end. I also wanted the announcer and the air horn to sound like they were coming from loud speakers so I added some delay (with pre delay), reverb, and rolled off the top end a little bit. That way the sound echos and feels like it’s bouncing around a massive stadium. Enjoy!
The next jingle I did for the podcast was for Christmas week for a segment called “All I Want for Christmas”. I wanted to do something that sounded like classic christmas songs, strings, handbells, sleigh bells, brass, etc. I thought about sampling my own sleigh bells and handbells, but I actually found a free Kontakt library from Fracture Sounds and it was a perfect fit! Work smarter not harder. So I pieced together the jingle and ended up adding the strings and brass using Session Strings and Session Brass in Kontakt. It worked great. The last was getting my vocals, originally I wanted to make it sound more like Bing Crosby or something classic, but it’s really hard to make your voice sound like that I found lol. So I decided to go the more ‘pop’ route and use iZotope’s Nectar to add the harmonies and WavesTune to pitch correct it. The last thing, is I wanted the strings to stick out better on the 3rd bar, so I put the brass pad in the 2nd bar and then cut it out of the 3rd bar but then had an ending hit with the brass. It’s the little things that go a long way! Enjoy!