Some sonic challenges I've set myself from time to time to synthesize various sound effects from scratch in the studio using all manner of custom designs, vintage studio equipment and test gear....

All Sound Design, Recordings & Compositions Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio.

Synthetic Sound Effects...

Oh heck do I love the old Brüel & Kjaer lab gear...  a type 1405 Noise Generator feeding Pink Noise into two hand cranked 1621 swept bandpass filters.  The recording was made with two overdubs - one with the filters set to a 23% slope and one to 3% slope.   Each filter was hard panned resulting in pure analog generated eeriness!

Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio 2021.

Brüel & Kjaer: Twin 1621 Winds... (SFX With Lab Gear)

The result of an afternoon in the lab experimenting and exploring a newly resurrected and slightly modified little 1964 EICO 488 variable frequency tube dual-channel multiplexing switch, a swept signal generator and a pinch of insanity :)

Several minutes of ensuing material was declicked in iZotope RX (yes, sadly the EICO's tube multiplexor, although lovely in tone and saturation, has a clicking/popping habit) cut up and then randomly triggered in Kontakt with random levels, panning, filtering and reverb depths to create a cacophony of Amazonian birdsong... well that was the general idea anyway...

Rain performance courtesy of my Blue Zone Kontakt library.

Sound Design, Composition & Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio, 2022.

1964 EICO 488: Amazon Hideaway.. (SFX With Lab Gear)

Ever wonder what happens if you shine a flashlight through a glass full of water, olive oil and marbles, give it a spin and then record the resulting modulated shadows of light on the other side of the glass with an optical sensor?

All sounds from the optical sensor bar the rain which was courtesy of our back garden one soaking wet afternoon.

Incidentally, the long reverb tails on the thunder claps were the result of the contents of the glass slowly coming to a halt - only a very short reverb was added to increase the effect of outside ambience.

Concept, Sound Design & Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio, 2022.

Sound of Light Through Oil, Water & Marbles (Optical Sound Experiment)

This was not recorded with a microphone but made by shining a light through a glass beaker full of water whilst dropping an effervescent Vitamin-C tablet into it and recording the modulated light on the far side of the beaker with a photo sensor whilst it dissolved.  Multiple takes were recorded and layered together at various pan positions to create a pseudo stereo effect.

Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio 2023.

Sound of Light Thru Effervescent Vit-C Tablet... (Optical Sound)

Having some fun testing the Breadboard 01 Custom Modular...

Breadboard 01 (the modular I built for Will Gregory a few years back literally on a set of wooden breadboards) was back in the workshop this week and now easel mounted which I have to say has make it much more enticing to experiment with now its more ergonomic to use.
 
Once you start thinking outside of the box its quite surprising what this thing can muster up.
 
I made this using the filter in max resonance acting as a sine oscillator and then using the LFO and VCO skew output to act as a complex LFO generator driving both the filter cutoff (pitch) and coincidentally chopping it with the VCA and then pitching/layering and panning 4 overdubs.

Sound Design & Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio 2023.

Breadboard 01: Breadwood Forrest..

Setting myself another sonic challenge..  made with a 1978 Mk 1 Korg MS-20 making use of the MS-20's superb high and low pass resonant filters and ring-modulator auto-triggered and shaped from an external audio source via the built in Envelope Follower.  The sheer flexibility of the MS-20 really does allow this wonderful instrument to cover a lot of ground.

Composition & Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio 2023.

1978 KORG MS-20: The Patch Cord Band..

Made simply by feeding white noise into a gorgeous and very rare 1968 29-band General Radio model 1925 "Multifilter" during overhaul/testing at Hideaway Studio.  This is no ordinary 1/3rd Octave GEQ - the selectivity of each band is significantly greater than most analog units and the result is remarkably eerie!!

Original Sound Design & Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio.

GenRad 1925

1968 GenRad 1925 Test Recording: Windy-1

Some big analog FM bells recorded live during testing with a huge and extremely rare PPG System 300 Modular synthesizer that was in for major overhaul at Hideaway.  The bells were made using 5 out of the 7 available VCOs in a blend of cross modulations each subtly pitched under CV control by 3 step sequencer channels to produce an array of overtones.

Original Sound Design & Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio 2018

Uber Rare PPG System 300 Modular Synthesizer: Big Bells!

Having some fun making wind SFX by feeding white noise into a gorgeous 1966 Krohn-Hite 310C all tube 4-pole active Band Pass Filter (originally put to very good use in the making of my Blue Zone Sound Library) but with resonance generated by feeding back some of the signal to the input via an external tube amplifier.  This worked really well and two hand cranked performances were recorded and then mixed together in stereo. Both sets of four poles in these filters are driven manually by two gearboxes.. delightfully eccentric - I truly adore this sort of old tech!!

Original Sound Design & Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson

1966 Krohn-Hite 310C All Tube Band Pass Filter: Resonant Winds

Having another play with Hideaway Studio's truly insane Klockwerks system.

Simply feeding in a sinewave and some white noise into various LFO shapes - again using LT patch 09...

Here basic tones from a Minimoog are fed into the a MultiVerb LT (patch 09) modified as a "donor unit" for the Klockwerks system. The LT is being modulated with various LFO rates and waveforms from one of the clock modulator programs on the Klockwerks handset.... in this case the LFO shape, depth, offset and rate are being tweaked on the fly by hand but these can be acurately controlled from a MIDI sequence using up to 4 separate CC channels as well a CV input. LFOs and slide effects can also be synchronised to MIDI clock at various clock rate divisions.

One powerful and unique aspect of the Klockwerks system is that it binds clock modulation patches with patches on the donor FX unit to form an instant recall system. Such patches are stored in NV memory and then called up instantly via MIDI program changes.

Patch 09 on the MultiVerb LT seems to respond well to this sort of thing!... the resulting output is truly mangled beyond recognition!!

Original Sound Design & Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio.

Klockwerks System in Action: Fun with Sine & Noise

Having great fun in The Lab with a rescued 1960s all tube Baldwin Panoramic Tone Converter chassis (originally part of of the ultrasonic reverb in the organ by the same name) acting as a super-heterodyne effect to create bell tones.  

In its original application the PTC used a high frequency carrier to convert audio frequencies into ultrasonic frequencies to pass across a spring reverb and then demodulated the signal back down to audio frequencies on the far side of the spring.  Magically this made the reverb almost totally immune to vibration and the usual ricochet effects on heavy transients.  

What I have found is that if you feed audio that is rich in high frequencies directly into the PTC spring output sockets the signal is mixed with the carrier wave generated by the local oscillator and then the upper side-bands are filtered out thus resulting in all manner of interesting metallic bell tones!

In this test recording you can first hear the sound I am feeding into the PTC and then you can hear what results at the PTC's output!    If you play different pitches into the PTC you get different bell ratios coming out the far end....  all drenched in saturated vintage tube loveliness!!

Original Sound Design & Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio.

1960s Baldwin Panoramic Tone Converter: Tube Heterodyne Bells

Experimenting with two of the four photo-receiver channels on my prototype Quad Candle LFO CV generator.  In this case two channels are modulating each of two laboratory signal generators to create a gentle ensemble effect whereby both oscillators detune independently as the candle flame flickers in a gentle breeze...

Original Sound Design, Composition & Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio.

Quad Candle Random LFO:  Eerie Flicker Choir

An 1969 Solartron Pseudo Random Generator modulating  a lab oscillator in a 5 level probability distribution of pitches mixed with three drones slightly modulated with the bandwidth filter set to 3.5Hz producing something a little more musical than I was expecting from an old piece of lab test gear!

Original Sound Design & Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio 2019

1969 Solartron Pseudo Random Generator: JM1861 Bagpipes

A bizarre watery effect created by feeding back the output of an ART LT FX processor to its input whilst randomly modulated by the Klockwerks System.. the regenerative path was created with a Binson tube Pre-Mix fed back via a DBX II 128 classic limiter and the Hideaway Dual Tube Hybrid Filter centred around 1KHz in tube resonance.   The resulting chaos was then further filtered with two Hideaway Studio TEQ-9B All Tube Gyrator EQs.   Before each plunge effect was wild self-oscillation which was removed using a mixture of Izotope RX and cut/paste.   Each plunge effect itself was created by rapidly winding down the clock frequency just at the point the self-oscillation was tamed.  No deliberate tone or noise sources whatsoever were used in the making of this recording.

I love this kind of pseudo chaotic self-making stuff!   Its a pig to setup but when it works it can be really interesting..

Original Sound Design & Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson

Klockwerks: Regenerative Waters...

UPDATED RECORDING 08/06/22 now with steam whistle SFX "accidentally" created whilst attempting to build a tube based VCO and ending up with a spectacularly unstable mess with a rather surprising unintended sonic result!

Whilst testing out a monster 3 cabinet classic Moog Modular during major overhaul to my surprise I ended up producing what sounded like there was something monstrously heavy heading my way!!...

Made in one live take with a 960 Sequential Controller feeding a 1528 Sample-Hold triggered by a 921 AUX LFO, 902 VCA modulated by the sawtooth from the S/H, three cross modulated 921B Oscillators into a CP3A 4Ch Mixer all feeding into a 907 Fixed Filter Bank which was madly being hand cranked band by band to create the pass by phasing effect...

The interacting speeds of the sequencer, LFO and sample/hold clock were carefully adjusted until everything started to chug in quite an uncanny manner!

Now with a little ambiance courtesy of the back garden! :)

Original Sound Design & Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio 2019.

1977 Moog System 55: The Iron Horse.. (Updated Recording)

Ever wondered what happens if you feed pink noise into the Carrier input of a Vocoder whilst firing a swept sinewave at the Modulator input?..

Equipment used:  PAiA 6710 analog Vocoder.  Bruel & Kjaer type 1047 Exciter Control (swept sine) fed into a Bogen MX6 tube mixer.  Bruel & Kjaer type 1405 Noise Generator fed into a TL Audio TL2011 tube EQ.   Output of Vocoder fed into a JSH DX99 delay and into a Hideaway Studio TEQ-9B active tube EQ.

Original Sound Design & Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio 2019.

PAiA 6710 Vocoder: Steam Machine!

Another sonic challenge I set myself... this time a swarm of busy bees!!

Recorded in one take from a 1978 Korg PS-3300 and very much making use of her 9 resonator channels, PWM and complex modulation...

Original Sound Design & Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson

1978 KORG PS-3300: Busy Bees

Made with a GenRad 1390B vintage tube noise generator driving a PAiA 6710 modulated by a swept frequency generator...

..and a hinge on the airing cupboard door!.. which finally got oiled!!

A selection of test recordings that came out of an experimental sound design project initially called Thermionix. The project resulted in a very significant amount of sample material which eventually formed the basis of what was to become The Blue Zone sound library for Kontakt.

The project made use of a significant amount of vintage and experimental tube equipment and circuits - hence the original name...

Sound Design, Composition & Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio 2011.

Thermionix: The Beast Snoreth Again...

100% synthesized water effects made by feeding some randomised FM bell like sounds from an Orla DSE24 and pink noise from a Bruel & Kjaer type 1405 fed hot via a tube mixer into a gorgeous 1965 Bruel & Kjaer type 1612 Band Pass Filter Set.   Around 60 samples were captured with the filter set to each of the 3rd Octave frequency settings and then loaded across the keyboard and auditioned live in various combinations....

The classic Bruel & Kjaer Band Pass Filter Sets such as the type 1615, 1612, 2112 and 2113 are made up of banks of very high quality passive L/C resonators and are extremely selective with very high Q factors and have a sound all of their own!  There are few studio filters that could come close to achieving the same effect.
 
Sound Design & Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio, 2020.

1965 Brüel & Kjaer type 1612: Waterwerks (SFX With Lab Gear)

Here's what happens when you get bored one evening after returning a lovely 1979 Simmons Clap Trap hand clap synthesizer to life and get thinking is it possible to "perform" your own crowd from scratch with layer after layer of single analog synthesized hand cranked claps!?...  hmmm...

- well you judge for yourself - I had great fun either way! :)

Sound Design, Performance & Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio, 2020.

1979 Simmons ClapTrap: Hand Made Crowd!

D.A.Wilson is an Electronic Engineer, Sound Designer & Vintage Synth Specialist with a particular interest in combining vintage tube, classic analog and modern digital technologies working as a synth engineer looking after a very considerable amount of vintage studio equipment for Will Gregory (Goldfrapp / Moog Ensemble) and a number of other internationally celebrated electronic musicians and producers.  Having undertaken several major restorations and produced custom electronic designs for a number of major artists including Jean-Michel Jarre, Dani is also known for fully restoring two out of the world's four remaining 1979 Crumar GDS and partially restoring 1938 Novachord 346 (the only known operational Novachord in the UK) to playable order along with developing and producing the new Elfin family of 8-bit polysynths and the popular MIDI Front Panel Animator (FPA), Filter Defeat Module (FDM) and XD-280 Drive Emulator upgrades for the AKAI S612 sampler.

Demos of the S612 Upgrades in Action: 

https://soundcloud.com/hideaway-studio/sets/hideaway-studios-s612-front


Hideaway Studio Kontakt Sound libraries may be purchased directly from: 
https://www.lootaudio.com/category/kontakt-instruments/hideaway-studios
 

..and a nice introduction by Cory Pelizzari to the Hideaway Studio Kontakt Libraries:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-C7a3ChC9U&feature=emb_title


For more on releases from Hideaway Studio for Kontakt please visit the blog at:  www.hideawaystudio.net