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Introduction
On July 14th, 2020 I released my first ever sound pack, a collection of samples and sounds that I had created over the previous few months called SOUND PLAYGROUND Vol. 1.
I had been spending the majority of my spare time for the previous 6 months learning sound design and really diving into how specific sounds are made and how certain parameters affect the way they are played back. Since quitting my job (and basically my life) in early 2018 to learn music production, this was a project that I not only wanted to finish, but be proud of the sounds and actually make use of them in my music production.
This is the process of the coming together of SOUND PLAYGROUND and a little bit about the people behind the scenes that helped make it something that I'm proud of.
Sound design
When I first dove into learning music production and watching tutorials I couldn't believe how many people had their own sound packs and drum kits out in the music producer YouTube community. I wasn't sure if these creators were making their own sounds, or if they were using basic samples and adding effects, or if they were layering two other sounds from other packs together to make a new sound.
When it came time for me to think about creating a pack of sounds I knew that I wanted to make something that people hadn't heard before. I knew that if I truly wanted to get excited about something to the point where I would be proud to make it available to a bunch of people I had never met I had to make the product myself.
I ended up buying Serum (on Rent-to-Own from Splice) and I probably spent a good few months on sound design tutorials. Big shoutout goes to Austin Hull (Make Pop Music), Relik, and Virtual Riot, for giving me the basic ropes on how to make your own drum sounds from scratch and how to further process them. Without a doubt there are others, and also countless forums posts that deserve credit in helping me navigate drum sound design, but the previous 3 were the ones I kept referencing and coming back to.
All in all I probably made close to 1000 one shot samples that I then narrowed into the 200 that ended up being SOUND PLAYGROUND. The drum hit samples were all synthesized with either Serum, Alchemy, or Ultrabeat, and the reverse effects were made using lots of post-processing on reverse reverb audio tails.
Artwork
As much as I would consider myself a creative when it comes to music and very much a fan of any form of art, I cannot create anything graphic to save my life. I'm lucky enough to have grown up in a pretty creative community and have a decent black box of people that I can call on for help with artistic projects.
My friend Erik and his team at Swav Marketing hooked up the artwork for SOUND PLAYGROUND and I'm really pleased with how it turned out. I'm pretty picky when it comes to my expectations (even though I don't always know what I want) and they absolutely nailed it.
Promo
As the majority of the people that follow me know me from YouTube, I knew that I needed some kind of video based content that gave a little more context to SOUND PLAYGROUND.
A big shoutout to my friend Chase at Tamarack for coming up with the concept, filming, and editing the SOUND PLAYGROUND video.
I've known the guys at Tamarack for a while and we've worked on quite a few projects together. Their creativity and willingness to help with anything they think is cool really shows in their work. We basically just shot some footage during COVID of me walking around my hometown and messing around in their office, and then Chase turned it into a great short video that said exactly what I wanted to say about the project.
Thank you
At the end of the day, I just really like making stuff.
SOUND PLAYGROUND Vol. 1 checked all the boxes for me in the sense that I made the entire product from scratch, and then I had two of my childhood friends also help out with the parts of the project that I knew I wouldn't be able to satisfy my own expectations. Not to mention they're both exceptional at what they do.
I'm hoping to keep working at getting better with sound design and create more sample packs in the future that might be more genre specific, but for now I'm really happy with how SOUND PLAYGROUND turned out.
If you've made it this far, thanks for reading. And if you want to know more details about SOUND PLAYGROUND or are just interested in checking it out, you can click here.
Cheers,
Tony
