Household Sound Effects

[Eleanora Parrot]

Thishouse is packed full of 9 excting sound effects that will entertain kids for countless hours. Whether you are a famous actor, rockstar, or just love playing with your pets, there's fun for everyone at the Rock & Slide House!

The secret to Foley lies in everyday, household items. Snapping celery stalks sounds eerily similar to the sound of bones breaking; hitting coconuts together really does sound like a horse walking (thank you, Monty Python).

The aluminum-as-thunder effect is a little more well-known, but no less fun. Waving a sheet of aluminum will produce thunder-like sounds and altering your movements will add realistic variation to the effect.

Heartbeats are another horror movie staple and (thankfully) do not require a stethoscope to replicate. Take a plastic trash can, flip it over, and push the bottom in and out. Adjust the rhythm according to your desired heartbeat speed. You can also use the cap of a Snapple bottle.

Anyone who suffered through awkward middle-school years will be familiar with this Foley technique. To create a kissing sound just give your arm a smooch. To be more specific, plant one on the underside of your forearm. The wetter the better.

Gregg Barbanell, the Foley artist on The Walking Dead, crushes walnuts to create the sound of crushing skulls. Of course, when the situation calls for regular bone-breaking sounds, he just sticks to celery. Foley can be a very gory business.

I recorded a few hits on my clothes hamper for a deep impact for one of the body layers, and then decided to head out of my bedroom and to the kitchen for more sounds. In the kitchen, I recorded the sound of a ton of silverware being rustled around inside one of those utensil holder things to get some high end for the body and maybe the transients too. I found a Pringles can that I dropped on the floor and counter to get some impacts. The impact made this really loud yet metallic and mangled sound that I thought would be really cool for something (it turned out being integral to the sound). Lastly, I turned to the metal stools next to the counter top and dropped them on the ground a couple of times to get a harsh impact. With a lot of recorded source gathered, I headed up to my room to noise treat the samples and start layering!

I began by layering the transient first before moving onto the body. I needed to get a really sudden, high-mid to high range burst that sounded harsh and explosion-y. My first instinct was to pull from the basket hits and pitch them up two octaves. They produced the nice mid and high frequency pop that I needed to get the initial burst of the explosion sounding sudden and powerful. I found that it still needed a lot more harshness, so I reached for my cardboard recordings since they were really gruff and violent sounding.

Now it was time to make the main (and most fun) part of the explosion: the body, or the actually explod-y sounding part! I used three main recordings for the layers of this part of the sound; a laundry basket hit layer for the oomph, a silverware rustling layer for lots of harshness and warble, and a layer of the hamper punching for even more low end and beef as well as a bit of an initial trail off.

Last but not least came the tail of the explosion. This part was integral to making the explosion convincing and have presence, so I knew I needed to get it right. I had to experiment quite a bit with my recordings to find something with a nice low end and trail to it, but I eventually ended up settling on using the metal chair stool impacts and the Pringles can dropping for the tail. Making the tail was pretty straightforward once I had the samples. I started by pitching both of them down as far as I could without any artifacts.

Around -36st was the sweet spot, especially for the chair. There was some hissing left over from the room recording and part of the metallic texture, so I applied a basic high cut EQ to both of the layers to get rid of that and also shift focus to the low end frequencies. The pitched down chair created a super nice long trail that even has a bit of resonance to it thanks to the metallic texture, while the Pringles can provided a layer of oomph to the tail thanks to the impact and the hollow texture it had.

For effects, I used my favorite compressor (the Waves CLA-76) to smooth the dynamics out a bit while still giving a little extra oomph, as well as some simple reverb and delay sends to make the tail last even longer.

With all the layers done, all that was left to do was arrange them for cadence and apply some master effects to the layer group buss. I used the CLA-76 again to get the peaks of the explosion pumping a bit for even more oomph and beef, more multiband compression to treat the dynamics a bit and increase the low end a bit more, and lastly applied a little high cut to get rid of some harshness that was just too damn harsh. And that was that! I was really satisfied with the result of my work. The whole process only took about 3 hours.

As I mentioned, my explosion ended up being picked as one of the three winners in the GoRecord challenge! I was so happy when I first heard the news. The competition was very stiff and all of the submissions were awesome! I hope the next episode of Waveform features another GoRecord challenge as this was a great exercise for me.

I'm looking for a way to add some vocal "effects" to some portions of our songs. Naturally, if we ever record our songs professionally, I will try to play around on a DAW with digital effects until I find something I like, but currently I'm more interested in ways to make the vocals sound a bit different using low-tech household items in front of the microphone, like paper cups, cardboard, combs, etc.

Once upon a time I found and brought home some lengths of plastic tubing (intended for plumbing, I imagine). They were very long - up to 3 metres - with about a 1-inch diameter. When you sang directly into one, you found your voice pulled to one of its natural harmonic pitches (the harmonic scale familiar from valveless hunting horns etc.); being so long, there was quite a full scale of these accessible to my vocal range. It was such a strange experience, actually feeling your vocal cords 'snap-to' specific pitches, as if quantised. So, if you want to experiment with tubes/piping.. go long!

Wire up a basic contact mic, sing into that. Try attaching it to various membranes for a very dirty mic. Also, always keep an eye out in charity shops for kids' toys with sound distortion functionality. Some of those are pretty sophisticated! I picked up this guy for 1 not so long ago, and have been using it in performance. Includes octave shift up/down and a vocoder-type effect.

Another thing to try is cupping the microphone. Cardioid mics use air filters on the sides to eliminate off-axis sounds through phase cancellation. If you block those filters, you change its pick-up pattern (it turns omni). If you're monitoring the input through a speaker, you'll get feedback - and different degrees of cupping will give you varying amounts of feedback or a bit of a ring on certain vowel sounds. The frequency of the ringing of course corresponds to modes in the room, so try changing your position as you do this, with respect to the monitor, and to different corners of the room.

Try a wrapping film like those used on cigarette packets. Grab the 2 opposite ends and push the film against your lips as you speak/sing. I don't know how to describe the kind of distortion it creates but it reminds me of people listening to football matches on old pocket radios.

You can give your videos the same auditory impact as a Hollywood movie without the mega-bucks budget. In fact, you can use the same techniques that feature film producers still employ today. All you need is creativity, a willingness to get your hands dirty, and some common household items.

You have several methods at your disposal for recording the sound effects. The easiest and most obvious is to use your camcorder, a technique that has several advantages. First, the camcorder offers the simplicity of a recorder and microphone all in one unit. Second, because it shoots video as well, you get a visual record of each effect. When scanning a tape for an audio effect, this gives you visual cues of their whereabouts. If you want to get really elaborate, you can even make up small slate cards that list the sound effect, the name of the video and the date.

If you want to take your sound effects even further, check out any of the audio processors available for a few hundred dollars. Called digital effects processors, these devices are designed primarily for music recording. What they can do to normal sounds, though, is nothing short of amazing.

Partner with us to reach an enthusiastic audience of students, enthusiasts and professional videographers and filmmakers. Click here to contact a sales representative and request a media kit.

You may return most new, unopened items within 30 days of delivery for a full refund. We'll also pay the return shipping costs if the return is a result of our error (you received an incorrect or defective item, etc.).

You should expect to receive your refund within four weeks of giving your package to the return shipper, however, in many cases you will receive a refund more quickly. This time period includes the transit time for us to receive your return from the shipper (5 to 10 business days), the time it takes us to process your return once we receive it (3 to 5 business days), and the time it takes your bank to process our refund request (5 to 10 business days).

If you need to return an item, simply login to your account, view the order using the "Complete Orders" link under the My Account menu and click the Return Item(s) button. We'll notify you via e-mail of your refund once we've received and processed the returned item.

Keep kids entertained for hours and challenge their creativity with the Rock and Slide Play House from Hape. This toy house is packed full of 8 different adventurous rooms with 9 exciting sound effects for hours of play. Children can hear the keyboard and guitar playing and pretend to be a rockstar in the concert room, listen to a movie sound clip in the television room, or even slide down the curved slide to the pool in the beach room. Kids can also hear a hairdryer, toilet flushing in the bathroom, a lullaby clip and clock ticking in the bedroom.

3a8082e126