Make one source sound like hundreds

X

xbxrxixtx

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A friend of mine wants me to add vuvuzelas to his video. This is an attempt to recreate the last World Cup in South Africa. What is the best/most authentic way to take one source and make it sound like many?

What I have: 1 vuvuzela, 3 mics (and a subkick I made that i'll try just for fun), recorded via MOTU 896hd using Audiodesk to my Macbook. I also have an MBOX 2 mini and can use protools if needed as well to mix.

I guess my plan right now would be to set up all my mics and blow the vuvuzela until I'm about to pass out and then repeat the process over a few times. Then take all of those tracks, offset them a bit, and process them each a bit different and then repeat until I end up with what sounds like many. The theory being that each mic will present different sounds, and then each bit of processing will create different sounds and eventually that will sound like there are a lot of different people playing.

Any advice on something like this? Is there an effect that will simulate it, or at least make it easier to achieve?
 
I don't know about an effect that will help, but make sure to move the mics, or move to a different spot in the room each time you record. That'll make a world of difference.

The best way is to just find a video from the time and snatch the audio though.
That's a lot easier, and a lot more authentic sounding.
 
I would record a bunch of single blasts from the vuvuzela from different distances and angles and with varying lengths, then copy and paste more or less randomly across several tracks and along the timeline. Then I'd go around and change the volume of various copies randomly. Then I'd duplicate tracks and slide the blasts around randomly. Then I'd designate some tracks as "far", some "moderate distance" and some "close", and adjust the volume, pan and reverb accordingly.
 
I remember watching some of the world cup and hearing how those were everywhere in the crowd. Recreating that seems like a tough task because there were probably thousands of those being used..

Maybe you could pick a room that is big and has lots of echo, and then record the one sound with your 3 mics spread out in the room. I think that might give you all kinds of reflections that might sound as if the source is coming from multiple places. Then as you mentioned you might do this a bunch of times (and even change the mic positions and source position to make it even more varied). You'll definitely be capturing the room sound like this, so if you don't like the sound you might try a different space until you do like it.
 
Thank you all for the replies, I think we're all thinking along the same lines. As far as finding video from the event and then using the audio...that would be a lot easier however I want to do this myself just for the hell of it.

I think what I'll do is set up the mics and blow from close and relatively equal distances to start, and then move the mics around, and then move rooms and do it all again. Using bedroom, living room, bathroom and garage. This should give me a lot of different tracks and tones then I can go back and cut and paste then process and pan.
 
Steenamaroo said:
Have you asked the neighbours? I'm sure they'd have some suggestions! ;)
Click to expand...

...and considering the cylindrical shape of said vuvuzelas, I'm sure their suggestions would include specific instructions concerning where to insert the hitherto aforementioned object. :D
 
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The suggestions on recording multiple takes, multiple mics, positions, etc are great and I have nothing to add there, but to answer your question about something that might make it easier.... You may have some luck using a delay that adds some kind of processing to modify the delayed sound to kind of automate some of the little tricks you were mentioning in the OP (probably with feedback off so it only echoes once) . Cubase has "mod delay" (cleverly named, lol..). Stacking those up will increase the number of faked and slightly altered duplicates exponentially - (1 becomes 2, 2 become 4, then 8, 16, etc etc - 1000+ in only 10 instances).. I honestly wouldn't expect this to work too terribly well, but it's worth a shot, IMO. Might at least ease some of the workload of manually doing kinda similar things with a billion tracks.

Maybe even put it on a bus that all the genuinely different takes are going through.. idk - hth :)
 
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