Freesound Forums

Hello Freesounders

Welcome to 2018!
I notice some Freesounders like to process other people's sounds. I think that is a fantastic way to use Freesound and a clear example of creativity fuelling more creativity. So I honour them in this dare

The dare I propose to you is to create a complex effects chain, using the following process.

1 - Select a sound from Freesound as your 'raw material'.
2 - Create an 'effects chain' to process your sound.
3 - I am taking the term 'effects chain' in a very broad sense here. So you could:
- create an effects chain in your DAW in the normal way
- create an 'offline' sequence of steps to process your sound (using programs like Audacity, paulstretch, etc)
- use hardware effects or a modular synth to process the sound
- write a piece of software to process your sound
- etc
- your process can be any combination of the above.
4 - It is important that you take your time designing this effects chain. This is the creative process itself. The aim is to make the resulting sound to be very different from the sound you started with, so you are encouraged to use effects like pitch/frequency shifters, spectral processing, etc. And to make the processing complex. Maybe you can consider using feedback loops?
Also remember the process does not need to be 'online' or 'real-time', offline processing is OK. So you can take that file offline and do things you would not normally do to a sound.
5 - Do take your time and fine tune your process util you achieve a result you are happy with.
If you are using an offline process or a combination of processes, make sure you can replicate the process. Take notes if necessary.
6 - Once you have achieved that point, you cannot change that process anymore
7 - Now it is time to go back to Freesound and find some more test sounds.
Consider your original sound and look for sounds that are DIFFERENT. For example:
- Consider the loudness of your initial test sound. Select other test sounds so that you cover sounds that are QUIET, INTERMEDIATE and LOUD.
- Consider the frequency contents of your initial test sound. Select other sounds to make sure you cover sounds containing mostly HIGH FREQ, MEDIUM FREQ and LOW FREQ. Also consider choosing a sound that covers FULL SPECTRUM.
- Feel free to consider also other characteristics such as duration (LONG, INTERMEDIATE, SHORT), etc.
8 - Process the additional test sounds that you have selected using the same exact FX chain or process.
9 - post all resulting sounds as a sound pack, each sound must contain the tag "Dare-52". Each sound must also contain a link to the original Freesound sound that was used as test sample.
Include at least a short description of your FX/processing (could be in each sound description or just once in the pack description).
10 - You are also very encouraged to discuss your results further in this thread:
- Did your FX chain produce very different sounds depending on the input material, or did it generally produce similar sounds?
- Where you surprised by the results?
- Did you learn anything in this process?
- Did it inspire you?
- Did you ind any of the resulting sounds useful?

You are also encouraged to repeat this process if you want and create more than one FX chain. However, please upload the sounds from different FX chains on different packs. Thanks

Have fun !