Weald - A Wood Based Sound Effects "Processor" and IR Library

[Justice Graves]

The IR's for 23 of the woods can be found here if anyone is interested in playing with them.

Thank you for this, very excited to check these out.

 

[michaelwayneharwood]

Thank you for this, very excited to check these out.

You are very welcome! I would love to hear your impressions of the files.

 

[michaelwayneharwood]

I threw together a quick ghetto recording rig to alpha test the theories I have been playing around with, and have attached three MP3s to this post so you can hear for yourselves:

1. test-mixed.mp3 is a quick mix of the two signals (direct and through the wood module)
2. test-direct.mp3 is the signal from the bass recording straight into my rig
3. test-limba.mp3 is the signal coming through the limba wood sound module and recorded using a Blue Yeti

Overall I am pleased with the initial results. There is quite a bit of noise on the limba recording, and some tweaking needs to be done to get that tamed, but the tone coming out of the limba is being modified in a pleasing way. If I can get rid of the noise this would be a tone shaping too I would use quite a lot.

 

[michaelwayneharwood]

Here'a cleaner test of just the wood module. There's still a bit of background noise the Yeti is picking up, but it's a lot cleaner. There's some buzz on the box that needs to be addressed as well, but since it's floating on foam I expect that's some of it.

 

[MYLOWFREQ]

I haven't read the whole thread but I dig the idea and the sound samples. I think instead of having a pedal with wood blocks and a mic in it, a digital pedal would be better in terms of the physical size and noise issues. Also, how about impulses of materials other than wood?

 

[michaelwayneharwood]

I haven't read the whole thread but I dig the idea and the sound samples. I think instead of having a pedal with wood blocks and a mic in it, a digital pedal would be better in terms of the physical size and noise issues. Also, how about impulses of materials other than wood?

You can easily use a Logidy EPSI pedal to load the wood IR's to go digital. The idea for the processor using wooden "tone" blocks is an experiment I wanted to try just to see if it would work. I don't expect that anyone other than me would want one, but is appealing to me on so many levels that I had to give it a go. Other than some silly April fool's jokes like the video below from @Jay Jillard of Jillard guitars, I have not seen anyone do anything even remotely like this.

 

[michaelwayneharwood]

A couple of things to note.

I did some playing around with the sound clips using EQ match and some other digital tricks to see if I could reproduce the sound of the "processed" signal that comes out of the wooden modules, and though I was able to reproduce some of the qualities (e.g. EQ, compression, etc.) it did not come close enough. Doing a direct comparison between the the direct signal modified with compression / EQ/ distortion/ etc. against the tone captured through the wood module yielded results that sounded good, but was missing a lot of that was present in the Weald processed tone.

I also did a comparison using my captured Limba IR and noticed that the IR EQ curve was different. A quick EQ match got that squared away, but though the IR sounded good and a *lot* closer than just using digital effects (e.g. EQ, compressor, etc.) it still did not sound as good as the sound coming straight out of the Weald prototype.

Everyone has their own take on what tone sounds best for a given situation, and there are always sets of criteria that affects decisions when shaping tone (e.g. does it cut through the mix, does the tone fit with the genre of music, etc.). I *really* like how the wooden block adds a pleasing mix of warmth, compression, saturation, distortion, and (dare I say it) "woodiness" to the tone.

YMMV.

 

[michaelwayneharwood]

Also, how about impulses of materials other than wood?

The sky is really the limit, provided that the material can be vibrated in a way so as to capture the resulting sound. This idea is essentially a modification of concepts used to create plate and spring reverb units. I would love to experiment with other materials, but am focusing on wood for the time being.

 

[michaelwayneharwood]

If you haven't seen this plate reverb created with wood it's worth checking out.

 

[J Posega]

All that work, and you're posting sound samples in .mp3 format?

 

[J Posega]

[Rule 1 violation quote redacted by mod. ]

Wow, what's your problem? I just think he's selling the idea short to compress his work down into a low quality MP3.

 

[Why Nautilus‽]

He was just showing it off as a demo, the actual files are in .wav

 

[J Posega]

He was just showing it off as a demo, the actual files are in .wav

I saw that, but when you're involving a concept as nebulous and contentious as tonewood, one would think that the OP would want to show it off in all its glory.

 

[Justice Graves]

Sadly I wasted my only off day this week sleeping, so I haven't gotten the chance to check these out. Hoping for some down time this weekend. But this really just keeps getting more and more exciting.

 

[michaelwayneharwood]

I going to eschew updating this thread due to the negative vibe and contentiousness that continues to plague what I had hoped would be a helpful sharing of information. Anyone who is genuinely interested or curious can visit my blog to follow progress - the site URL is listed as my "website" under my account details.

One last thing to note...this is not a commercial product that is being developed to be sold - it's a personal project I am pursuing because I perceive value in doing so. I will be making all IR's generated available for free, and would be happy to assist anyone who desires to make something similar for themselves.

 

[Why Nautilus‽]

I'm sad to see this thread die out, it's a really fascinating concept. And I will attempt to use your effects to record something soon