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It's no secret that we love antiques here at 344 Audio, and over the years we have amassed a fairly large selection of vintage objects. While these have mostly served as studio decoration up to now, we are now moving forward with a series of recording sessions to capture the charm and personality of these antiques in audio form, to be released to the world as sound effects libraries.
Check out this news post for more details about our antique series.
Vintage Sound
Antique objects have an in-built sonic character that is hard to replicate. The combination of the materials, weight, shape, and functionality gives them an intensely pleasing and practical sound, and our ears instinctively pick up on the build quality and robustness of these objects.
In the past, resources were more scarce, and so things were built to last. Craftsmanship was on display everywhere you looked. Shoes, furniture, jewellery, cutlery, picture frames, and everything else in between required years of apprenticeships and practice to make, and were built to a much higher standard than their equivalents today.
Since the dawn of mass production, we have stepped further and further away from this way of doing things, and now in our modern world, goods are mass-produced with cost and efficiency in mind over everything else.
When it comes to how these objects sound the result is flat, lifeless, dead and devoid of any real spirit or personality. In a cinematic context where we are using sounds to tell stories, vintage will always win over modern for its personality and feel. There is just no comparison, so that was our initial idea of planning this antique sound effects series.
Typewriter
The humble typewriter is an interesting device as it maintains many similarities with phone and computer keyboards. There is a range of great sounds that are produced including the typing sounds, click-clack of the mechanism, ding when a page has reached the margin, and the sliding sound as the paper is brought back into position to type another line.
Telephone
Antique telephones such as the model shown below produce some cool sounds such as the spinning of the rotary numbers and the sound of the earpiece being taken in and out of the holster. Sounds like these are very diverse and can be used for a large variety of foley prop interactions.
Books
Antique books have a really unique sound compared to modern books due to the thickness of the paper used, types of ink and glue used, and the binding techniques that hold the books together.
Luggage
Leather, canvas and softwoods were frequently used to build vintage luggage holders, cases, boxes and cabinets. Whilst they would be seen as weighty and blocky by today's standards, these hard-wearing items have a chunky and heavy feeling sound that lends itself perfectly to a wide range of foley scenarios.
The examples mentioned above are just some of the many items that we will be recording and making into sound effects libraries. What's great about working with antiques is that they really tickle your imagination, and once you start delving deeper into this world of sound it opens up new ideas and possibilities to explore. Stay tuned as we continue this journey and update you on our progress. If you have any suggestions of specific antiques or objects that you would like us to record then let us know!
We hope you enjoyed checking out this news post!
If you enjoyed this post please check out our ultimate guide to audio post-production: https://www.344audio.com/post/the-ultimate-guide-to-audio-post-production-sound-design
344 Audio is an Audio Post Production studio in Manchester.
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