Funny Noises for the Connoisseur - Softcover

Hopkin, Bart; Brunelle, Ray; Nicastro, Vincent

9780972731317: Funny Noises for the Connoisseur

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0972731318 ISBN 13: 9780972731317

Publisher: Experimental Musical Instruments, 2003

This book, with its accompanying audio CD, is about comical sounds and how to make them. On the CD you’ll hear squishy sounds and gloopy sounds, farting sounds and belching sounds, laughing sounds and crying sounds, moaning and keening sounds, munching and snarfling sounds, scraping and squeaking sounds, bestial indigestion sounds, crazy-bad musical instrument sounds, Martians conversing, muskrats chattering, and morticians giggling. There are also some sounds that are more exotic than comic and a few that are strangely lovely.

For those who wish to try their own hand at funny-noise making, the book provides ideas and instructions. The procedures are simple, and the materials required are for the most part commonly available. The performance techniques, too, are pretty easy – no special skills required for the basics. If you choose to take it further, your funny-noise skills will improve with practice, and new possibilities will appear.

Since this book emphasizes original ideas, sound-making tricks that are already widely known do not appear in the main text. There is an appendix at the back of the book, though, which lists many of these common-knowledge funny-noise techniques. The appendix also lists commercially available sound toys, odds and ends from the percussionist’s trick bag, and other store-bought sound-gadgetry. Electronic audio techniques aren’t included in the book because not everyone has access to the required equipment – and also because the natural, non-electronic approach is so much fun.

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About the Author:

Bart Hopkin, lead author and funny moise maker, is director of Experimental Musical Instruments, an organization devoted to interesting and unusual instruments of every imaginable sort. His previous publications include Gravikords, Whirlies & Pyrophones (a book & CD devoted to intruments from some of the most inventive builders worldwide), Musical Instrument Design: (practical information for instrument making), and many more.

Bart is joined in this project by Ray Brunelle and Vincent Nicastro, both experts in the field. Ray Brunelle is a sound effects specialist and an active contributor to commercial sound-effects libraries; he has also studied and written on the history of sound effects. Vince Nicastro is a Foley artist with an impressive list of major film credits behind him.

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