Gaffer Tape?
It can’t fix stupid, but it can muffle the sound…

While recording the WIND FLUTE SPINNER I accidentally recorded some gaffer tape rips while attaching pipes to the potters wheel… I didn’t even notice it at the time, but while editing the recordings I came across them & got totally distracted for ten minutes, playing with the gritty tearing sound. So I made a note of potential & carried on editing… This new miniFX Library is a result of revisiting that idea.

Next time I was at a hardware store I grabbed a bunch of gaffer tape as well as some 1″ and 2″ wide sellotape. Recording with the Sanken CUX100K mics and Sennheiser MKH8040 I started performing moves, pulling lengths of tape off the roll, then rips & tears.

Using proximity I figured I could rip past the mics and listening later on studio monitors the fast rips reminded of times when automating a pan is less efficient than cutting short passbys as hard cuts between speakers, with or without overlap. Encouraging!!

Next I experimented using resonators – the large wooden box used for PIANO HARP recording, a metal trash can & a plastic road cone. These provided ‘body’ to the sounds, but when I switched to sellotape I made a little discovery when using tension – if pulled slowly, the sellotape ‘pinged’ the resonator! So i spent some time exploring slow pitchy moves – have a listen to the vid & preview sounds to hear what I mean. Apart from slowly decreasing in pitch as the tape got longer, I also performed some phrases, pulling tension & then releasing it slowly, so the pings almost doppler up & down in pitch…

The noise aspect of these sounds also means they will respond well to processing and I can easily imagine designing some great projectile passbys & scifi weapon whizzes that cut through busy mixes…

HISSandaROAR FX033 100K STICKY TAPE

If it can’t be fixed with Gaffer Tape then you aren’t using enough!