Somehow November is my month for completing long term projects, the first of which is a new HISSandaROAR library of sound design source material: SD005 PRESSURE

The library was created from over 50GB of new recordings, including “props’ such as a five ton steam engine, an air compressor with many different attachments, truck air brakes, a domestic pressure cooker, spray cans, fire extinguishers, balloons, shaken up soda cans, paint ball guns & the most essential device of all; the human breath!

I did a Q&A with Miguel at DesigningSound – have a read here and incase you missed it earlier here is the little making of video:

Apart from using the sounds as component elements in their own right, another use for them is with regards to convolution – the noise aspect of the sounds means that convolution will find many common frequencies to interact with, be it via a dedicated convolution app or by impulse responses…

While recording with compressed air I also discovered I could create interesting ambiences by injecting low pressure air flows into pipes, so I recorded steady state versions of these, again great material for processing into sci fi ambiences….

I also did a record session at a Paintball location in North Grenada – we had great fun blasting the guns through different pipes! And it was my first multitrack recording with my new SD744 (with 722 synced via c.link)

Between the fire extinguisher, a bunch of different aerosol cans, and the pressure cooker my studio was a stinky mess by the end of the sessions! But totally worth it – I found one aerosol can that sounds like a death ray and one of the fire extinguishers had a unique tonality to it!

So go check out the new library & failing all else grab a copy of the free CD quality version! The next release on HISSandaROAR will be THE DOORS – I am in the process of shipping drives to the contributors this week, the release will be in January 2011.