Intro To Sound Design

Introduction To Sound Design Lesson 1

Task 1

Using your own words, explain the six sound design categories and how these methods communicate with the player.

(Diegetic, Non Diegetic, Foley, Ambience, Voice Over and Direct Sound).

Try to use examples you know of from your gaming experience!

Task 2

Think of your favourite game and find a gameplay clip of it on YouTube. Watch and listen to roughly 3 minutes of it. What can you hear in the clip? List each sound and put them into the correct categories (some will fit in more than one category).

●Try to choose a clip that doesn’t have commentary on it

●Try to choose a clip that has a lot happening so you have multiple sounds to analyse

Embed the clip you’ve chosen onto your website next to your write up.

(Diegetic, Non Diegetic, Foley, Ambience, Voice Over and Direct Sound).

Lesson 2 - Microphone Basics

Mic Comparison Task - Group Task

We will be recording an audio sample in groups – but we first need to decide what that audio is.

You can choose one of the following -

someone speaking for a few seconds at least, so find a video game character quote or two that you can recite.
A 1+ second sound effect using foley

Ensure everyone gets involved with recording (adjusting microphones, recording the sound, ‘performing’ the sound).

EXAMPLE QUOTE

" You Know The Old Saying: When Life Gives You Lemons, Go Murder A Clown." - Festus, Skyrim

2. Mic Comparison Task - Recording

You are going to record in groups with the 3 microphones provided using the audio interface and Adobe Audition.

You need to record your sound 3 times, once for each microphone (Dynamic, wide condensor, shotgun mic)

You will export each clip and share the clips into Microsoft Teams as well as embed them onto your website (upload to drive and embed the share link).

3. Mic Comparison Task - Compare and Contrast

With your three audio clips, you now need to listen to each and compare them.

What can you hear?
How clear is the main focus of the sound?
What background elements can you hear?
Does it sound clear? 'good' quality? Is it muffled? Is it 'bad' quality? Is it comfortable/easy to listen to?

Compare the three to each other and decide which of the three you think is the best and explain why, write all of this on your website.

Lesson 3 - Audio Editing Basics

1. Clipping (check and Fix)

When audio has those high 'peaks' they can sometimes be too high – the sound can be far too loud for the microphone, causing it to distort or 'clip'

We need to check and fix any clipping in this file before we do anything else to the track.

Watch this video, and fix your track!

Make sure you take screenshots for your blog.

2. Normalize / Truncating

If you don't have any more major clipping, you should be able to now normalise and truncate (Cut) your track.

(I will demonstrate how to do this)

Cut out the silences from the start and the end (Truncate)
Normalise your track

Not sure after my demonstration? Have a look through the software on your own first and try to find the solutions.

3. Effects

We can add a bunch of different effects to our audio, I will demonstrate how to do this and then you need to experiment with different effects to improve your sound.

Think about the 'mood' you're trying to convey, sometimes less is definitely more!

Make sure you screenshot the different effect controls you use to provide evidence on your website.

4. Adding Tracks

Let's add some fun stuff! Look for foley sound or royalty free music that you think would work well with your track. (Make sure to reference them!)

Foley sources -

Music sources -

Alternatively, let's record our own! Need a werewolf howl? Some footsteps? Background chatter? You can record the audio and use the effects to alter the sound.

Add a secondary track and balance the levels to add more to your audio.

5. Finish Your Audio Clip

Once you have completed all of those steps, relisten to your clip in full.

Are you happy with the end result?

If not, try to work out what's wrong and how to fix it.

If so, Export your audio, send it to me on Teams and post it onto your blog.

(Put the mp3 on your Google Drive > Copy Share Link > Embed in Google Sites)

6. Edit Discussion

Where you've posted the finished audio onto your blog, you now need to write about the editing process.

• What did you do to your original raw audio?
• What did you like about editing?
• What did you not like about editing?
• What effects did you use?
• What tracks did you add?
• How do you feel about the end result overall?

Remember to use your evidence screenshots!

7. Effect Descriptions

Use your previous experience and google to help you find the definitions of these effects and post about them on your blog

(Use your own words, copy and pasting is plagiarism and AI is frequently incorrect).

Reverb
Delay/Echo
Chorus
Distortion
EQ

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