Two Sounds Into One Sound

Unifying two sounds into one sound by making sure that they have shared characteristics.

I’ve touched on this before, but I think it merits a new post because it’s such a powerful set of techniques in sound design.

In creating new sounds of all kinds … whether it’s a creature vocal, an explosion, a door open, or a spaceship pass-by … it’s often helpful to use two or more sounds simultaneously. We may be trying to add a demonic texture to a human voice, a reverberant element to an explosion, add low end or an additional squeaky chatter to an old door, or just another layer of interest to a pass-by.

The biggest obstacle to overcome when we combine two or more sounds is that the result often doesn’t feel unified, like one sound. Instead, it sounds like simultaneous but unrelated sounds.

Sometimes we’re lucky. We find two sounds that contribute different qualities to the result but are amazingly compatible without any manipulation. But most often we aren’t that lucky. Here are the main set of techniques that work for me.

PITCH CHANGE: alter the pitch change in one sound to match the pitch change in the other. For example, if one “word” goes down in pitch at the end, modify the pitch of the simultaneous sound or texture to go down in pitch at the same rate.

VOLUME CHANGE: Make sure both sounds go up and down in volume at the same time.

EQ CHANGE: Consider implementing a dynamic filter on both sounds, so that, for example, both start bright, but grow more muffled at the same rate.

SHARED REVERB: Add the same reverb to both sounds.

SHARED POSITION IN SPACE: Both sounds should be panned to the same place in the LCRS space.

All of these techniques can help, but some of your success will depend on the luck of finding raw material that lends itself to being compatible with the other sound.

Another thing I would advise is to not feel that both sounds must be played at equal volumes. You can get a lot of benefit from playing the “texture” element quite a bit lower in volume than the “main” sound.

I suggest playing the “texture” element at key moments, most often either the beginning of the sound or the end of the sound.  Insisting on hearing the “texture” element (or all the contributing elements) constantly is one of the main reasons that this kind of technique fails.

Doing high-level work is always work. It always takes time. There is no plugin that will do it for you quickly and easily. Yet.