This week we feature a new library of mechanisms from Hzandbits and an interview on an interesting collaboration on the A Sound Effect blog.

Hzandbits Release Mechanisms

Mechanisms is a collection of slightly odd mechanical sounds, mostly in mono and edited as seamless loops.

Things that whirr, rotate, grind, click and clack. Strange machines that defy categorisation. Levers, cogwheels and camshafts. Wood, metal and plastic, scrapes and screams. Some are simple loops of a single sound, while others are more complex movements.

Most of the sounds lend themselves best to small-ish mechanisms, but pitching down works well on many of them, for creating more substantial sounding movements.
Sources include everything from an antique coffee grinder to old 8mm film cameras, and various nameless props and gadgets - perfect for designing sounds of strange machines and mechanical contraptions.

• Oddball mechanical sounds
• Seamless loops
• Searchable file names
• Secure Amazon S3-powered download
• Metadata included in CSV and ODS (OpenOffice) formats
• 150 files - 213MB recorded at 24bits/96kHz quality
• Price $32 including VAT at 20%

A Sound Effect Blog Interview - When Sonic Worlds Collide: An Unusual, Inspiring Sound Collaboration

To break new ground and to keep things sounding fresh, you sometimes have to set up unusual collaborations. That’s exactly what award-winning sound designer Peter Albrechtsen and acclaimed sound artist Jacob Kirkegaard have been doing for the past ten years.

They share how their collaboration – and their very different approach to sound – inspires them, and how it makes them hear, design and use sound in new ways. Asbjoern Andersen from A Sound Effect interviewed Peter and Jacob and they shared their experiences with him. Here is an excerpt from the interview...

Peter: I think we’re both really into the sensuous and textural aspects of sound but we do it in very different ways. Actually, I’m a bit envious of Jacob because when he does his sound art pieces he has people’s full attention and he doesn’t have to be weighed down by all the unwritten rules of film sound – in a movie there is a lot of focus on the dialogue and on the music and sometimes the abstract, emotional potential of sound is left somewhat unexplored. At the same time, though, I love to create sounds for picture and the amount of cheating and manipulation that’s possible with film sound amazes me on each and every movie.

Jacob: I think what we have in common is that we both like when sound speaks without words and when sound can take us somewhere new. Whereas I also regard the power of emotion which can be channeled though sound, I do seek to avoid adding deliberate emotional undertones. The sounds I find and record around me usually don’t have any specific emotion embedded in them, they are kind of neutral. It is us human beings who add emotion and meaning to things. Like a piano with its many keys I believe that we contain the whole spectrum of potential emotions right there under our surfaces. In many films the soundtrack aims to play on that piano of emotion. And we can easily be moved. I’ve found that sounds work stronger if they remain more open to interpretation and not too demanding. And Peter is a master in treating my sounds with this sensibility.

You can watch the trailer for ‘Mountain’, which is Peter and Jacob’s latest sonic collaboration.

You can read the interview in full on the A Sound Effect blog.