FX020 TORTURED VENETIAN BLINDS

Single user license with full UCS metadata & photos.
For multiple users please request a quote for a Site License HERE

I rescued these old venetian blinds prior to them getting dumped, as I have always thought they have a strange tonality, at times reminding me of the thin flexible metallic sound of a tape measure but larger scale. Recording them I started with a non-destructive approach: shaking & moving them, punches, hits, ratchets etc and I was amazed how loud they were! (At times the thin metal impacts reminded me of 80s snare drums.) The slightly heavier lower bar also had an interesting pitch, so I captured impacts, with the blinds adding decay… I also imagined someone breaking into a house through a window & climbing through a set of venetian blinds.

While I have recorded blinds before (for DOORS 1 and DOORS 2) those were normal moves, as the homeowner would not have appreciated me torturing their blinds… But the more interesting sounds to my ears were accessed once I had dismantled them. Each line of the blind became a thin metal strip, which I tortured and twisted, fluttered, flicked, shook & rattled – singularly, in pairs and as a group. These sound very interesting slowed down a few octaves, check the audio preview for examples of the Sanken CUX100K recordings slowed down one and two octaves.

The resulting library provides a unique tonality on its own & when contributing to complex layered sound design, with a peaky thin sound that will cut through dense layers.

Recorded 32bit 192kHz in a dry room using three microphones:
– Sanken CUX100K LR
– Sennheiser MKH8050 C

These recordings are output 24bit 192kHz multitrack and unprocessed, with full dynamic range intact and plenty of headroom. Approx 10 takes per file, seperated by 1 second of silence for auto slicing.

Preview audio is via the Sanken CUX100K mics at real speed, then half speed, then quarter speed