Creating wind and air magic sound effects doesn’t have to be complex. With just your voice and some free effect plugins, you can create some nice magic sounds. So, how do you create wind and air magic sound effects?
Start by creating wind sounds with your mouth into your microphone. Take those recordings and add effects to them. Import all your RAW and processed recordings into your sampler or synth of choice and tweak the parameters to your liking until you have the sound you are looking for.
Now obviously, that’s an oversimplified way of doing it. So let’s dive in a little deeper to discuss what this might look like.
What source recordings do you need?
Not surprisingly, you’ll want to have some wind and air sound sources for creating your sound design. You can record wind and air on a windy day, but unless you have a great microphone with even better wind protection, you’ll probably end up with some low rumbling unusable sound.
Assuming you don’t have any wind recordings, you can use your own mouth like I do in the video. You can just blow in the microphone to create some airy sound. Just be careful to keep your distance to not pop the microphone and ruin the recording with distorted boominess. If you can whistle, even better. That will add some interesting tonal quality to your wind.
Another way to create your own wind sounds is by using synths. CLICK HERE to learn how.
How do you design it?
Once you have all your recordings gathered, the fun begins. I like to first start by processing my sources with reverb and delay plugins. This helps to add space which can convincingly help sell your magic sound effects. If you are tight on time or need inspiration, scroll through plugin presets. When scrolling through presets, I usually aim to keep the airy quality and tonality of the source so I don’t lose the sense of what we are designing.
Consider using multi-effect plugins like Guitar Rig Player. Guitar Rig Player is a free plugin from Native Instruments that has different effects included and a whole list of presets you can scroll through.
Once you’ve found a few different presets you like, export them so that you now have processed files (with applied effects) and unprocessed files. From here, you can import them into a sampler like S-Layer and see what kind of results you get. With a few parameter tweaks and patience hitting the randomize button, you’ll surely come up with some usable magic sound effects.
Be creative and make the wind and air magic sounds your own
Importing files into S-Layer is just one way of creating magical sound effects. How about importing them into other samplers like Iris2? Or importing them into granular synthesizers?
Consider also resampling your already processed sounds. Add new plugins and effects to them and re-import your sounds into S-Layer or your sampler of choice. As you rinse and repeat this process, you’ll surely discover new sounds you never knew you could create.
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