Posts tagged “Doors”

New Theme for Spring 2014

 

 

 

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Ever since starting the Sound Collectors’ Club, ‘Doors’ has been a frequent request whenever it’s been time to choose a new theme.  To date, I’ve always been reticent to go with it, as I feel Tim Prebble already ticked that box a while back with his epic crowdsourced ‘Doors’ collection that he orchestrated.  Although overlap with other collections is eventually inevitable, I prefer themes that don’t echo well-known independent libraries that already exist out there.

However, the thing is that a lot of people (including myself) missed out on Tim’s collection when it happened, so there is still a lot of demand from club members for new sounds in this department.  I finally caved in when club member Steve Papagiannis’ recently suggested an ‘Open & Close’ theme rather than just specifically doors, so that the theme can include all kinds of different hinged things, big and small, rather than just doors.  I’ll let Steve explain:

“How about opens and closes, building a “new” 9000 series.  Doors, drawers, gates, garages, cabinets, boxes, compartments, trunks, mason jars, etc – anything and everything, if it opens and closes, from the smallest jewelry box or door latch to the largest electrical utility box or hanger door, it’s fair game (would include knocking/pounding, latches, creaks if there are any, associated with said subject matter being recorded.”

The only requirement I’d insist upon is that you must submit the open AND close sounds of the item / object.  After that, any supplementary sounds that are useful bi-products of the opening & closing, such as creaks or the usual interior or exterior versions where relevant, are always very welcome but not essential.  Let me clarify that doors ARE welcome in this collection, but so are any other kinds of interesting-sounding hinged items too.  Oh, and obviously I’ll keep car doors in their separate collection that already exists.

So let’s do it – let’s make this the new 9000!!!

 

Addendums:

Rene Coronado has made a good point on Twitter regarding this theme:

“Cool theme!  I’d add:  What made Tim’s collection so good is the requirement of different performances and perspectives; i.e. soft > hard & near > far.”

& Steve Papagiannis has kindly contributed these thoughts on our subsequent approach towards labelling & metadata for this theme (and all other themes, for that matter):

“If there’s one takeway that was really successful about the 9000 Series, it was the naming choices.  Sure somebody might not care about obscure details like “Big Castle Wood Door” or “General Store Wood Door” at face-value, but these sorts of specifics actually helped search-ability (and memory recall of one’s favorites) immensely.  Hundreds of files just called “Refrigerator door open close” are not very useful in my opinion, and hard to decipher for those adding their own metadata after the fact.  Is it a steel fridge door?  Plastic/steel?  Is it more modern or maybe more of a 60s or 70s with the latches versus a traditional rubber seal?  Is it a household fridge door, or industrial (like medical or morgue)?  Is it clean and tight sounding?  or Old and busted?  Having some sort of unique descriptive “name” in the filename helps. I like to adopt the 9000 Series “Institutional” tag in my own library to mean a metal door which you might find in a commercial or insitutional structure (school, building, etc) which is that traditional, quintessential solid-panel (or maybe glass viewhole) metal door with the latch handle.  Often I like to tag my hearty, solid-sounding tasty wood doors as “Antique”, also borrowed from the 9000 series since well, we don’t make doors like that anymore and those high-quality wood doors of yesteryear have such a particular sound unlike modern household or apartment doors.  If anything, I personally think it should be a requirement that when you submit, regardless of a door or anything else like a box, please note in the filename a) what type of material(s) (or the case of something like a fridge, maybe modern or old) and b) any particular sonic characteristic (tight, heavy, thick, solid, hollow, etc) – but go by what you hear not what you see.  Countless times I run searches for solid steel door, or heavy copper door, or something like that and all I get back are dull, hollow-sounding metal doors which don’t sound like an assertive metal door I want.  I get said results as though I was searching for “hollow”.  But they get tagged as thick, solid, or heavy because of how they looked or felt when recording, not how they sound/translate.  Just some thoughts to possibly add to the page! :)”

 

Definitely worth bearing these thoughts in mind when collecting & labelling your sounds.

 

 

April 5, 2014 | Categories: Themes | Tags: , , | 2 Comments