{"id":1539,"date":"2010-06-19T10:01:45","date_gmt":"2010-06-19T17:01:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/?p=1539"},"modified":"2010-06-19T10:09:28","modified_gmt":"2010-06-19T17:09:28","slug":"hyperhopper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/2010\/06\/19\/hyperhopper\/","title":{"rendered":"Hyperhopper"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Sunshine on his shoulder makes him jumpy...<\/p><\/div>\n

No sound designer can resist sound-making objects, so I did some recent damage at ThinkGeek<\/a> for some small, inexpensive musical items<\/a>…but then I noticed the robots.<\/p>\n

Sadly, \u00c2\u00a0buying a spendy mechanical robot arm<\/a> just to record servo sounds seemed like a horrible investment. I learned this lesson<\/a> last year. ;-)<\/p>\n

However, I did get a tiny solar-powered grasshopper kit. An offset actuator in its abdomen makes the whole thing vibrate on tiny wire legs when it’s solar-cell carapace is hit with sunlight or a strong halogen source.<\/p>\n

Of course, that would sound tiny and delicate. Which is OK. But how to make that sound bigger? Well, you put it on something that will resonate: Something with air around it that will conduct vibrations easily. (I’ve had loud, racous luck<\/a> with this\u00c2\u00a0before<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Being a hot, sunny Sunday, I chose the top of my closed Weber grill<\/a>. I tested the sound with contact mics, but the steel was too thick. Truly, and unusually, where my ears were – close to the top of the grill – was where the best sound was. I switched to a hypercardioid mic<\/a> in a windscreen<\/a>, and captured today’s sound.<\/p>\n

To accentuate the lovely low-mid resonant tones, I applied a huge -24dB cut at 5.5kHz , where the metallic feet where vibrating against the grill (I still wanted a tiny hint of chatter \u00c2\u00a0in there), tand a +9dB boost at 180Hz. Could make for a nice layer with some other design elements.<\/p>\n

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\n[Sennheiser MKH 50 into Sound Devices 702 recorder]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No sound designer can resist sound-making objects, so I did some recent damage at ThinkGeek for some small, inexpensive musical items…but then I noticed the robots. Sadly, \u00c2\u00a0buying a spendy mechanical robot arm just to record servo sounds seemed like a horrible investment. I learned this lesson last year. ;-) However, I did get a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[63,4],"tags":[9,147,10,243,22,64,244,321,18,245],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1539"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1539"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1561,"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1539\/revisions\/1561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}