Hello saber fans, I thought I would post up this project since I'm getting some good results, and it just might inspire some other folks to give it a try.

This saber font is designed for my recently built saber, which I will be posting about (with video) once the sound font is finished and everything is the way I want it. I wanted a sound font that would sound as elegant as the saber's appearance:

Aria1.jpg

I am a singer (specifically, I sing opera) and I thought it would be cool to try to modify the sound of a human voice into something that sounds like a classic lightsaber sound. Thus, the name of the project became "Aria". The first source was my own voice, singing a 'C' (C3 to be exact, for those of you who are pianists/keyboardists). I recorded both an open mouth "ah" vowel and the same note, only hummed.

For those of you who might not know any Italian, 'aria' also means 'air'. That's where I found the inspiration for my second source- a noisy, old-school laminate projector at my university. It had an interesting whir that came from the motor that turns the cooling fan... so I recorded it!

I should also mention, I have taken quite a few classes on audio recording and engineering, so I did come to this project with a bit of previous experience..

As for putting it all together, I used a FREE sound editing software called Audacity. It comes with many different effects built in. I didnt use any outside plug-ins or programs to create the hum below. After much trial and error, I ended up using the open 'ah' tone layered over the projector noise, which was pitch-corrected to give it more of a 'lightsaber' hum instead of the airy, mechanical one it had at the source. The vocalization, however, was much more complex.

I added a phaser effect, added a compressor to even out the sound, duplicated the track, and then 'nudged' one of the tracks so it was out of phase with the original. The result is a voluptuous, ringing tone that was really what I was going for. I did, however, run into a complication because after all the editing, a specific ring-y frequency popped out that was a bit annoying. But all I needed to do to fix it was find the frequency and 'notch' it out using an equalizer.

Anyway, enough of my blabbering. Here's the hum. I'll be adding to this thread with new sounds as I create them.

https://soundcloud.com/carl-hengen/aria-hum/s-usMXJ

SW