Go to the supermarket and head straight for the bulk foods department. Get ample bags of different snacks/grains — there is a huge variety of texture to be found. For example, cashew nuts have a nice clunky grit to them. Trail and Oriental mixes of different particulate compositions can have versatile tonal colors. There are certain gummy sweets that are more subtle but nonetheless add flavor and weight to other elements.

Then when you’re back home or in your studio environment, put on a pair of food safety gloves (if you intend to eat this stuff afterwards), and try recording different gestures, even pouring them into an absorbent bowl/container, shuffling them around with your hands. Monitor carefully to build upon what “sounds good” — note that some combos don’t tend to work too well, like rice in a glass bowl can sound very “clinky” and annoying to the ears. Ye olde usual “experiment until you find something you like…” applies here.

Afterwards, you can pitchbend things (usually down) as-needed to create desired effects. It can also be very aurally rewarding to use granular synthesis to process real-world grains, and build up layers of textures that can be mixed to taste (literally).

This is how I did most of the Terrain Editor sounds for our virtual reality platform Sansar, with multiple tracks of manipulated grains, and you can hear a bit of it in action @ fmod.com at the top, a few seconds in. :D
– TORLEY

– Erik Nielsen

We’re currently working on mobile branding projects for a leading mobile manufacturer, animation sound design, audio recordings – and more game projects. Stay tuned as we get the news section back on track :)

– Fredrik Kilander

So what I did was put small marbles into a ceramic bowl. Spin the marbles around the bowl and it creates this nice steady sound which is really quite gritty but reminiscent of chirping crickets!

Bring it into your DAW, roll off the low end leaving more mids and highs, turn the volume way down and automate the volume fader to rise briskly up and down over the track. Really sells the effect but the level of the chirping has to be just right – less is more.

– Thomas Harris

There are also several dedicated crickets sound effects libraries available.