 Have you ever wanted to make something blow up today? I'm gonna show you how to make a sound of blowing something up So the the next best thing And what's even better? I'm gonna do it all with free and open source software and on Linux. Check it out Hey, I'm Anfa. I'm an electronic music producer and sound designer So I only use open-source software and Linux and this video I'm gonna make some explosion sounds because that's fun and we can also learn some Interesting things about sound design and producing sound effects. I'm gonna be using Ardor, which is my DAW of choice Okay, so I like to start making explosions with a synthesizer. So let's open up a synthesizer Let's go create a MIDI track What could we use? Vitalium and let's have maybe for instance is just for good measure Okay, yes, I want my MIDI keyboard to follow selection and provide music data. Now, let me disconnect the MIDI tracks So they don't all play and just one Yes Fantastic Now let's open up the plug-in and See what we can do Explosions are violent increases in air pressure which create a shockwave and a lot of turbulence or chaotic air movement So let's maybe go with noise Here's a sampler. We can make the noise stereo in a vitalium by dragging the stereo control over the pitch This is fine You can also increase the amount And now left and right channels are playing at different speeds You can also start this at random places. So it doesn't matter because we want to make explosions So we can have one This way every single Hit is gonna sound a little bit different Now this sounds way too bright. So I'm gonna open a filter Make sure that sampler is going into that filter. You see that it also changes here. Let's wait with the backup a little bit, okay? now that's quite quiet, so I'm gonna make this louder and Do the resonance I'm gonna up the drive Also, I am going to Give myself a little bit more volume in here Okay, I think I want to also transpose this noise sample and Maybe even add some random variation. I'm gonna grab the random source put it here All right, I'm gonna speed it up and Lower the influence Let's slow it down all right now this sounds a bit like wind and Explosions are kind of like a special case of wind I'm going to Alter the envelope one which is the amplitude envelope. Okay, that sounds more like What we're going for? Maybe let's remove the attack Time so it's perfectly quick if we zoom in you can see that the default Has a little bit of attack you can minimize we remove that completely Okay, this is like a bit too chill Let's try a different filter There's a bunch of types of filters. We're using the analog one. There's also a dirty filter nice So the dirty filter with drive on gives us some nice crunch good also We may want to maybe up the sustain in here and Instead use a different envelope drag it over Level I'm going to now turn the level down. So that's the minimum and I'm gonna turn this up. So that's the maximum Now this envelope controls how loud the noise is at its source Because with this envelope we are controlling how loud the sound is at the end of the signal chain So after our filter and it would make sense to distort the sound more in the filter when it's louder and Not just turn it down later because that's weird Okay, let's lower the sustain here as you can hear now We have Something that sounds a little bit like an explosion So we could definitely add some more what we could also do is use another filter filter to and Use two of them in parallel. I'm gonna first disable the first one Enable sample so that our sampler goes to filters one and two You can maybe change this to a band pass. I could also use this I would like to change the curvature, but I don't want to affect anything else. So I'm gonna go to matrix Which is shorthand for modulation matrix. That's it. That's the thing and here you can see we have envelope two Which is this one and it's being used to control filter to cut off There's a few things first is we have a fantastic remapping function, which we could just use To do this and now you can see This is way snappier But there's also this thing which does the same thing Let's copy this and initialize so you see we have a shorthand for making this kind of bending Built in a right into this Matrix with the morph thing Okay, let's go back to our voices What if we distort that Okay, the analog filter is quite clean I would say let's try the dirty one First without distortion or drive Okay, let's see if we can find something that distorts even more. What about the ladder? All right, that's funny. Okay, let's go with diode. I believe that's a model of a cork filter. Oh That's weird, okay, so it's either low pass or band pass This sounds to me like a nice Reverb like echo Response of the environment where the explosion happens. I like this. Let's see what happens if we Enable this first filter again. Nice. Let's disable the second one Can you hear the difference? Of course, this doesn't sound like a realistic explosion yet We could keep working on it and finally get there But it's already way better than what we had before Also, I have an idea To maybe go to the matrix and see envelope two sample level can we Change this What if we do two? Will that accept it? No, no, that is too much So if I make this By polar We can Okay, I think what we could do. Let's make it in a polar is Use another envelope make it just shorter. There we go Oh So you see we are adding a little bit of a Really nasty click I think I'd also like to move this thing. Let's see. What if we and they Assigned this Okay, that's way too much What if we also, I don't know Change the oh, what did I do? I think I did nothing. I Would like to assign it here to this one. Okay, that's it and now reverse that All right, what about this? Okay, we can also use that Okay, this is very very sensitive Even a tiny bit Is there like a modifier key that I can use to have more precision Okay, I can just oh if you control click you can type in okay 0.01 All right, control click again. Let's type 0.02 We can middle click to disable. I think that's an appropriate amount. See how little we get what we did Okay, I think what we could do to improve that is also add a little bit of a percussive hit not Entirely unlike a kick drum, so it's an able to oscillator And now it's going to a filter which is distorting so I'm gonna go to effects Sweet, okay First is we may want to disable note tracking on this oscillator so that whatever I press it sounds the same we could also and Up the over sampling to hopefully get cleaner distortion I think I'm gonna keep note tracking for the oscillator Okay, we need to make this a sine wave. We could use some Harder any Presets, I think they're not okay. Let's go edit this Right-click clear and just add one harmonic Well single one and this clear it as well These these are the phases and these are the amplitudes of harmonics Okay, we can actually save this as sine Wow, I'm gonna be the author of sine amazing Great. Now we can think of we go shift. Yes holding shift we can offset the pitch by Entire octaves instead of just half steps or half tones rather Hmm. All right. I think what we need is a nice snappy amplitude as envelope like this one But maybe let's take a different one. I should like how that screamed Yeah, that's not really You know what? I've just realized we're distorting signal. Okay, that was way too loud. Okay, so We want a very quick and Large change in pitch No, let's disable the sampler Also, let's disable the phase randomization We can also change the phase. I'm gonna control click and type 90 This means that our waveform is not gonna start here. It's gonna start here So we have a nice click almost like an 808 But we don't want that we want something more. Let's go with this Just not so much Okay, let's shift this down another octave. Oh, sorry shift Yes, we can also move this to the level and turn down the base level to zero Let's turn on the sampler Yeah, so I think this little sine wave gives us a bit more Low-end now, let's go to post processing. Let's go with effects We can try distortion It would be nice to maybe Use a pre-filter Change it to a band pass This adds some interesting character. Let's try Added just a bit. All right. That's interesting. Let's see what we can do with the reverb We could improve this up the size and reduce the time This is how this reverb sounds on its own What if we also use this to add snappiness? You could also add some punch to this kick drum element With some distortion You can maybe enable it Oh, there's also a phase and we could enable unison in detune To have this a little bit less clean or focused Okay, we have something going on I think what we could also do is try and use the compressor Now by default the compressor is in multi band mode and it has three bands And you can see ratios Are expressed the compression ratios are expressed with these lines And this is a upwards downwards compressor So I believe at first it compresses downwards So these are like the downwards compressors and then it compresses upwards, which is Like it brings the quieter parts up This means you can either limit the high amplitudes or not Or you can limit the low Which will try to lift the quieter signals up to the same loudness Isn't this even working like an expander? What if we move the reverb above that? Okay, maybe if we lower the mix so that there's less reverb because the compressor accentuates the reverb a lot Okay, I don't like that. It's too long. Alrighty I think that's kind of Usable let's see what we can do with dq One thing is we could use a hypers filter to maybe control the lows a little bit because they are quite crazy And this is also useful if you're trying to like This sounds a little bit similar to The micro missiles in doom 2016 So like a general rule of sound design is Sounds which are higher in pitch Are created by smaller objects Sounds that are lower in pitch Are created by larger objects So if you are making a smaller explosion For example, it would make sense to use this eq Maybe like that And you don't have all this crazy bass going on Yeah, it it sounds like a it could be a grenade or a Small rocket Maybe even a shotgun. I don't know. Of course. This sounds a little bit Synthesis ashy clicks synthy and you may not want that For like non realistic graphics For a video game this could work If you're going for realistic looks well, this is Not gonna cut it on its own You will need to use At least some form of recorded explosions And you can blend this in and blending recorded explosions with Synthesized ones gives great results Because you have all the control of the synthesis And you have the character of the recorded sounds It's great to even like go and record some firecrackers And I actually have a recording of a firecracker That I could bring up and show you how that Works So let's let me find that recording So here is a recording of a firecracker And as you can see, there's a lot of very interesting characterful reverb That it's really difficult to synthesize something like that but If we combine the two Let's create a note Also the pitch of the note Changes There are also different ways we could affect that Something very useful that I used when designing Sounds for tanks firing shells Firing their cannons is using convolution reverb with something like this firecracker So what we could do is For example use this another vitalium instance And maybe use our awesome sign preset Drop this Remove the phase randomness make this Always start with a click get shorter Okay, we can also distort it maybe post Almost hard style Oh my goodness This makes me want to drop it and start making hard style. What about to do is to do is Wait to not enough highs What the hell we need more highs Okay, a little bit noise Sure Oh, that's a good note. Okay, I'm gonna record that actually Because I I don't want to search on the keyboard. Which note is it? Okay, let's go with that and now You have this I'm gonna add an IR Which is an impulse response reverb And now We can actually if we open the Plug in with generic controls Okay, no So now we can open a file Load this Now if we go no dry You can see this is our This is our um sound Which is multiplied with this Reverb recorded reverb. It's good to do some fade out Okay, and afterwards we can also apply compressor Lsp multi band compressor Okay lsp multi band Compressor stereo times eight Sure, I want to favorite this plugin. That's one of the more useful ones. Okay Greetings, you've updated. Sure Actually, this is the fresh Linux arch Linux installation I haven't used these plugins yet Okay, what we need to do is up the ratios ratios are here Let's go maybe to four to one Can use four bands of this compressor You can also change this to yeah, the it Sidechain boost this determines that the the spectrum like none Is neutral pink like boosts lows a little bit Brown is like more Or maybe it's the other way around No, it doesn't sound good I'm just gonna row lower the Where is it attack decibels? Okay, this is the and where is makeup gain? Okay, so I should make up again is this And together Okay, there's a little slight delay. We need to and now again Lower sounds larger objects We can I'm gonna copy this alt one to mute it. We can t To time stretch Oh, there's a new Wow, there's a new mode. Awesome. I haven't seen that resampled without preserving pitch. Yes. This is gonna just Change this playback speed Now I'm also going to apply this to our our original firecracker I don't think This flanger is doing ours Doing us any good. There's so many cool things we can do Like I don't know maybe use an LFO on this This sounds a little bit like a rocket going off because it's okay. Let's change the starting point I've published some sounds on freesound.org which are firecracker explosions and you can cut out Their license on their creative comments zero so we can just get them. You don't have to credit me So that's always appreciated And you can make your own explosion sounds based off of that and using impulse response reverb is very Nice and and gives you Makes you makes it possible to mix a recorded explosion sound with Something else and achieve an interesting result and also this plugin can also as well stretch Time stretch this reverb. So I think we need to change this Fade out so because okay, uh Now I'm gonna apply some Processing on the master bus because this is only x42 dpl Yes, we need a limiter as you can see I have no favorites in this on the system because this is very fresh Okay, we are we've been clipping this signal very strongly Let's see. Do I have Chow tape Oh, I don't okay wolf shaper. Okay wolf shaper Wolf shaper favorite as well Wolf shaper is a distortion plugin Which has an oversampling Mode I can enable alter return The good thing is we can Quite clean or the saturator signal because it features this oversampling without the limiter And with the limiter Now it's clear that we are with our signals way too loud And we are losing a lot of transient in This process I'm going to enable the sample peak true sample uh limitation So that we don't go above the limit Okay, and I think that's that could be it Of course if we had multiple sounds and usually when you're doing sound effects, you're don't you don't do one session per sound effect You're gonna have a thousand or 50 or 200 sound effects in one session depending on What your system can handle and how you want to organize your work But I've made different videos where I show how to manage that so I'm not gonna talk about this This was a video about making an explosion sounds Okay, that's all for today. I hope you found this video interesting inspiring educational If you have any questions about this topic or anything else regarding audio production with free and open source software and linux Or if you have suggestions for what I could do in a future video, please leave them in the comment section below Thanks for watching I'd also like to thank everyone who is supporting my work financially Thanks to these people. I can keep making videos If the view dear viewer would like to join them Please go to patreon.com slash anfa or liberapay.com slash anfa which is a free and open source alternative to patreon And there you can support me with a monthly donation. Even one dollar means a lot to me. All right. Um I think that went pretty pretty okay. Uh Yeah, without without using any recorded audio. It's it's not really possible to make Explosions that sound realistic if you keep if you stay you On synthesized sound, it's always gonna be sounding stylized and for some games or animations This can be what you maybe what you need if you need something more realistic then You're gotta get some recorded explosions even small ones. You can always Stretch them out slow them down and make them sound bigger Or just grab a pack of Firecrackers and Oh, and also if you do that Consider uploading them to freesound.org under a creative command zero license. So we can all use that as well All right, and make some explosion sounds