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Audio synthesis - 70s sound effects

  • 30-05-2005 9:39am
    #1
    incisor71
    Closed Accounts Posts: 281 ✭✭


    Hi all,

    This forum is the most appropriate home I could find for this topic - although it may well tickle a little interest in the Art->Television forum too. No doubt I'll suffer some social ostracism as a result, but social life levels are pretty much zero at the moment anyhow, so I think I can bear the outcome!

    I've been working on re-creating some of the sound effects from the most commonly-screened 70s Sci-Fi series, such as The Bionic Woman, Wonder Woman etc. The main reason - apart from curiosity about their synthesis is that I'd like to use the recreated sound effects as part of a theatre production, which means they have to be available without background music, hiss or other extraneous sounds.

    A lot of these were generated by sweeping the frequency of a sine wave and repeating it through a feedback delay (on a tape deck). One of the effects which still eludes my capability to reproduce it accurately is the basic "bionic strength" effect (ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch....) and despite listening to it slowed down, and filtered into various frequency bands, I can't quite figure out how it was done.

    I happened to hit upon a partial solution during a Sonic Arts project, part of which entailed strumming the strings of a Baby Grand piano with the sustain pedal held down. By playing this repeatedly through a noise gate whose trigger threshold is gradually lowered with each playback, I've gotten something pretty close.

    If anyone has any ideas or contributions, or could tell me about what relevant audio/ tape deck equipment would have been available to studios in the 70s, I'd be most appreciative!


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