How to create a 60 Hz hum sound?!
Hi!
I know that most of the time we want to remove this kind of noise, but I'm trying to recreate it :)
I also know that the most easiest way is to record my own hum sound and I already did it by recording my guitar jack plugged into my preamp Axe-FX II XL+.
Now I want to try the synthesis way.
My first step is to create a cycle~ 60, but after that I'm stuck...
I can't figure out which components are in a humming sound.
Saw? Square ? Triangle ? White noise ?
Any idea ?
Thanks!
I want to achieve this sound (I already have a patch to generate all the noisy background) :
The easiest way is to use cycle~ and connect that to your audio output. If you read the cycle~ help file it gives you a really simple example to use.
Or you could use this if you want something a bit more sophisticated:
Hi Andy!
Thanks for your answer.
Sorry, I should have been more specific in my first post.
I already have a good knowledge of Max, so my issue isn't technical.
When I wrote that my first step is to create a cycle~ 60, but after that I'm stuck, I didn't meant that I don't know where to connect my cycle~.
My main issue is that I can't figure out what type of sound I need to use to recreate this 60 Hz hum sound.
I know that the basis for this kind of sound is a sine wave at 60 Hz, but a simple 60 Hz sine wave is not enough to recreate it. The example in the video is clearly more complex than a 60 Hz sine wave, but how many layered sounds are needed? Do I need to work with many sine waves or triangle, saw, square, noise? A mix of different waveforms?
I have no clue... :(
I feel like I’ve heard those kinds of tones while playing around with wavetable in Ableton. I’m by no means an expert in sound design but I’d try combining cycle tri and saw and offsetting their frequencies to make a more complex shape and combine that with the original cycle? Maybe haha?
Hum... good idea! I will try it.
I will also try Wavetable, it's the synth I use 99% of the time in Ableton and I didn't even thought about it!
Thanks for your help!
Ok, sorry, I didn't understand fully.
I've put the sound into Wavelab to analyse it and all I can say is that its extremely complex. This is the frequency spectrum:
and this is a snapshot of the waveform:
As you can see, there are sounds with frequencies all the way up to about 10kHz. Just as an opinion, it sounds less like a 60Hz hum and more like an air conditioning system. I really don't know how you could even contemplate building this up from scratch!
What about starting with a white or pink noise generator and putting it through a variety of filters and modulators and then layering on a few sine waves at various discordant frequencies?
Thanks Andy!
Indeed, it's a very complex sound...
It's more like a challenge for me.
I like to design my own sounds to have more control to shape the sound as I want.
The sound in the video emulate a lightning buzzing sound, but you're right, it's rather complex like an air conditioning system! And your idea with noise is indeed one good way to do it.
I tried with Ableton Live and Wavetable and I succeed to design a sound that is close by layering multiple Wavetable with brown noise, vinyl dirt soft and vinyl dirt constant (in noise categorie).
Now, I just switched to Operator since I can specified a fixed frequency for each oscillator (which I can't with Wavetable and tweaking with the detuned knob and a tuner isn't the most precise way).
I made 2 layers :
a 60 Hz sine wave (with subtle noise LFO on pitch) and a saturator with waveshaper effect
a 60 Hz 4 bits sine wave (with subtle noise LFO on pitch) and a saturator with waveshaper effect
Even if the effect is close, it's way to much "perfect" and digital, therefore I find it rather annoying to listen to for a long time.
When I listen to the sound in the video (or in other similar videos), the sound isn't as annoying, and it's even relaxing sometimes.
What do you think of my sound ? Any tips to improve it ?
Here is an extract of a horror soundscape I'm working on and in which I use my sound.
I'm the only one who finds my sound annoying to listen to for a long time ? :)
Nice, I don’t think it’s any more or less annoying really. Maybe you could slightly modulate different eq bands to bring in and take out the “annoying “ frequencies over a long period? It might be neat in a soundscape to try and simulate the feeling of walking around a space with the sound coming from a fixed location?
Thanks for your feedback and advices Greg!
I will try to modulate the eq yeah!
Simulate a sound coming from a fixed location is coherent with the place I try to emulate.
^ya, what Greg said("modulate different eq bands" both over short-term and long-term LFOs)... i think another thing you could try is some kind of tape-saturation plus tape-warble(my 'technical term' for when the tape is deteriorated a bit, combined with a slight noisy modulation of the playback-speed... nothing too drastic, still keeping the 60hz frequency overall)
I'm the only one who finds my sound annoying to listen to for a long time ? :)
haha, not annoying, but... your 60hz sound seems to live in a separate space from the rest of the horrorscape(so it makes it less of a 'horror' because one can fixate on the 60hz sound easily in order to escape the rest)
your sound-design is always one of the most amazing i've ever encountered here on the forums.
mad props to you!
🙌🏆🥇🏅🏅🏆🙌
Thanks for your ideas!
Indeed, it can add that dirty feeling perfect for horror ambiance.
your sound-design is always one of the most amazing i've ever encountered here on the forums.
Thanks a lot :)
Here is a new version with some change :
fast random LFO on the lowpass filter ;
slow random LFO on the highpass filter ;
tape saturation & wobble ;
a layer of cassette noise ;
downsampling around 8000 Hz.
Maybe I could also add some saturation to each filter to add depth and vintage feeling.
Awesome, sounds pretty close to me!
Ya! This is the sound i was thinking of(some saturation to each filter would take it even further, and then of course, to mimic the video more: some more reverb... but perhaps that can be dependent on how this is presented within a space(if in an art installation with a reverberant space that colors all the sounds mixed together in a similar way, this recording might be enough)).
Nice intricate detail in this last version!