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Most of the songs we write and record have instruments and/or vocals, but nothing else. Let’s face it, the most exotic sound on most of our recordings is a tambourine. This is not necessarily a bad thing. After all, “instruments and/or vocals” run a pretty wide gamut, from Gregorian Chant to Smooth R&B and everything in between. But every once in a while, just for novelty value, you should consider using some kind of sound effects in one of your songs.
Some songs, like the Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine,” are positively full with ambient sound effects. The birds chirp along to “Blackbird” from the same band. More recently, digital mix master Beck and others have combined “found sounds” and other effects with music samples to create audio collages in their songs. Of course, this is a technique where a little can go a long way. No need to overdo it!
As a composer, you can specify which sound effects will be heard by adding notations like (wake up here) to your lyric sheet, or at least have a firm idea of what specific effects will be used when writing the song. In this case, the effects would be considered part of the song. Alternatively, you can wait until you have your Producer hat on and decide if and where to add sound effects when you mix the song. Here, the effects would be considered part of the arrangement.
name that sound
There are three main sources of sound effects: (1) sound effect CDs or websites; (2) TV shows, DVD movies, etc.; (3) personal recordings.
With sound effect CDs or websites, you get pre-recorded sounds of all kinds, with many variations, tagged according to theme and length. Need the sound of a car starting up and driving away? There were a dozen variations of this sound on a CD that I found. Do you need birds, crickets or elephants? Once again, samples labeled by the dozen can be found on sound effect CDs. And here they are complete CDs of storms, jungle sounds, etc., ready to use!
Sound effects CDs can be found by sheet music at your local library – mine, a medium-sized branch, has drawer after drawer full of stuff! For me, this beats websites, which can be awkward to use and usually make you pay for your samples. If you’re in a real hurry, maybe try online, but if not, just head to the library!
Another really good (and cheap) source of sound effects is to record a movie or TV show as you watch it, and then extract some of the effects you hear (or dialogue – talking is a sound effect too!) by copying them onto a cassette or whatever you use to import external audio into your studio.
Finally, one of my favorite sources of sound effects is recording my own. With battery-powered portable recording devices like the Zoom H4 and others now available, it’s a snap to get CD-quality recordings “on the go” of anything from your own rain storm or your cute kitty to the crowd at a football match. However, a warning. Once you start thinking this way, it’s hard to stop. (I could record an oncoming train! I could record a volcano!)
There are sounds all around you. Why don’t you try incorporating some of them into one of your songs? Works!