Creating a machine gun sound from everyday objects

Posted on June 15, 2009

Image from WikiMedia

This a brief demonstration on the construction of a machine gun sound, for an upcoming game mod I’m working on (WW1:Source).

As an exercise, I tried to create an approximation of the German MG 08/15 machine gun using the sounds of everyday objects, and minimal processing.

The aim was a percussive, hammer-like sound, with metallic elements, loud but short in duration (as it has to be repeated rapidly in-game.)

So, here goes:

1. We start from a short sample of a plastic water bottle being squashed (not very impressive on it’s own.)

2. Add a little distorted sample from the same source: mix

3. Next, I add the sound of a wooden brush handle hitting a glass tile, for a bit of percussive ‘click’: mix

4. Overlay a sample recorded by shaking a small metal box filled with screws, for that metallic/ammo element: mix

5. …and another one: mix

6. A sprinkling of white noise: mix

7. Now, I add the sound of my espresso machine handle being slammed down (part of this sample pack), for that percussive thump: mix

8. … and a bit of wooden door closing, to accentuate that: mix

9. Then, a couple of hand-muted cymbal strikes are thrown into the mix, for a bit of metallic “clank”: mix

10. Finally, a snippet of metallic tinkle from my box of screws, delayed by a few ms, and a little low-passed reverb tail: mix

11. Now for a bit of compression, bringing the level up by a few dB: mix

12. Getting there, but let’s make it more “boxy”. Low-pass EQ at 40Hz,and a bit of boost around 500Hz: mix

Let’s check it in-game:

Get the Flash Player to see the wordTube Media Player.

Not bad… Of course a better result can be obtained from the same source material with the use of heavier processing, but my aim here was to try and use recognisable, relatively unprocessed sounds.

You can see a similar MG in action here.

Tags: WW1:Source