Put My Thing Down, Flip It and Reverse It

Sound Designing for Changing Fortunes

Well, it’s been a while. I really thought I’d be back around mid-April after wrapping a couple of bigger projects. But life kept happening. Happy to be getting one of these out again!

Video Breakdown

A video version of today’s Sound Byte, where I walk through my Pro Tools session and break down everything discussed in today’s newsletter.

Breakdown Buffet

Quick sidebar. I haven’t plugged myself here before, but lately I’ve been thinking more about connecting with new people and possibly taking on new productions. While this newsletter focuses on sound design, most of the work I do day-to-day is editing, restoration, and mixing for all kinds of shows, including straightforward interview formats. If there’s a podcast or radio show you need help with, or if you just want to talk shop, feel free to reach out! I always love talking about audio.

OK back to it, if you're curious about those two big projects I mentioned, the podcasts are Computer Freaks Season 2 by Inc. Magazine and Brand New World (eps 1-6) by Fast Company. I’ll be sharing many sound designs from both series over the coming months.

Speaking of which, today’s sound design comes from Computer Freaks Season 2.

If you’ve read earlier editions of Sound Bytes, you might remember I talked about Computer Freaks Season 1 in the newsletter titled The Power of Music Stems for Dynamic Storytelling. Season 1 focused on the founding of the Internet, told by the people who built it. In Season 2, the story jumps forward into the 1990s, covering the rise of the Internet into the mainstream: web browsers, online shopping, internet security, and search engines. Since the 90s were a decade of zing and bling, I felt like I had more room to go bolder with thicker builds, more effects, and plugin fun.

As a quick refresher, I like to give some context before I play the Sound Byte. First, I’ll play the section dry, exactly how it was delivered to me, because I think it’s great practice, especially for people new to podcast sound design. It gives them a chance to think, how would I structure this if this were my project? Spotting those moments is half the battle of podcast sound design, and your instincts might be completely different from mine and that’s totally fine. There are no right or wrong answers.

Today’s audio comes from Episode 5 of Computer Freaks Season 2, which is about the rise of the search engine. The story centers on a company called GoTo.com. And please hold onto your butts, GoTo did not win the search engine wars. And in this episode there was a specific moment where their fortunes changed, a smaller company called Google started opening their lead and so I wanted something that hit big to signify this moment.

Up until that moment, most of the audio builds had upward momentum like pitched effects rising in tone, a happy snappy choice of songs and a Shepard tone peppered throughout to symbolize GoTo’s ascent.

OK, here is the dry version of the clip. This is what was how it was scripted and delivered to me.

Today’s Sound Byte

And here’s what I came up with, today’s Sound Byte.

As you probably noticed, this build is all about downward momentum and, well, reversal.

Let’s talk about that Shepard tone I mentioned earlier.

I’d been sitting on the idea of using a Shepard tone for this series because it felt like a great sonic analogy for these massive online companies that just keep growing with no ceiling. The Shepard tone is a sound that continuously rises in pitch but never seems to reach the top. It pulls this off by blending in lower-pitched tones that overtake the higher ones as they fade out. The shift is gradual, so it’s not super noticeable, but the illusion is there. Here is a small sample pulled from the episode.

I peppered this tone throughout the episode during key moments when GoTo’s growth accelerated. Most of the time I tucked it in the background only occasionally bringing it to the front of the mix, the first sound design in this build being one of them. So lets talk bout that first build.

Build 1: Setting the Stage

I pulled a vocal sample from Missy Elliott’s Work It. And I picked this line because of how on the nose it is for what the sound build is about. It’s from the early 2000s but close enough to the 90s to feel era-appropriate. And so it became the centerpiece of this build.

But others clips could have also worked. NSYNC’s Bye Bye Bye, Chumbawamba’s I Get Knocked Down (just skip the getting up again part hah), or even a quote from the episode itself, like “they overtook us” or “Google is winning.” But I landed on Missy because she has a swagger that sounds cool. Also the Missy line gets extra points because the lyric works both forward and reversed and are known by audiences to play as both. So it adds to that reversing theme of the build.

To isolate her vocal, I used the Music Rebalance plugin from iZotope’s Production Suite, something I covered in the Cleaning Up Clips edition of Sound Bytes. It’s an easy tool that lets you pull vocals or music out of a mix cleanly. If you are interested in how to use this, the video above is your best bet.

This first build introduces the reversal concept. I kept it minimal because, as I always say, you need room to grow. So we get one line from Missy, reversed, plus the flipped Shepard tone, and one more element, the sound of a dial-up modem, being dragged down with the plugin Vari-Fi (again, best to check the video if interested in how to use it).

For anyone too young to remember, back in the 90s we connected to the internet through modems that made this weird, warbling noise.

And as a kid in the 90s whose family first subscribed to AOL in 1993, this sound was as familiar as the Simpsons theme. To little Nick, this sound represented a world of discovery that was about to be unlocked. It’s hard to overstate how much wonder and possibility was wrapped up in that screechy modem handshake.

And because this sound was such an icon of the early mainstream internet days, I used it in all kinds of ways in this season. It became a character in the show. I manipulated it to add emotion when needed, from sharp impacts to ominous fear to a meditative feel to moments of supreme bliss.

And I’m pointing this out because I think its extremely rare to get a sound that connects to the production in such an iconic way. So if you’re lucky enough to work on a show that has a sound that connects to the content like this, RUN WITH IT.

Build 2: Leveling Up

This next section purposely gets more intense.

I smashed the Missy line. I love doing this kind of thing where a big impact sound “breaks” the audio. I actually did this in another section in this episode where a zap breaks the Shepard tone.

As you can hear, the Shepard tone is rising like normal and then when the speaker talks about selling to large corporations that zap sends the Shepard’s tone into the ether, giving it that broken apart pixelated feel. This audio implies that GoTo’s growth is being accelerated into a new dimension.

Back to our Missy build.

Here, that smash crushes Missy’s vocal down to audio purgatory. It represents the crushing pressure of Google’s business moves.

I dropped Missy’s pitch again with Vari-Fi, but also used a second effect to get that trippy, flipping, repeating quality. That was done using a preset in Soundtoys’ Effect Rack called Trip Forward Flashback in the Sound Design preset category, one of my favorites when I want to add a surreal twist to a voice.

Step 1 - Missy with that Effects Rack preset added

Step 2 - Missy with Vari-Fi added on top of that

Together, those two plugins made the line feel like it was melting down. Loved how it turned out.

The impact in this section is pretty standard made up of a low-end and a high-end hit, classic combo for impact design.

One effect for low end

One effect for high end

Played together.

Hell yeah.

Build 3: Calm Before the Drop

This is always the trickiest part for me, pulling back to give the drop more punch, while still keeping the listener engaged.

Lets start with my favorite part of this section, the reversed snare.

This was the first time I’ve done something like this, and I think it added a lot to the section and to the reversing theme overall. First, it’s a reversed snare. Second, it’s edited to start tight and gradually space out, almost like a fan blade or something spinning down, giving weight to that downward momentum I was aiming for. Third, the reversed snare eventually reverses and becomes the forward snare in the fill cuing the drop.

The last reversed snare slides into the snare fill, giving it a kind of reveal moment. I stretched that region with the expansion tool to give it a more drawn out feel. When you stretch something too much it adds some strange digital artifacts, not desirable in most cases but for a show about computers, lets go!

Then I kept that reverse snare in the song for a bit. I’ve been into this idea lately of letting a sound concept stick around past the build, like the effect was having too much fun and couldn’t let go.

I brought it in from the left and moved it to center, hoping that the listener might not consciously notice it creeping in but would still be subconsciously primed for the drop.

Then I filled out the stereo field with more reversing and downward-momentum sounds, like a vinyl record scratch. Because what is a record scratch if not a recording being pushed and pulled forward and backward.

the dial-up modem again being pulled down with Vari-Fi

and Missy’s vocal with some reversed, some forward.

I also dropped in a chunk of the original Work It, reversed that track, without separating the vocals. So in other words, Missy’s actual song is reversed so her originally reversed lyrics play forward BUT the instruments in the song play backwards. Yes, my brain hurts thinking about this too.

I think the overall takeaway in this section is that everything is falling and fading away or dropping in tone before the beat comes in. The Shepard’s tone is falling, the dial tone sinks, the background song disappears, the snare drum fan blade spins down, Missy voice sinks to the depths all leading into…

The Drop

I think this part is the easiest because you now have permission to pick the ‘best’ most dynamic part of the song and just let it play, in all its glory. Crank that puppy up. Then its just a matter or experimenting with plugins, layering textures and moving things around until you get something fun. You’ve kind of earned this moment with all the setup.

Just don’t overdo it. Too much and it turns to mush.

I spread Missy's vocal across the stereo field and ran all those tracks into a dialogue aux with pitch automation pulling everything down. Again, if you are interested in a visual on this, the video is the best place to look.

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That’s a wrap on this edition! I’m really happy with how this build came together and excited to share more examples from Computer Freaks season 2 in future newsletters. If you enjoyed it, please share it! See you next time.