 Hey, I'm Anfa. I'm an electronic music producer and sound designer, but I only use open-source software and Linux and This video I'm going to show you how you can take a sound effect that you like How you can analyze its features and then recreate something similar with a synthesizer This could apply to many different sounds in this example today. I'm going to synthesize a sound of a Bullet shell casing bouncing off the ground but this could also work for bells or other metallic sounds it is very fitting for metallic sounds But we're going to analyze the sounds to find specific partials that is metallic resonances that we're going to Dial in to recreate the sound Let's get to it All right, so the first thing is you need to find your reference. I was looking for a sound of a bouncing shell casing on the free sound and Well, I found exactly that bouncing shell casings very sizes This sound is licensed under creative commons zero So I could use it if I wanted to and I didn't even have to credit the author so it's always appreciated but I've downloaded the sound and Picked a specific part that I really like let me play it to you So you can hear there's actually two things going on one thing is do we have this very nice sound of a brass shell hitting the ground? But there's also something else which we don't like Something like a plasticky Impact sound So I want to cut that off because it's going to confuse our analysis Let's listen to this Okay, maybe we could analyze just this part So I'm going to right-click Select the name of the region and go spectral analysis and What we have here is the overall Spectrum of this selected region So what we see here is that there's pretty much nothing below 500 Hertz and Then we have a peak at 1.5 kilohertz another peak at 4.4 All bit of stuff going on here And then we have a bunch of peaks at almost 10 kilohertz so 9.8 kilohertz a little less But still a lot of 13.2 15.6 and a bit of peaks at 20 kilohertz almost 20 kilohertz so This is the information we need to recreate the tone of the sound the spectral makeup This is that a cross-section of our sound and I'm going to use this reference To synthesize a tone that will sound like this. So I have a synthesizer here vitalium Let's open it up. I have it wrote it to my keyboard so that I can play it and Right now it plays a default sort of wave So because tuning of these partials are going to be extremely important I am going to now disable key tracking for this oscillator, so I'm going to go to advanced and Uncheck note track this means It doesn't matter what key I press the oscillator will always play the same pitch No, I'm going to also normalize this by pressing alt and free All right, so we need a spectrum analyzer as well to like see what we're doing and There's a couple of spectrum analyzers in the vitalium itself. We can click here and Have a spectrum analyzer But it doesn't tell us what the frequencies we're hovering over are we can also look in here But again, this is pretty minimalistic and of course we can like We can tell what's going on by looking at the slides and this is going to be a hundred Hertz a thousand Hertz 10,000 Hertz and 20,000 Hertz here So we could find our way in here It's going to be a bit difficult because this is not too big So I am going to open another plug in which is going to be our analyzer I think I'm going to make the window of vitalium smaller So we can fit it all in one screen and just have our reference had our synthesizer and have our analyzer So I'm going to open our plug-in. I don't want to do that Okay, a plug-in I often use is called high red Sam, which is I believe it means high resolution spectrum analyzer something and Apart from this face in the corner, which I can't get rid of It's a really nice plug-in Also apart from the file that I can't resize it just like I would Okay, I'm gonna I can actually clip this a little bit because we're not going to need as much stuff So now what we want to do is match the spectrum on the top with the spectrum on the bottom Simple, right This is what we're starting with all right Okay, so my idea is we can use the wavetable oscillator because it has we can edit the harmonics content So if I right-click here and press clear we can insert individual partials Actually harmonics because this is a harmonic series But if we play this note low enough our harmonics are actually gonna reach the stage where they're Like so close together. You can't really tell they're a harmonic series So they will sound like in harmonic partials and with this way we can like mimic what we have here So I'm gonna close this and I'm gonna shift this oscillator all the way down to negative 48 And now you can see what we're playing our our basic Tone is somewhere around 20 Hertz, which is like, you know below At the limit of human hearing and all the other stuff is here. I'm gonna Clear and I'm gonna put one and see where it is Okay, that's around 1.4 kilohertz what we need we need 1.56. That's pretty close. Let's try another one 1.56 1.4 Okay a little bit too little a little bit too low again Still a bit too low 1.56 my goodness. Okay. No, no, not exactly. It's just close enough So this is one thing Yeah, and okay 1.1 point six can be can be okay You can see there is a little bit of harmonic distortion right here. These partials are Not something I intentionally put here, but they are a result of aliasing probably We could get rid of that if we go to advance and up the oversampling Unless that's going to freeze the entire thing or crash Arder in which case you would be better off not doing that All right, turning on oversampling then and well Let's try this again, so All right Didn't help didn't help either. What if we enable higher as wavetable? No, okay So this a little bit of distortion is gonna keep stay there. So we have one Partial, okay, this is not not tall high enough. I'm gonna also clear the face faces Put another one here and see 1.4.6 1. Okay, we need 1.5.4. Let's try this one 1.5.5 That's good enough. Okay another one is 4 4 4 so 444 Okay, that's too low I Am going to zoom out this series. Let's see. Oh We have We have some aliasing Okay, this is kind of I think the wavetable resolution is breaking Down at this point. I think we need to Play this a little higher Okay, two octaves higher. Let's try it. Let's try it again. So start with 1.5. This is free. So no kind in the middle Yep 1.5 Then 4.8 That is 9.3. So that's going to be almost good for this thing Yeah, good enough 4.4 and a half. Okay, we can also add a bunch of other Harmonics here because there's a bunch of more. You can also add a bunch of there Just paint some Draw some sound in there All right, and then this 13. Oh, that's a 14. Okay, and then 16 close enough and 20 Yeah, kind of You can also insert a little bit of Stuff here and there. Okay, that's kind of like our spectrum Now this is just like the the basic tone. So what we need to do is turn this into a patch So I'm going to hide this these analyzers and I'm going to make our Synthesizer larger Because now we need to figure out how to actually turn this into a Plausible sound because this is like the raw harmonic makeup of the sound and not the sound itself Okay, so what do we need? Trying to use a low pass How about high pass? Okay Now first thing the sound we're making clearly decays and Also, I think that our sounds let me use another analyzer plug in wolf spectrum It's funny. It seems like the high frequencies are like staying longer So low frequencies are decaying and the high frequencies are staying longer and we can also emulate that with this Just by altering our wave table. We have one first state of our wave table. We can have another state of our wave table where I lowered the low frequencies The high frequencies a little bit too, but we leave the Like the the most important tone in there. So now Okay, all right. So Let's take a look at the amplitude envelope. The first thing is it's it has sustained. We don't want sustained This has to be a percussive sound All right, second thing we have a little bit of attack by default. Let's turn this into zero Okay, we can also change this phase randomization to zero So that we have a very consistent transient You can hear there's a little click now But with randomization, sometimes there is this click sometimes there isn't And this way our hits are going to be consistent, which is going to be easier Let's also move to the first frame of our waveform Second thing this sound is obviously too long We can make this decay shaped a little bit differently And another thing we want to change the position of the wave table along with this thing So I'm going to drag this up here And you can see that it's the wrong way. We actually want to Make this wave table start in the low position and Go to the high position Later, okay, but it's decaying a bit too fast. I I Would like to make this slower, but I don't want to alter this wave table. So I'm going to go to the matrix Modulation matrix. Yeah, and you see we have our assignment here envelope one is driving oscillator one wave frame and Here is the morph thing so we can bend This Envelopes function that's going to actually be influencing it. So now we have a little bit more of That of that low frequencies we can also switch back and Mute this to see what it makes Okay Now I think we need a percussive click because there's obviously a click in here and also I think we have a very prominent Harmonic here, which should not be as prominent or maybe it's a different one This one. Yep That's better. So also, let's have a little bit of noise and I want to use another envelope Or actually, no, we can use the same one. Let's drag it into level I want to have a little bit of white noise just in the very start of the sound So I'm going to make the level all the way down and have this envelope trigger it But this is way too long So I'm going to go to modulation matrix again and use this thing in the opposite direction To squeeze this envelope so that it It's even shorter, right? So our our morph function here is Bending this envelope down. So there's very little So there's very little body to it. Well, I can hear the effect of that Actually, we could have a little bit of noise residue And I'd also like to use a filter for this noise. So it's enable filter one. I'm going to Root sampler to it disable oscillator one don't want to root it to filter And I'm going to make this a high pass Maybe distort it there is like I think there is a tiny bit of something like this lower frequency tone that is There on the very beginning Okay, I think what we can do next is like try to maybe um Sprinkle some stuff on top of the sound to shape it better. So we could add a little bit of reverb to it Remove lows. Maybe let's make it all wet remove size make size small timers level Okay, so that's very Disable chorus. Oh nice. We have this tiny tiny Resonance, okay Let's see what compressor will do Oh Something we don't want which is uh make it all sustained We could also try and play a little bit with Something like a phaser, but in a static mode. So Disable depth or set depth to zero. So it's not moving So this is like adding additional peaks frequency peaks to our to our sound We can also try a calm filter Maybe let's put it after this thing Now right now it's low pass What you could also do is use this envelope to affect that frequency So that we remove the low frequencies even more. Oh, I like that. That's pretty nice What if we make this oscillator quieter can also play with tuning and we have a cue Which we can use to like apply some final frequency balance tweaks And we can also see our spectrum in here Cool thing about this shell filter is that we can do something like this Nice. We're boosting this little harmonic there What else can we do? I mean we can use this shell filter as another peak Okay, I think not At least not to such a degree without with Okay, is this close to our Reference reference not at all might it's way too long. That's for sure So I'm going to reduce the decay sound Decay time And also the frequency of our harmonic is wrong If we could pause it, that would be fantastic Or actually I can just uh sustain this Whoa, okay Ah, so this is 1.5 1.5. Okay 4.4. What is this 4.6 Could this be the difference 200 hertz in there that makes it sound so different Let's try I'm going to open up this editor and find that Particle partial. Sorry. I think it's this one So we have Okay, 4.4 on 4.4. I'm gonna leave my cursor at 4.4 Oh my goodness. It's like between one pixel. Okay, so you see I've clicked my cursor and oh Okay, it shows 4.4 with this vertical line Cool. Now I can see what this is. I'm going to zoom in a little bit Oh, I think I hit it Wow. All right. Let's listen again I think it is a little bit closer, but still not perfect So this is 4.4 and this is 4.0. It's still 4.6. I think I moved the wrong partial. What the hell Oh, did I move it at all? No, it was it was the one. Okay Like I just didn't move it enough 4.45. Now that should be similar. Okay 10 10.0 is pretty much 10 kilohertz. Is this 10 kilohertz? No, it's 9. Something. That's a problem then Uh, what is this? That's more like it and this 13 It's pretty much okay 15.6 15.2 Okay, the problem is our second Frame is going to now be different I could enter another one here And just do what we did there Instead delete this one. I'll also do this All right, let's remove sustain Still very different All right, I think um, it's going to do for HOFO And there's way too much reverb now. I can hear it I think we could enable velocity tracking And now maybe make this all thing a little louder I don't think there is an easy way to make it all louder. Okay And I'm going to try and insert a bunch of notes so that to simulate this Shell bouncing So it's going to be longer And shorter so long and loud short Shorter and quieter and shorter and quieter still Okay, that's too short. Uh, that's too fast. I'm going to stretch this time stretch this Still too short Okay, I think this is not long enough And this is too short. So we have like The change in length to wrap it Alrighty, so that is our synthesized Shell casing Impact this is by no means perfect But I wanted to demonstrate to you this idea of analyzing a sound I'm checking out its harmonic makeup its frequency content And trying to reproduce that with a synthesizer to achieve a similar sound and It works more or less. I'm going to actually show you a shell casing sound I made before using exactly this method And this is the one So you can see or hear it's a bit different than this one we have I also based it on a different sample. I think it which one did I use as a reference? Maybe one overly long a little bit lower sound. I don't know But yeah um Of course, this takes a lot of skill and a lot of practice, but you can still get some interesting results and Well, if I tried I've tried before to make this sound by ear And it didn't work at all And when I actually refined a reference sound Loaded it up and Used spectrum analysis to reference what the What the partials what the frequency peaks in the original sound are where they are and Also used as the spectrum analyzer to make sure I am putting this frequency peaks where I need to put them then the sound Well became actually usable And I can play it to you in context actually because this was a sound I made for a little game I'm working on with a friend And if you watched my recent live stream, you may have seen us Playing the game And I'm worth making some other sound effects for the game on the live stream. So Let me quickly start a game And I'm gonna play this sound to you along along with other sounds we've made during the live stream The game sound didn't record at that time. So I'm re-recording this gameplay for you Oh, and you can check out this game at github.com slash anapha slash liblast And if you know Godot and want to help out make this uh More fun to play online then feel free to do so Shameless plug So that's it Thanks for watching I hope this video was interesting and I've given you some ideas for how you can make sounds with synthesizers And also, maybe I've shown you some interesting things you didn't know about vitalium Which is a super powerful wavetable synthesizer Uh, it's an open source version of vital vital source code was released But the community has made like a fork And we named it to vitalium to avoid any confusion And I'm using this fork because I'm all about free and open source software. Yeah, so thanks for watching If you have any questions or suggestions for future videos, please leave them in the comment section below Also, if you would like to learn more about How to use Linux for music production or gets help with some issues you're having Please join my community chat at chat.unfund.xyz And there's a bunch of very helpful people there Who are sharing ideas and helping each other out? And we're having a great time in there Also, I want to thank all the people who are supporting my work financially These are people on patreon and liberapay And I would like to encourage you if you find my videos helpful to consider joining them Yeah, that's all for today Now go and make some sound effects Yay We made it Just a few software crashes along the way, but we made it