Help me get this clock sound?

[AD Chaos]

Hope this is not the wrong section for this,


I really need help finding a certain sound, it's the hand of a clock moving (not the sound of mechanisms, but the sound of the clock hand itself); been looking for it for a long while, but to no avail. Specifically, I'm looking for something as close as possible to this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6uIONVMTxE#t=2m02s

Two separate samples would be ideal as I want to emulate the speeding clock effect, but with just one I can alternate between a processed and unprocessed one too, I guess.

I've already looked around at many freebies on the web, and even gone through a couple of foley libraries, all with no luck; all I can find is granny clock sounds, digital alarms etc, and with a lot of noise on them too (either from background, or plain poor recording quality). I've even considered talking to some foley artists to make me the sound (as I really need it for a project), however I'm not sure the guys I know would be able to deliver, and the cost would probably be very high.


If you know of a specific library or can point me to a resource I would really appreciate it very much


Thanks much for you help!

 

[SethTheGreat]

I swear you could make that sound with your mouth. Record yourself saying "thip" and make a sample. I don't think that's the actual sound of a clock hand moving.

 

[RedDog]

www.freesound.org

Also, I can make it for you. Give me a few minutes.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/35204107/tick tock.mp3

Need any tweaks?

 

[rfahey86]

that sounds pretty close.

 

[AD Chaos]

I spent a huge amount of time at freesound a couple of months ago with no success.
Maybe I need to give it another try with different keywords or something.

Also, I can make it for you. Give me a few minutes.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/35204107/tick tock.mp3

Need any tweaks?

Whoa dude that's really great, how did you do it! Would you mind sharing the steps? (here or in a pm if you prefer)


The reason I'd like to do it myself is to be able to control the 'acceleration' effect and the duration, so that it matches the corresponding tempo map section (which isn't even defined yet). The timbre is absolutely PERFECT, I think I did notice a bit of room underneath, I imagine this was done rather on the fly?


Props to you again, that's ridiculously close!

 

[RedDog]

Always happy to show a few tricks!

Here's a step by step. I checked freesound for a metallic sounding tick and found this which was pretty close to the ticking in the clip you posted.

1. Import into reaper, zoom in to see the proper transients.
2. copy and paste a couple times for an appropriate length, making sure all ticks are in rhythm. Make sure you have a really long set of ticks. Glue into one take.
3. Cool part, essential. In reaper, by right clicking a media item, you bring up a special menu with the excellently placed option to "Reverse Items as new take". This inserts a new file of the specific item, played completely backwards, on a new take lane.
4. The old "Master Playrate" envelope trick, used many times over for things like sub drops, perfect pitch divebombs a la Floyd Rose, and of course, the tapestop effect. in this case, I drew an envelope on the master channel (must be visible to see envelope [ctrl+alt+M}) upwards to speed up the sound gradually.
5. Bounce out live output to a new file, essentially rendering the whole thing to a new file which here, I've named "tick tock" and put somewhere I can find it, e.g. my dropbox folder.

That's it! The whole process takes about five minutes of critical listening and a little creativity. Here's what it looks like from my angle.

 

[AD Chaos]

I officially owe you a beer

Thanks so much for taking the trouble man, I've been stalled with this for a long time, in part I guess because I wasn't picking the right kind of sample, and also not doing much beyond reversing the wave.
Will check up on the couple of tricks you mention, I'm yet kind of unfamiliar especially with the 'master play rate'.

It's a shame that particular sample has so much background noise, the sound is all there.. good ears!


THank you!

 

[RedDog]

I officially owe you a beer

Thanks so much for taking the trouble man, I've been stalled with this for a long time, in part I guess because I wasn't picking the right kind of sample, and also not doing much beyond reversing the wave.
Will check up on the couple of tricks you mention, I'm yet kind of unfamiliar especially with the 'master play rate'.

It's a shame that particular sample has so much background noise, the sound is all there.. good ears!


THank you!

With the "Master Playrate" the same effect could probably be done by any time-based tapestop trick, with a proper workaround. If you have the patience, a properly tuned gate or expander should help with the background noise.

Happy to help!

 

[SethTheGreat]

www.freesound.org

Also, I can make it for you. Give me a few minutes.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/35204107/tick tock.mp3

Need any tweaks?

Great job. That's really really good.

 

[AD Chaos]

It is, really, when comparing it to the movie clip.


Can't wait to get some good amount of time to experiment with this!