Sound design with our own voice

Hi, this is Alex from sound design studio AK Audio. 

Today I'm gonna show you how I use my voice in the sound design process. Our studio is working on making music and sound for the game called "Wrack: Exoverse". This is a rogue-like tower defense first person shooter. Not long ago I was working on sound design for its grenade launcher called the Thumper. 

To get the right idea for the sound I started recording the sound of my voice while watching the animation of the weapon. From the recording, we have 2 parts of the sound. The first could be synthesized with a noise oscillator and the second with tonal waves. 

I imported it into iZotope RX to watch its spectrogram. That helped me understand the sound I recorded. From the picture, I can set the fundamental frequency somewhere near 150 Hz, with a little pitch modulation. Also, there are several harmonics, that means It should be synthesized with something richer than a sine wave.

From the spectrogram, I know the length of the sound, tone and pitch modulation and I finally can make it with my favorite synth. 

In Serum, I added some harmonics to the sine wave to make its timber richer and modulate the pitch and the volume. In the fx section, I added a little distortion and a reverb filter. 

After synthesis, I usually resample the sounds, it's always easier to change its length and fade the sample.

The main bass layer I tuned up 4 semitones and processed with the Amp, filter, and Imager. 

Also, I used this sound in granular sampler Polygon to create some sci-fi textures to layer with the sound. 

To add some fatness in the sound I synthesized a sub-bass layer from a sine wave with modulated pitch and volume. 

And one more interesting layer. It sounds like the weapon spit out the grenade. I started with a Kick drum attack sound. Then I applied some other effects to the texture. Plate reverb makes it sounds metallic, compressor adds attack, and reverb-filter make it sounds like it spits.

There are some other layers like noise with tremolo, and sample of mechanical attack of an m203 grenade launcher. 

Then I just needed to create more variations for each layer and put it in the middleware. 

I hope this technique helps inspire you to make good sounds.

You can find more information about our sound design studio at http://akaudio.com