Pro Techniques from Endless Noise

Pro Techniques 02.01.2003

By Randy Alberts

00:00:00:16 — Tires squeal, upshift at 2.
00:00:03:38 — Throttle full open then choke at 4 to downshift through s-turn.
00:00:06:02 — Open it up in 3rd to 4000, close driver side window.
00:00:08:59 — Get to 4th by 5, then gradual acceleration through OD up to 6.
00:00:11:41 — Hold speed and rev for 3.59 seconds.
00:00:15:00 — Repeat as needed until audio capture engineer satisfied.


	Jeff Elmassian, Endless Noise founder

It's worth a visit to Endless Noise's website to sample a pair of well-crafted television ads the Los Angeles firm recently created for Mazda. Using audio tracks that were spot-miked in and around a Mazda 6 car racing at 90 miles an hour in "Tach," sound designer, composer and Endless Noise founder Jeff Elmassian raises heart rates high for 15 seconds with extreme tachometer close-ups as his only visual guide.

A companion spot ("Dusty 6") features a Mazda 6 blistering across a salt lake bed at Earth-entry speeds to carve out one of the longest 6-shaped donut broadies ever captured on film. In recording both, Elmassian may unwittingly have entered the Guinness Book of World Records as the fastest digital audio engineer on the planet with his Apple Titanium laptop, Pro Tools LE, and new Digi 002 along for the ride.

"Whereas 'Dusty 6' was made up of completely abstract metaphors of sound design, 'Tach' was a literal telling of the visual story with a tachometer and in-car sounds," says Elmassian, 35, who won a Grammy as producer of the Elmo In Grouchland soundtrack and co-orchestrated those beautifully rhythmic sneaker squeaks and basketball bounces with Afrika Bambaataa and Steven "Boogie" Brown for Nike's NBA star-studded "Freestyle" ad campaign last year. "We used a pair of B&K microphones and my portable 32-track Pro Tools studio-in-a-suitcase to record the car," Elmassian says. "For location sound now it's just like filmmakers shooting in digital who don't need to wait anymore to see their dailies."

Endless Summer in the City
Endless Noise formed in Los Angeles in 1998 and after a brief two-company startup break Elmassian re-formed the company in 2001 to satisfy their expanding commercial music and sound design plate. Now advertising clients Acura, Budweiser, DDB Worldwide, American Express, Hersheys, and J. Walter Thompson, and a collection of Grammy, Clio, AICP, London International Advertising,

and International ANDY awards call Endless Noise every day. Elmassian, a composer, orchestrator, conductor and musician practically from birth, who at age 12 soloed as a clarinetist with the L.A. Philharmonic, uses Pro Tools an Apple G4 every day in his audio editing — when he's in working in the office, that is.

"I'll take a sound into Pro Tools and make a sample out of it so that I can perform it live like an instrument with a keyboard or drum machine," says Elmassian, whose credits also include Inside Monkey Zetterland and various high-rotation MTV segments. "Once I have bass rhythms together, I'll go back into Pro Tools and do the micro-editing there. This allows me to further develop a technique of blending music and sound design into a genre that didn't exist before. My favorite projects are the ones that employ this technique and process because that's the music that most interests me."

Pro Technique 1 —
Re-positioning a QuickTime movie
"This tip helps a lot for when you're working with a QuickTime movie that doesn't start at Frame 1," Jeremy Zuckerman, Endless Noise Sound Designer/Composer, offers.

When dealing with such a QuickTime movie, Zuckerman suggests using the selector tool to find Frame 1 and, using Command/Ctrl + comma, identify the sync point at that first frame. Then in Spot mode using the grabber tool, select anywhere on the QuickTime track.

"When the Spot mode dialog box appears," he says, "input your desired movie start point in the sync point field."

Pro Technique 2 —
Basic gain/amplitude matching with AudioSuite
Zuckerman also offers up this quick tip on using the Digidesign Gain AudioSuite plug-in to quickly and easily amplitude match different takes of the same line, passage or sound effect. This is a particularly good tip to remember, no doubt, when recording the inside of a car going from 1,200 to 8,000 RPM in less than 2.3 seconds.


	Digidesign AudioSuite Gain plug-in

"This works great on similar audio files when you have different takes of the same subject," continues Zuckerman. "Select the audio you want to match to, then in the AudioSuite Gain plug-in click on 'Find Peak' and take note of the result value. Leave the plug-in open and select the audio to be altered. Click on 'Find Peak' again, enter the amount necessary to match to the original result value, then process. Easy."

Pro Technique 3 —
Selecting an in-point for audio in Slip mode
Sound Designer Kevin Keller at Endless Noise offers an easier way to select an audio in-point if one works in Slip mode. He often sees folks who don't work in Slip mode by nature and wants to offer up this easy tip for when they absolutely have to. Instead of trying to select a specific spot on the timeline to lay in some audio only to lose the spot after going back to select and move the audio, he suggests simply grabbing a familiar tool.

"Just use the selector tool to pinpoint the spot in the Edit window you want the audio file to jump to or start at," says Keller. "Then shrink your view so you can see the audio file and its blinking selector. Now, using the grabber tool (Command/Ctrl + 4) and holding down Control/Start to click on the audio file, the audio file will jump right to the spot you've selected."

Of course, Keller shouldn't let a good opportunity to further enrich the lazier of us get away. "The proper way to do this is to be working in Grid mode for music to begin with, and either in timecode and/or bars and beats mode where you can use the forward slash on the numeric keypad to select a specific spot, say, for instance, at bar 49. Having already copied the region you need, you can then paste it into bar 49. Hitting the forward slash twice selects an out location, if needed."

Keller also points out that each of these key commands are clearly detailed in the documentation of every Pro Tools purchase. Though he isn't fond of reading manuals, he reminds us all that the importance of understanding and using key commands can never be overstated when it comes to understanding just how much Pro Tools can do and how much time we'll save doing it.