How was this sound made? (Metroid Prime)

[Eric Barker]

Strange question, but I'm playing in a video game cover band on the side, which is a really great way to stretch my synth chops (since game music has some of the best keyboard material). But one sound that I've always wanted to reproduce is the creepy bugs/radio background sound from the beginning of Metroid Prime, demonstrated here:

I've gotten decently close using white noise through a self-oscillating resonance filter with a random LFO. But the result is a little more bubbly than "radio-y", which also works, but I'd love to get closer. It's a very particular and unique sound, not really that important, but I'd LOVE to know what technique was used to create it.

 

[CowboyNQ]

A video game cover band. Wow - didn't know that was a "thing". Do you play out much?

 

[Eric Barker]

Sure, there are hundreds of groups playing VGM. I could go into more detail, though I'd rather not get too off topic.

 

[CowboyNQ]

Cool - I've learned something new. Mustn't have hit my part of the world yet. I wish you great success!

 

[SeaGtGruff]

I wonder if it was done with formant synthesis? I know nothing of how to do such things, but first read about it in connection with the Yamaha FS1R, although it isn't exclusive to the FS1R.

http://www.vintagesynth.com/yamaha/fs1r.php
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_synthesis#Formant_synthesis

 

[happyrat1]

This guy does sound tutorials on the Studiologic Sledge on Youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvNM5I4gpa4MfzRiP3s2s5Q

He also does requests from the comments section.

Perhaps you could interest him in reproducing it for you.

At the very least you'd pick up some pointers on sound design simply from watching his tutorials.

Gary

 

[Eric Barker]

Both good ideas. I had some fun watching a few of those tutorials. Though he does have a tendency to lean on wavetables for pure subtractive sounds, he does end up with very musical results. I'm not seeing much "sound design-y" type of synth stuff though, more focusing on capturing old musical patches, which is understandable considering the demand for that sort of thing. But I haven't looked through his entire library... I'll admit, I got distracted going through his old Tony Banks Pro Soloist patches, an old love of mine.

As for formant synthesis, that's definitely a promising direction, and considering the release of the FS1R in 1999, and the game three years later, it falls perfectly into that time period. Could be a formant synth through sample & hold. I don't have access to anything that does formant synthesis at the moment, so I can't really test it out. Something tells me it's something a little more conventional. It's not completely dissimilar to the effect of an un-decoded police radio. The TV station I worked for had one of those that would rattle away, and it creeped the crap out of me. So to me it sounds like some kind of old telephony interference process, but I can't put my finger on it, like phase modulation with a feedback resonance.

 

[MikeyParent]

A video game cover band. Wow - didn't know that was a "thing". Do you play out much?

This is a whole different scale, but have you heard of VideoGames Live? I went two years ago and it was incredible. The guy who does this is a famous video games composer and the cousin Of Steve Tyler.

 

[CowboyNQ]

Very cool!