Falling Pillars Revisited

I mentioned previously on my Blog that I was not fully happy with the sound I had produced for when Odin's throne room collapses. I combined some of the sounds that we had captured from the actual ilkley Moors location with some of the ideas I used for the original sound clip. Layering up the sounds collected from dropping smaller rocks on to a stone surface gave the sound of small rocks falling loose and clattering on the ground. Instead of slowing down the dragon sound clip form the BBC library, I slowed down a wind sound clip also from the BBC collection, as I wanted a deep rumble rather than a scraping sound. I also used the idea again of slowing down a gun shot sound to achieve crashing noises:





My aim when creating this particular sound was to make the audience feel that everything is collapsing around them, making them feel that they are standing in the throne room as it collapses. For this I needed to heavily pan the different layers to make it sound as if objects were falling from all angles. I came across a massive problem when I realized that the for some reason, the sound recordings of dropping rocks form the moors were all panned to the left and could not be altered. I spent ages trying to find a way to convert mono tracks into stereo so that I could have control over the balance of the sound. In the end, by chance I was attempting to work with imported raw data of the sound clips when I found a solution. Although I still do not fully understand why, once I got the raw data working it was panned in the opposite direction to the right, very similarly to the original problem. Basically, I combined the two mono tracks to create a stereo track which could be panned in both directions. Because the imported raw data did not go in to audacity in the correct speed, I had to adjust the imported clip to sync with the original, but in the end I had by stereo sound clip. 


I created three different versions of the collapsing throne room sound. I believe that on the first attempt, the small loose rocks are too constant and become repetitive and slightly annoying. With the second attempt, I tried to build up the sound more. I faded in the deep rumble, and began with a few small rocks coming loose. The small rock clattering then stops to make way for the loud crashes. I also tried a version without the small rocks as I was starting to think they did not quite fit with the deep sounds of the rumbling and crashing pillars. I am still undecided as to which is most most effective out of the second two clips. One could argue that the smaller loose rocks give the second clip more depth, but I'm still not sure whether they fit at all.