Sound Themes - Wings In Motion 01

Designing wing sounds for flying creatures can sometimes be a challenge. And when it comes to creature sounds, it’s all about options. A small bird like a wren sounds very different than an adult gray goose. To find the right texture, and distinguish between wide and narrow wings, or to accomplish the task of designing bat or dragon wings, I created this library. In the first part of “Wings In Motion” I limited myself completely to Foley sounds, which was a very interesting journey.

This library contains over 11GB of data consisting of 341 files and 2539 sound effects. Besides the typical fabric wing flaps, I used all sorts of props sorted by materials like rubber, neoprene, plastic, paper, etc. This opens the door to new creative sound design options to make your flying creature sound exactly how you want it to. I added all sorts of buzzing, clicking and rustling sounds especially for the flying insects.

The recordings are mostly structured as follows: individual wing beats/wing beats in two intensities; hard and soft. Then I added continuous wing beats, again in soft and hard intensity. Additionally, I added articulation for takeoff, flybys, and landings. The rich and accurate metadata ensures you find the sounds you’re looking for. It describes the prop used, the performance and names a suggested use case and tonal characteristics of the sounds.

All sounds were recorded at 192kHz/24bit in MS using high-frequency microphones (Sennheiser MKH 8050-30) to ensure the highest fidelity and flexibility for pitch manipulation in post. I chose to record in stereo MS because the files can be decoded to native MS afterwards, ensuring 100% mono compatibility. From planning to productiont, great care has been taken to ensure that this product that retains its value, sounds great and is fun to use.