I spent the afternoon producing several Pop Up Ding sound effects.  These types of effects are extremely popular and are always big sellers.  They are the kinds of sounds you hear all the time on videos and games but you don't really pay much attention to them.  

​To make my Pop Up Ding Sounds I usually start with a whoosh effect and then add a popping sound I created using....my mouth.  Yep.  A mouth popping sound.  And then I typically add some sort of bonus effect to give it some punch and a distinctive sound.  I'll adjust volume levels and EQ for each layered sound and then Mix it all together in Logic Pro X on my iMac.  After mix down and normalizing the effect with WavePad I'll import it back into Logic Pro X and add a UAD loudness plugin to make it "pop" (pun intended).  Then I use WavePad to remove the front and end dead space and create a 96Hz 24Bit wave file.

Take a listen to a few of the sounds I made today:

To capture the sound of water slowing dripping and getting a "leaking water" sound effect I set up a wet dishcloth over my triad-orbit boom and slowly poured water into the cloth to get the sound of water dripping and leaking slowly.  I used my stereo Sennheiser MKH 8040 microphone pair along with my Sound Devices Mixpre 6 to capture the sound.  This is an amazing combination that records so quietly and with such professional quality.  In the end I was able to mix several different sounds including taking a rain track I had already recorded, adding a cabin room plugin sound (using Altiverb 7) to it so it sounded like it was coming from outside and then mixing in the new leaking sounds.  It came out great!

Take a listen to some of the dripping sounds below.

We have been producing various Podcast background music tracks the last few days including some Bossa Nova Jazz tunes.  These are short intros or logos that are perfect for using with Podcast.  Most of our Jazz tracks include electric guitars, electric bass or upright bass, electric piano, drums and percussion.  The Gretsch Country Gentleman guitar in the photo to the left is the guitar we use for our Jazz tracks.  What a beautiful guitar with an amazing mellow sound. 

Take a listen to the sample below.