Sound Design: Noise making guns that make gun noises

I am preparing for audio post production for a first person shooter game, obviously I'm going to need gun sounds but I do not own a gun (I had a spud gun once) so recording real life gun shots isn't going to be an option, however during my years I have come across a technique by using white/pink noise, volume automation, EQ'ing and creative thought that could go along way for post production illusionists.

Using the noise generator in Pro Tools I print myself a sample of pink noise, I then copy this clip onto 3 more tracks (4 in total), each track will hold a specific purpose therefore labeling the tracks accordingly will help to keep production simple. The tracks will be used for the "SNAP" th "BODY" and the "PUNCH" of the gun sound, I know what you're thinking..I said there'll be 4 tracks! well there is by preference, the forth track will be for added effects.

If set up correctly the session should look something like this;

Here I have added 2 more tracks for making audio prints of my gun shots.

Each track is applied with an EQ of specific parameter settings, these are the starting points that I used.

'Snap' - High pass filter set to 2kHz with a 'Q' of 6dB for a less aggressive cut between frequencies.

'Body' - High pass failter at around 250Hz and a Low pass filter at around 5kHz both applied with a 'Q' of 6db.

'Punch' - Low pass filter at around 300Hz with a 'Q' of 12dB to capture purely low end frequencies to achieve the 'umph'.

Once the frequencies are set for each track it is now time to set the volume parameters, this is how we create the shape of the sound with amplitude and length. as seen in the image above.

The snap of the shot is the pop of the initial sound so this will be the loudest and shortest part, ideally the volume should fade to silence within half a second. The body takes longer to fade and ideally will have some shape to it to avoid sounding linear and to achieve different sounds for different weapons. The punch will then be slightly longer than the body to fade but with a similar approach in shaping (non-linear), the punch should give the impression of the natural low end frequencies taking slightly longer to fade from the gun shot.

So the first sample with all the tracks playing should sound something similar to this;

Link to samples

https://soundcloud.com/drivenbystars88/sets/ound-design-noise-making-guns-that-make-gun-noises

The extra track can be added with effects to a chosen desire, for example, if I wanted to produce a gun for a sci-fi film/game set in a futuristic space plot line I would want to use a 'flanger' plugin to add a little pitched tremolo effect into the design.

Most of the time when I make samples of any kind I tend to duplicate the track and use one for low end and the other for high end, this seems to produce clearer and defined sounds.

Gun 1

For this machine gun I used 3 tracks with the same recorded pink noise sample, track one defining the high end frequencies, track two has a pitch shift which actually produced a nice mechanical sound for the body in this demonstration and finally the third track concentrated on the bass tone of the gun.

Link to samples

https://soundcloud.com/drivenbystars88/sets/ound-design-noise-making-guns-that-make-gun-noises

Gun 2

For this machine gun I went for a sharper slightly brighter type of sound, I used the "little alter boy" pitch shift plugin from 'Soundtoys' because I liked the effect that it had on the previous sample, although this time I altered the parameters slightly and I added a "Blue Cat EQ" on each track.

Link to samples

https://soundcloud.com/drivenbystars88/sets/ound-design-noise-making-guns-that-make-gun-noises

Gun 3

For this demonstration I kept a similar set up to the prior but I added in a 'fuzz' and slight 'wah' to the high end track and made sure the low end was low, to me it sounds nice and chunky enough without the high end track that I am using however it does brighten it up. I will include this in the audio samples for your hearing.

Link to samples

https://soundcloud.com/drivenbystars88/sets/ound-design-noise-making-guns-that-make-gun-noises

If plugins aren't satisfying any needs I like to use layers, for a shotgun sound I layered a pink noise sample as the initial snap of the shot with a recorded and edit cough for the explosion.

Link to samples

https://soundcloud.com/drivenbystars88/sets/ound-design-noise-making-guns-that-make-gun-noises

I did a similar technique to get an explosive impact from a rocket launcher..

RL impact sample

https://soundcloud.com/drivenbystars88/sfx-weapon-rocket-launcher-impact-02?in=drivenbystars88/sets/sound-design-guns

Remember! these are just demonstrations and will require a series of reverberation, decay and frequency adjustments to add life and realism to the visual.

hope this sparked some creative thought process in your mind to put into practice, speaking of practice I should think about improving my shotgun samples.