MATRIXSYNTH: The 10 Greatest Sounds from Star Wars


Monday, January 05, 2009

The 10 Greatest Sounds from Star Wars


YouTube via digitaldave1234. via FakeBook.
We know R2D2 was made with an ARP 2600.
I'm curious what other synths, software or hardware were used in some of these.
"Roger Ebert has said that for some people, movie history begins with Star Wars. George Lucas has said that sound is "half of the picture". The sounds from the Star Wars series sit between those two quotes. Ben Burtt became the world's most influential sound designer by creating the sounds for the Star Wars series.

This list was created by factoring how famous or influential a given sound is, and also considering the sound from a sound designer's point of view. For example, the Darth Vader sounds are simple to create, yet the voice from James Earl Jones became one of the most influential sounds of the series. Compare that to the voice of Poggle the Lesser, which is not as famous, but a masterpiece of cutting and pasting phonetic sounds together."

BTW, be sure to see this post for more synths in film.

Update: One sound that stood out for me in the first of the new films and not on this list is the sound of the engines in the canyon race. The Star Wars films really did have some great audio effects. Sound makes a movie.

6 comments:

  1. I know that that one of the components of the blaster sound was the hitting of high tension support wires with a monkey wrench.

    And Chewbacca was a sea lion, right?

    ReplyDelete
  2. "I know that that one of the components of the blaster sound was the hitting of high tension support wires with a monkey wrench."

    with a contact mic yeahs.

    i have a interview with ben burtt that i can post scans from. he covers of his hardware in it.

    for the record the death star was raith sienar's idea, not poggle the lesser's. ;)

    ReplyDelete
  3. If I recall correctly, the light saber was a 60-cycle hum ... they just moved the mic towards and away from the speakers to create the 'wooshing' effects.

    ReplyDelete
  4. May the schwartz be with you!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Nope Tom- it's a mic being moved to and from a television tube- the TV's on with its audio off.

    Try it!a

    ReplyDelete
  6. The Marshall Time Modulator makes the Darth Vader flange sound... Thats it!

    later,
    ben
    ..

    ReplyDelete

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