CREATOR BLOG [Super fun peek into the art of creating an audio!]

A DAY IN THE LIFE...

Hey monkeys. So here is another little peek into the world of being an ASMR creator, or namely in this case, into being me. :)  

I spend the first 2-3 hours of my day working on my channel. Updating Patreon tiers, brainstorming new stories, writing scripts, answering YT comments. It's become very much a sacred ritual:

I wake up before dawn, hop out of bed and scurry downstairs barefooted to the well of life... the coffee maker. I pull down one of about 3-4 mugs that I use religiously (one that my brother got me, one that displays the logo of my favorite band, or one of the few that Morrigan has gotten me over the years.) I walk the dog while the coffee brews, and then I come back in to begin "the process".

Pour a hot steaming mug, turn on a lamp, then sit at my desk where I sign in to my AB accounts and check in to the world of Ben. I check the notifications, answer emails, as well as send out emails to other creators and communicate about current collabs, if any. Once all the admin stuff is knocked out, that's when I get to do the creative stuff. I open my google docs and start a blank document. I run through Tribe suggestions I've read lately, things they've mentioned they'd like to hear Ben perform.

Sometimes a really fun new idea strikes, and I take off writing it. If nothing new comes, that's when I backtrack and work on older stories, sequels. Things that are already started are much easier to run with, sometimes. And here's the thing too, writing in Ben's character for a few hours gets me in the right frame of mind to then record in Ben's character. I've found that if I just wake up, go into the home studio and try to record, Ben doesn't come off as himself. It comes off as "me" reading some stranger's words.

So the writing process really does help me ease my way into the waters before recording. Around 10am, after I've written for a few hours, it's time to go upstairs to the sound-treated room, power up my beast of a computer and all the recording gear, and dive in.

Settle into my rolley chair, place the headphones on, open up scripts, hit record, go. Now, recording/performing is a blast, but I will say this too: it is exhausting. After only 2-3 scripts, I'm physically and emotionally drained because I put a LOT of effort in, not just in performing but in multiple, multiple takes, trying to get everything juuuuust right. A 10 minute audio can sometimes take me upwards of an hour to record, sometimes because of voice complications, sometimes added with noisy neighbors, sometimes added with being A.D.D. and scrolling through Twitter when I'm supposed to be working. :)

But eventually, I decide an audio voice recording is complete. Not that I'm ever actually satisfied with it, it's usually because I've lost my sanity and given up on being able to do "one more take". XD    and then, it's time to edit.

Now this is where it gets super fun. Have you ever listened to an audio and though, "now, I wonder where they got THAT sound effect!!"  Sound effect hunting is a veeeeery difficult process sometimes, because even though there are libraries online you can access, no library has it all. In these cases, one must either opt for creating the sound effect themselves, OR, get very clever... (this next story/example is so fun, let's go...)

THE GREAT SOUND EFFECT HUNT...

So for example, I just finished the editing process for an audio called, "Busting Santa". Now as you might imagine, there are not many sound effects listed when you search using words like "reindeer talking", "sleigh landing on roof", "Santa carrying bag of presents", "Sounds of being in your house and reindeer moving on top of your roof."  XD

So as a SFX (sound effects) engineer, you have to think outside the box. You have to picture the sound you're after, for example in my case, I needed the sound of a sleigh landing on top of a snowy roof.  Obviously that sound effect does not really exist, so what sound effect sounds similar??  And viola!!  The sound of Santa landing on the listener's roof is compiled of me editing together multiple sounds including:  

1.  "Ice skater sliding to a stop" (which is a sliding sound WITH the sound of ice included... clever right??)
2. "Large rock sliding on concrete"
3. "Large metal door sliding open"

And there you have it. When you edit those together, do a little studio magic on them, the listener's mind doesn't hear ice skaters, rocks and metal doors. They hear a magic flippin' sleigh. *mic drop*

Then there was the task of finding SFX for Santa getting out of the sleigh and grabbing his bag of presents. You have to let your imagination go there and picture him. It's not enough just to have footsteps... Santa wears a belt and buttons that will jingle. He's wearing boots, not sneakers- boots have a heavier thud. There's snow on that roof, so the footsteps can't be clean. They have to crunch. Etc, etc.  That scene was thus comprised of:

1. "Man pulling up his jeans and buckling his belt" (which provided the sound of clothing and a cloth bag moving, as well as the jingles)
2. "Boots in snow, crunching"
3. "Potato chips being crunched"

Now, here's where it got realllllly fun. There's a scene where Santa-Ben is in the listener's house, conversing with the listener, and suddenly they hear the sleigh and reindeer making ruckus above their heads. I mean, reindeer are living things after all. They aren't just gonna be still and quiet for a whole audio. They move, they bay. So how do you create the effect of little hooves on the roof above you?  Well you guessed it, there's no library on earth with THOSE sounds. Sooooo, you gotta put your thinking cap on.

1.  "Rocks falling down a cliff" (creates the sounds of MULTIPLE sets of hooves moving)
2. "bookshelf sliding across wood floor" (gives the effect of the sleigh moving slightly when the reindeer move)
3. "Cows mooing in pasture" (when digitally edited and deepened, sounds like baying reindeer).

Once all those SFX have been edited together to paint the picture, I then highlight them, and do something called an "EQ adjustment", where I erase ALL the high end frequencies out of the sounds, leaving only the muffled, low-end frequencies. That gives the appearance of the sounds being above you, on the roof... muffled and far away instead of crisp and up close like they are in the opening scene.

Sooooo yeah, a 10 minute audio ultimately comes down to about 6-8 hours of work starting from the script being written, to the performance, to hunting down hundreds of tiny SFX and splicing them together, not to mention the art of timing with those SFX. Each SFX must be timed to match real life and physics. When Ben gets hit with a baseball bat, he obviously grunts in pain. So there are two main sounds:  the hit, and the grunt. I place the "hit" just a few miliseconds ahead of the grunt, because people don't actually grunt at the EXACT same time they're hit. It's a reaction, and so even though it's barely a detectable difference to your ears, the hit comes a few blinks before the grunt, giving the "cause and effect" satisfaction you didn't even know your brain expects.

:)  And there you have it. A small peek into the world of creating sophisticated, realistic audios.  Maybe next blog I'll take you into the process of the Wolf scenes.