That's what Cooper Skinner and his team found out when working on a project that called for African-American voices; they simply couldn't find a good sound library for that - so they decided to create their own extensive Black Walla sound library.
Here's how they did it - and, as a bonus, you can get yourself a free sound effects pack from the library! Get the story and sounds below:
We wanted to share the journey behind our Black Walla Pack (currently available at a special discount here with you. It’s been quite an adventure, and we’re excited to give you a behind-the-scenes look at how it all came together.
It all started when we were working on a project and hit a wall. We were searching for authentic African-American voices to bring our characters to life but kept coming up empty-handed. The vast majority of commercially available walla is English/Caucasian. That’s when we had our lightbulb moment: if we couldn’t find what we needed, why not create it ourselves?
That’s when we had our lightbulb moment: if we couldn’t find what we needed, why not create it ourselves?
A few months later, we were setting up our studio right here in Atlanta. We reached out to the local voice acting community and found eight incredibly talented individuals – four women and four men. We specifically chose actors with different vocal timbres to fill out the frequency spectrum, thinking ahead to how sound designers might use these recordings.
A behind-the-scenes highlight from the Black Walla Pack
Preparation
This simple ‘bang’ verbal prompt allowed for dynamic adjustments to the performance’s emotional intensity without interrupting the flow of the action
During the recording sessions, we faced some interesting challenges. Sometimes emotions would blend together in ways we hadn’t anticipated, requiring some on-the-fly problem-solving such as giving alternative prompts or specific directions for vocalizations to the performers. But these hurdles only made the final product more interesting and versatile.
Hear the audio demo for the Black Walla Pack above
We captured a wide range of emotional wallas, some of which are pretty rare in existing libraries. The collection features a diverse range of vocal tracks, including male-only, female-only, and mixed ensemble recordings. Many of the files are structured with distinct beginning, middle, and end sections, facilitating seamless editing within your DAW.
Keywords for the included sounds in the Black Walla Pack:
Admiration • Angry • Annoyed • Whispers • Congratulations • Party • Twerk • Drunk • Fighting • Greetings • YAAS! • Laughing • Giggles • Mmm Hmm! • Surprise • Sick • Trash Talking • Commentary • Whimpering • Crying • Annoyed • Anticipation • Fear • Anxiety • Applause • Booing • Cheer • Church • Compliments • Disappointed • Disgust • Friendly • Frustrated • Panic • Relief • Sports • Humor • Catcalling • Shouting • Goofy • Grunts • Street Calls – And more!
We also paid close attention to the dynamics of each recording. Some wallas feature breathing room and space, while others are intentionally chaotic. This variety came from our realization that different projects would need different energy levels.
On the technical side, we recorded in mono, stereo, and LCR (Left-Center-Right) formats. The LCR recordings can actually be broken down into three separate parts. We thought this might be useful for sound designers who want to mix and match to create new layers of sound.
Get free sounds from the Black Walla Pack library:
Want a taste of the sounds included in the Black Walla Pack? Click below to download a selection of free sounds from the library:
All recordings were done in a dry studio. We made this choice to give sound designers the flexibility to add their own spatial processing in post-production, whether that’s outdoor slapback, room reverb, or any other effect. We suggest playing around with plugins like Cargo Cult’s The Slapper alongside various ambience sounds to create your own scenes.
Looking ahead
As we were putting this all together, we started thinking about the future. We’re fascinated by the potential applications of this kind of data in AI algorithms. As voice synthesis technology advances, we believe authentic samples like these will be crucial in developing more natural and diverse AI voices.
We’re curious to hear about your experiences with walla recordings. If you’ve worked with them before, what challenges have you faced? What kinds of wallas do you wish existed? Your insights could help shape future projects.
Thanks for letting us share our story with you. We’re excited to see how voice and walla recordings evolve in the future, and we’re glad to be part of that journey.
Get the full Black Walla Pack here – at a special price:
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10 %OFF -
20 %OFF -
This bundle includes THE ARCANE: ELECTRIC SPELLS and THE ARCANE: FIRE SPELLS.
More than 1200 sound effects fully focused on electric and fire spells.
622 meticulously processed stereo electric and lightning spells sound effects recorded in 96 khz and 24 bits for high audio definition.
The collection comes with hundreds of variations, more than 1 hour of content and many different type of spells. It also includes raw files for more flexibility for your projects.
This collection is perfect for any films, video games or trailers.
The library is fully focused on electric, thunder and lightning spells. You will find simple one shot electric impacts, powerful high level thunder spells, magic weapon enchantments and so on. Spells such as lightning strike, electric blast, thunderbolt, magnetic field, thunder hammer, electric sword, lightning projectile, etc. are included in this library.
Recorded assets: Thunder, big and small adhesive tapes, inflated balloon, styrofoam, cellophane, various clothes, baseball glove, winter gloves, metal objects, aluminum foil, oven door, etc. Analog/digital synths and ultrasonic/geophone usage for more variety.
638 meticulously processed stereo fire spells sound effects recorded in 96 khz and 24 bits for high audio definition.
The collection comes with hundreds of variations, more than 1 hour of content and many different type of fire spells. It also includes source sounds for more flexibility for your projects.
This collection is perfect for any films, video games or trailers.
The library is fully focused on fire spells. You will find simple one shot magic firebolt, powerful high level fire spells, fire sword, berserker enchantments and so on. Spells such as fireball, firewall, rain of fire, meteor, fire nova, magma storm, pyroblast, sword of Avernus, etc. are included in this library.
Recorded assets: blanket, rainproof trouser, ski gloves, wind breaker coat, paperboard, thin and thick paper, bubble wrap, tap water, water in hot pan, pine cone, wood branches, various synth, etc.
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40 %OFFEnds 1761606000