Foley and Sound Design Explained: Make Your Music More Unique

What is Foley?

For those that don't know, Foley is real recorded audio that is often used for post-production of TV and film.

Did you know? If you're watching an action Film or TV show, and you hear a bone break, chances are it's a stick of celery being snapped!

In this post I'll share with you a few different techniques you can use to get creative and add interesting and unusual sounds to your productions.

Celery is often used as foley to simulate breaking bones in TV

How to Use Foley in Your Music?

There are many different ways you can use foley in your music. For instance, you can add foley as a layer on top of other drums to create interesting textures. Or you can use foley as an individual drum or percussion hit itself. Foley can also be used for adding atmosphere or ambience to your song. Furthermore it can be "resampled" and twisted into something new as sound design. Let's have a look at these in more detail.

If you are wondering where to find foley - you can record it yourself with a field/handheld recorder - or even an iphone can work, but it will be lower quality. Or you can use the website freesound.org which is a great community site, if you're just looking for any random bits of audio.

Adding Foley to Drums

Adding foley to drum beats is one way you can use it in your tracks. Let's look at layering up some drum hits with foley to give them an organic and interesting quality.

So I've got a basic beat below, just a kick, snare, and hi-hat. However, I think that my snare sounds a little bit too dull. It's a bit too thud-y, and has a bit too much 200Hz. So, I want to add more top end to it, a bit more snap.

A basic beat with a stick snapping (yellow) as foley on top of a snare drum (dark blue.)

I could add some white noise, or look for another snappier snare OR I could use foley. For instance, I think a twig snapping could sound quite good.

Here's how it might sound:

Example 1a: A basic drum machine beat with no layering:

Example 1b: The same drum beat with a stick snapping as a layer of Foley:

Using Foley as Percussion

As well as layering it on top of pre-existing drum sounds in your song, we can also use the foley in its own right as individual hits, drums or percussion in this drum beat.

Pro Tip: Foley works great as a substitute for percussion.

The Orange track is someone popping bubblegum but has been used as percussion.

Here is how it sounds:

Example 2: A basic drum machine beat with bubblegum popping being used as percussion:

Using Foley is a really great way to get some interesting and unique percussion sounds.

So that is just one way that you can use Foley, either layering with drums or adding them as their own individual parts.

Using Foley for Ambience and Atmosphere

Another way is to just use Foley to add some ambience and atmosphere to your tracks.

For instance, a classic (maybe overdone) one is adding vinyl crackle, like a vinyl player just playing at the end of a record. That lovely white noisy crackle just has a really nice sound to it and adds a soothing texture. You'll often hear it in beats and lo-fi music.

I personally really like the sound of waves crashing - the sound of soft, white noise adds a calming and tranquil characteristic to a song.

You could also use drones of background traffic, noise or any cityscape ambiance. They also can set the tone of your song and be really interesting too.

Maybe they are a bit overdone - but these are great in intros or outros just to set the scene or fade out a track.

Using Foley in Sound Design

Another way to use Foley is for sound design. You don't just have to use raw audio files - you can sample them, pitch them up or down, filter them and apply modulations.

You can even apply different modes of synthesis to them, like additive or granular, and you can get some really creative and unique results. Using them in synths like Logic Pro's Alchemy or Xfer Records' Serum 2.

I find that pitching foley down seems to be better - you tend to get more bass-y, droning, kind of textures. Whereas sometimes if you pitch up, you get more chipmunk-y sounding things! But that could work well for impacts or just some more high-frequency types of percussive sounds.

In the example below I have sampled a ship foghorn, pitched it down and then applied a modulation to the filter so that is sounds more like rhythmic bass sound.

Example 3: A ship foghorn that has been manipulated into a bass patch:

You get some really interesting pad textures, timbres and tones and other wonderful, weird stuff when you mess with random foley sounds like this.

Final Foley Thoughts

Those are a few different techniques that you can use to add some interesting moments, some different, little things to your music production. Making your songs be a bit more creative, a bit more original, and allowing you develop your own signature sound. This can really add an element of drama and storytelling to your music.

However, If you're stuck with your tracks or need some help finishing them then maybe I can help.

I've worked with hundreds of producers now to help them finish their own music, get their songs released and listened to.

If you want help getting your music ready and put out there you can contact me here.

Thanks for reading!

Adam

AM Music