Making Music With a Manufacturing Plant
I had a recent project this week that was to develop an idea. This manufacturer wanted to have me create a musical score to their commercial in part using sounds of the factory as musical elements in the piece. The following is merely a demo I put together for them thus far as the mix will be different, but here's what I came up with!
Files
Working with hours of audio lends itself to great organization and some memory of each recording. I spent several hours weeding through the best sounding effects to convey the sound I wanted. I will talk more about this in a future post as it is an enormous undertaking on it's own.
The Piece
I assembled all of these sound effects such as hammering, drilling, taping, sewing machines, cushion master, etc. Some effects like the staple gun are used in the factory that almost sound symphonic percussive. I added delays to them to make it feel like there are more of them resounding just like in the factory. Hammers are punchy, literally.
Here's what those sound like:
What's heard in order:
- Lights come on in the factory.
- Workers come and clock in and go to their stations.
- Machinery starts up, scissors, staple guns, hammering, sewing, all in an organized rhythmic party.
- The cardboard bailer machine is used to compress cardboard and is used as an organ-like instrument playing the chords as they change with the piano.
- We get into bagging, taping, and wrapping the couch.
- Final moment is with the truck door opening to be loaded for delivery.
The only instruments added are a few pulsing sounds, a piano, and a kick drum to emphasize the hammering.
Sound Effects Only
Tomorrow I will unveil the process of how the shoot works and the editing process for handling the files.
Steemians! Please let me know where you see music around you, and feel free to follow and repost if you enjoyed it! Stay tuned for some on set audio tomorrow.
playitforward: How interesting of a concept to pull off. Incorporating these sounds into a song is pretty brilliant to my ears. Nicely played :) Now, how many folks have done this before? So original....love the idea and it really affected the 'mood' of the music.
@gregshortmusic Thank you! I'm sure a few people have given this a shot before. It's really unique and surprising how MANY things can make cool instruments. As long as you know how to work with it. Sometimes files need to be tuned, sometimes they need to be cleaned, etc. I have a post coming out tomorrow explaining more of the audio side of the process. I might make a post about designing a musical instrument out of a cardboard bailer machine.
great job :)
Thank you! It's fun and rewarding to have the full circle process from recording to composing. @ifreakdarhytme
Well that's reminds me Sound of Noice (Movie) ! Followed you as a sndbox member :)
I'll be sure to check it out. Thanks @vitruvianman!
Better yet, make a couple of songs from which you can choose something in style and tempo. Why make things so complicated when there is a royal free music https://depositphotos.com/music.html where you can choose something suitable for your intentions. I am, by the way, recently faced with the choice of musical accompaniment. I couldn't find any music that would be played in the original, only remixes. It was very frustrating that it happened this way, but I like that some sites do not block the content and do not write a fine for the music.
You have original music because it's better quality and can more likely tailor to fit your needs more closely. @honey20miss