Streamdeck and Wwise

Recently, for a new project I have the privilege of working on, I am finally getting the chance to use Wwise for the implementation. All my other projects were done with native unity Audio, and this was a very exciting endeavor. However, I am not as fast with Wwise as I would like so I figured I should put my nifty Streamdeck to use and began mapping out some common keystrokes that I would have difficulty remembering.

This profile will be available below.

I organized the profile so that anyone can use it, whether you have 32 or 6 buttons. It is split into a few folders:

- Misc

- View

- Create Actor

- Various 1 off functions such as toggle collapse container, commit changes (source control), Generate sound banks, start capture, and follow capture.

Misc

This folder is where I put common actions but didn't have an overall theme to them. Some of these actions include: open in editor, open in explorer, back rename, check out (source control), and open blend track editor.

View

This folder just has keystrokes to navigate Wwise and view its various windows. These are things like soundcaster, Mixer, Designer, Profiler, and soundbank.

Create Actor

This will arguably be the most used folder in the profile. Each of these commands create a child to whichever parent you have selected in the designer window. these commands include Blend container, switch container, sequence container, random container, and actor mixer.

All and all, I hope people find this profile useful. Whether it is for the workflow or the cool looking icons (thanks Ashton Fayendo!) There are some bugs when loading profiles where commands have to be remapped on different operating systems but please let me know if you have any questions.

YC _ Wwise Profile.streamDeckProfile

.zip

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Crowdsource Recording: Creatures

In June, I decided to run a crowdsource within the field recording slack. Being a huge creature person and part of it had already been recorded, I decided to run part 2 of creatures. It was way cooler of an experience than I anticipated - even after running doors back in 2021. At first, I thought that it would be pretty explanatory, then a few days into the crowdsource I realized the daunting question, what makes good creature source material?

Since every creature for every project is different, there is an endless amount of ways that a creature can be created. After listening to early submissions and beginning my own recordings, it was soon realized that there are certain qualities of a sound that make it sound like a creature.

- The throat

- The mouth movement

- the breath

For sounds of the throat of a creature, it could be any type of sound that had a longer sustain, anything that had a screech, or squeak. It was also learned that applying a resonant moving filter to the midrange of just about ANY sound, gave it a throaty quality that made it sound like it was coming from a creature.

The mouth movements of a creature are a crucial part in making it sound believable, the throat on its own often isn't enough to make someone believe the creature is alive, but hearing the mouth open, close, gurgle, click, before and after the main throaty element, giving it the extra spice that allowed for it to be believable. These elements could be any type of short squeak (a common theme), gurgles, bubbles, bowing of various objects, processing with tremolo, slowed-down recordings, etc. Having a quick burst of the mouth opening and then a longer more dramatic guttural sound is an excellent way to turn any throaty element into a creature.

The final element is the breath, truthfully this is more of a sweetener and how it works is very dependent on the project, but creatures need to exist in space, right? How do they react to the environment, breathe, Gills moving, the low rumbling of the chest, absorbing sounds through a crazy black hole? Just about anything goes for this but it's one of those extra things that help bring the creature to life.

All in all, this crowdsource was an awesome experience and the types of sounds the community came up with is breathtaking. I am incredibly proud of how this one came out and I also wanted to give a huge shoutout to the other hosts: Daniel Meuser and Robbie Elias.

Field Recording - Peniche Waves

Date:

08/20/2022

Time of day:

Afternoon

Subject:

Ocean waves hitting rocks

Location:

Peniche, Portugal

Notes: Back in August, I had the pleasure of taking a trip to Portugal. For 3 days, I stayed in peniche, the surfing capital. When I arrived it quickly became apparent why it was, some of these waves were insanely massive - reaching 10ft sometimes! To make things better, there was a cliff that overlooked an alcove full of rocks and I knew there was a good spot to record these monstrous waves.

Because I was in a more public setting with many tourists and to keep portable, I couldn't bring a whole mic rig with me, but my trusty Tascam dr40x (surprisingly) handled the wind quite well and captured exactly what I was aiming for.