Man Of Steel Bumblebee sound

How to make that sound...
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Hi guys,

I'm fascinated by the sound at 0.39 and 0.45 in one of the Man Of Steel trailers, and would love to recreate it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlOF03DUoWc

The best way I can describe it is an angry kind of Bumblebee mid-bass sound that suddenly swells, and subsides as quickly as it appears.

As it swells, the volume increases and the pitch seems to increase a little, but there is another parameter modulating more quickly, around 1/24, giving it this 'bumblebee' sound. (I think there's a bit of panning, but this isn't the crucial parameter I'm looking for). I'm very keen to find out what is the crucial thing causing this effect.

I've never made anything like this before and could really use some pointers, and was wondering if anyone had any ideas!

Thanks for reading and any advice would be hugely appreciated. I mainly use Massive and Sylenth for sound design (groundbreaking, I know).

Thanks :)

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It's probably not exactly this but it sounds wavetable-ish with some super quick vibrato that increases its depth over a short period of time and the quick tremolo (panning) aswell

This alone wont suffice though.that sound is pretty dense which makes sense considering it needs to come across as larger than life.so,you will probably wanna layer it quite abit and try not to conform to just using synths try find some samples of metal for example and manipulate them with something like fruity granulizer,reaktor,alchemy (insert preferred granular synth here)


Quote from one of the sound design supervisors on reddit who apparently came up with the sound concept

"The core World Engine sound started as a synth sample. I then manipulated it quite a bit, entirely in Native Instruments Kontakt, to make it sound more agressive and powerful. So it is synthetic."

Quote from Editors Guild interviewing said individual

"One of Norris’ signature sounds for Man of Steel was a “World Engine” that the villainous General Zod unleashed on Earth in an attempt to terraform the planet into a viable replica of the now-dead Krypton. “I was looking to create a pulsed effect, working with animatic pre-visuals for the CGI effects. In the end, I created the sound using a Native Instruments’ Kontakt sampler. After searching through many samples, I found one that seemed to have a good balance between the ‘synthetic’ element of something from another world, and an ‘organic’ element to make it sound real. I then processed the track further to make it sound more threatening and powerful.” The sound designer recalls that he processed the sound, assigned it across a keyboard controller and used portamento to change the pitch as he keyed each pulse."


There ya go.alot simpler than i imagined lol







TIMT
I

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Hi TIMT,

Thanks so much for the detailed response. I've spent several hours reading around to fully get my head round it! This is all kind of new to me. Learnt a lot already, so thanks for nudging me in the right direction.

I found the reddit and editors guild articles which were very interesting but left me with more questions, especially as I am new to Kontakt. Just to repost the two passages you quoted:

"The core World Engine sound started as a synth sample. I then manipulated it quite a bit, entirely in Native Instruments Kontakt, to make it sound more agressive and powerful. So it is synthetic."

'I created the sound using a Native Instruments’ Kontakt sampler. After searching through many samples, I found one that seemed to have a good balance between the ‘synthetic’ element of something from another world, and an ‘organic’ element to make it sound real. I then processed the track further to make it sound more threatening and powerful.” The sound designer recalls that he processed the sound, assigned it across a keyboard controller and used portamento to change the pitch as he keyed each pulse.'

I'm a little confused here: apologies if this sounds stupid - but where might the original synth sample have come from? Just from his own recordings/library? (ie nothing to do with Kontakt, right? :? ) And this was dragged into Kontakt?

And what kind of manipulation could he have conducted in Kontakt? Is it possible to mangle audio in Kontakt? I'm very new to Kontakt and have only made use of the library instruments - not editing any audio.

So it turns out there is another area of sound design I am clueless about and have a lot to learn. Any help would be, as always, greatly appreciated!

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You can easily make this with starting from a reese bass, check out some interview of Noisia, they use this type of sound quite often.

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Thanks man - will check it out

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