What I mean is, we have come accustom to a very shinny, shrill sound of a character pulling out his sword. In reality, the sound produced by pulling a metal sword out of a leather scabbard sounds a lot more like a metal sword being drawn out of a leather scabbard than the bright, almost musical sound we are accustomed to today. Since we are accustomed to the bright shinny sound, however, we will look at a way of creating that sound, and then creating each sound made by swords in a sword fight.
First, we need a couple of household kitchen items. I choose a fork, a butter knife, and a metal wire whisk. We want to start at the beginning of our duel by drawing the blade. For this, we will place the knife in-between the prongs of the fork, and quickly drag the knife along the prong. Be sure to allow the objects to ring out very close to the capsule in order to capture the full ring. We achieved this sound.
Next, we need to create the sound of a sword cutting through the air. I choose to use the wire whisk because it makes a very audible whooshing sound, no doubt in part to having so many long, thin strands of wire moving through the air. With my whisk, I needed to grip the actual whisk portion of the utensil to keep it from making a ringing metallic sound. The final result was this.
Lastly, we need to create the sound of two swords coming into contact with each other. Take the knife and fork again and strike them together. Be sure to allow the utensils to drag on each other a bit to add a more "natural" effect. ( I put natural in quotations because I have no idea if this is true to real life. However, keeping in theme with hyper reality, it is part of the viewers expectations. So for them, the dragging is natural.) This is the sound of warring silverware.
Adding all the sounds together, with some processing and EQing, and we are able to replicate the sounds of swords in battle.
Great post man! I always enjoy reading your weekly blogs and finding new ways to create sounds that I might not have thought of! I do agree sometimes as sound designers we have to create sounds that aren’t the real sound mainly because the real sound is boring and dull, sometimes it works however sometimes it doesn’t like with the sword leaving the scabbard would be pretty dull in an action film ( the real sound that is) so creating the bright metallic sound does add a bit to it. Great use of ordinary house hold items to create the sounds of swords clashing against each other, I really thought the layering of your follied sounds came out nicely.
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