Film Noir SoundPad Preview

Greetings Patrons,

I'm really excited about this new SoundPad. I got the idea for a couple of months ago and it's been germinating since then.

I love the atmosphere and vibe of film noir movies, the issue for me was, that much of this is visual. The lighting, the starkness of the environment, the sense that the characters exist in a kind of bubble inside a largely indifferent environment. I wanted to convey all these feelings, but only with sound.

I re-watched many of the classics of the genre. Laura, The Maltese Falcon, Chinatown, Touch of Evil and others and I scrawled notes to myself when I heard something I liked. In particular, Jerry Goldsmith's soundtrack to Chinatown was even better than I had remembered.

I ended up designing 36 sounds (culled from 65) that I thought worked well together and were able to describe several different types of indoor and outdoor environments that could serve as a backdrop. Many of the sounds come from my own field recordings in NYC where I live. I also did a cocktail mixing Foley session from which the 'pour whiskey' sound emerged.

The two musical tracks I composed for this are both moody. Dark City is an homage to Jerry Goldsmith in that it uses his signature harp sound from the Chinatown Soundtrack. As soon as I heard a minor harp chord being strummed I knew I could sell the vibe. Cool City is a vibey piano, trumpet , bass and drums piece that I thought sounded - smokey - for a lack of a better word.

For this one, I replaced the usual tone section with 'stings'. You'll know how and when to use these as soon as you hear them. I tried many different types of loopable and layered tones but found that musical stings were much better suited for this. They're great for both punctuation and transitions.

This is currently in sneak peak mode for Patrons which means that it's not linked from any of the main menus yet. I'll release it into the wild in the next few days. It will take a couple of additional days for these sounds to be added to the Custom SoundPad tool.

Film Noir SoundPad 

Thank you, as always, for your continuing support.

best,

Tim