It’s High Voltage

Silence Never Makes the Same Noise

The use of Electromagnetic field microphones within sound sourcing

Electromagnetic fields are a combination of invisible electric and magnetic fields of force. They are generated by natural phenomena such as the earth’s magnetic field but also by human activities, mainly through the use of electricity. Simply put, where there is electricity, there is magnetism, but in spite of everything we have we rarely delved into this realm for sound creation and sourcing.

For this, I used the EMF Microphone from Spad_electronics soldering their DIY kit to create the “wave sniffer”.

One particular sound I found interesting was that of recording an Xbox Series X powering up. I found this had some fascinating noises with implications for use as a lightsabre.

First I started with the recorded sound and the aim was to manipulate the sound, since most of the desired qualities were already apparent. Since there were multiple frequencies occurring I had to first clean up the sound file. From memory the lightsaber noise oscillates with a low “humming” noise that modulates when movement is involved. I introduced a fade in and out of the file, since the original recording was long and I only needed a section of it. Next I added a phaser effect. The phaser creates cuts in the high end of the signal with the placement of those cuts being modulated up and down to different places within the frequencies. This added the pulsing nature of the sound I was looking for.

I then removed clicking artefacts within the recording by using a click removal. The sound of the lightsaber needed to be menacing and to feel like it had a lot of power, so to match this I increased the bass and treble of the sound source. Tremolo was then added to once more give the sound source more movement within the “light” part of the sabre, and to make it feel like it was coursing with energy. Finally a quick normalisation meant the sample was ready for use.

The process needed to turn the sound into a lightsaber was minimal and not transformative in nature. It was a case of highlighting desirable aspects of the recording and then cleaning the file itself. In the video example below the sample was added with different samples to create the short clip. The lightsaber sound feels authentic and fits well within the scene.