Water - Foley and Field Recording Sound Library

In 2019 I started work on my first sound library or asset pack as an assignment for my second year of my Game and Interactive Audio course. In this post I'll take you through the what is in the library (available for free download on the Free Sounds part of my website) as well as how it was made.

I was tasked with creating my first sound library and, like most of my fellow classmates, had no idea what I wanted it to be based on. The first inclination that I wanted to create a library based upon water came from my module tutor having a Hydrophone available for us to use. In one lecture, he had booked out all types of equipment for us to use and go out into Manchester to get some field recording practice. Since I had never used a Hydrophone, I decided to take it down to the Irwell River beside the university and see what it could do with a Zoom H6. The recordings I got were interesting but not quite right, but either way I was hooked upon the idea of having a sound library with unique water recordings that anyone could use in linear and non linear media.

With the decision made to have water be the focal theme of the library, I had to decide upon what I could record and how. I went on to record some Foley with the Hydrophone and a RODE NTG1, finding ways to interact with water and certain materials. I also chose to record some underwater vocalisations of myself, it sounds funny but I found a use for it in my other cinematic sound redesign project. Once I had these, I knew I wanted to revisit the river recordings.

Me getting vocalisations in the Foley studio (I know how it looks)

From the initial recordings I had made, I found that on a regular day and with a fairly normal and calm river flow, the underwater recordings were not too interesting or unique. However, keeping my eye on the weather, I noticed that there would be a storm coming to the local area, bringing with it a large volume of water that would both increase the water level and strengthen the river flow. With that knowledge I scouted three locations to record from.

Location 1

The first location was beside the university building and on the bank of the river. This location meant that I could get the Hydrophone only to one side of the river, where the flow would therefore be weaker than if further in. Location 2 was nearby, but using an area that overhangs the river, I could get the Hydrophone closer to the middle of the river and therefore in a faster river flow.

Location 2

The issue with both location 1 and 2 is that they are pretty much in the centre of the busy city of Manchester. With bustling businesses, tourists, traffic and the constant sound of building sites, these locations were anything but quiet and therefore not ideal. To rectify this issue, I decided to do these recordings very early in the morning, but whilst still light. This meant that I could still be at the river when the flow was higher than usual because of the storm, but also when there would be as minimal audible interruptions as possible.

To add even more interesting Hydrophone recordings with a more interesting sounding and faster flow of water, a third location along in the Irwell river was chosen on a bridge. As can be seen in the picture, this recording session would be done from the centre of a bridge, right where the water flows around the pillar, creating a violent flowing sound. At each location the Hydrophone was used to capture the interesting sound of the flow and ambient recordings were also taken to show what the river sounded like above the water.

Location 3

Once recorded, each file was edited to remove any other notable, unwanted and detrimental sounds. For instance, a DeBird plugin was used to take the sounds of birds at location 3, leaving the recordings to be left as just the sound of the river flow. Then loops were made where possible to make the library more useful for a sound designer, specifically a game sound designer. All the field recordings were collated together as well as any of the interesting sounds to come from the Foley session. As is usual with my sound libraries, an asset list is available for anyone to read through to learn more about what sounds are available and useful information is provided too. Metadata was also added as per usual.

The asset list as available in the download

How I feel about the library now

Since it is now 2021 that I am writing this post for my blog, I thought I should go back and listen through the library and give my current thoughts on its successes and failures. As I listen back to it now, I still feel that the sounds available in this library are interesting and can be useful to sound designers as intended.

You have explored recording a common sound type in an uncommon fashion and delivered high-quality samples within your chosen approach.

Here is some feedback I received from the assignment. I am happy with this outcome since this is my first ever created sound library and I was undertaking a task that I had little knowledge of how to complete. I made use of more advanced denoising tools such as spectral repair in Izotope RX that I had never done before. The project definitely aided my understanding of creating an asset pack that is both unique and useful.

There are some issues I have with the project but the main one is that I feel there could be so much more to it. I like to make small projects and in this case I had limited time available to me to create all of the recordings before the submission. Therefore, as can be seen, there is a good variety of sounds, but I believe it needs even further variety. This could come from recording more rivers in different conditions or just more interactions with the water with the Foley recordings (maybe more materials, higher amounts of water, different voices for vocalisations etc).

Hopefully anyone reading this who uses the recordings themselves can find good uses for them. I definitely did and I still make use of them to this day in some projects where possible. If anyone has any questions about it, feel free to get in contact with me, I'd love to talk about it further. If you haven't yet, go check out the recordings for yourself!