Freesound Forums

I am recording a teaser for my "The Andrevian Chronicles" project and I'm needing a background sound like a volley of arrows being fired by a line of archers. I've done several hours of looking, as well as trying to create me own, and haven't had much luck.

Anyone have ideas / care to give it a try?

Link to the project intro:
http://vimeo.com/70009533

if you search for "arrow" you currently get 98 results, some of which are usable woosh-like sounds, that you could layer in multiple instances.
And then there's this sound of repeated dry firings from a real bow
http://www.freesound.org/people/Benboncan/sounds/85019/

If the possible variations of shots and wooshes are still too few, you can use multiple copies with slight pitch and/or tempo changes.

As an example of multi-layering, I've just uploaded this sound
http://www.freesound.org/people/copyc4t/sounds/222608/
already moderated and available.

If this matches your idea, but you need more archers, I can add more layers at will, even from more sound sources that fit.
Also, this sound assumes that the listener is close to the archers, so the bow release is loud and the arrow fly sounds are close; if you need the shooting to be perceived as distant, I can rearrange everything as well.

HTH

Yeah, I started by doing a good deal of searching (both on and off FreeSound) and spending a few hours trying to layer my own, but everything I'm finding and / or creating sounds either like a cartoon or something from kung-fu theater. I'm really hoping for something that sounds more realistic for a line of medieval archers with longbows.

My hope was that some clever soul on here has an inspiration on how to achieve that sound better than the existing "arrow" clips currently available on the web.

Well, try describing how you'd expect it to sound according to your vision, for example by pointing out what's wrong in my attempt above, like: the arrow sounds should be longer/lower in pitch/whatever, same for the bow sounds, maybe we can get close enough

Also, describe the listener position and distance from the archers and from the arrows, and approximate number of archers, if you have a precise idea about that, it would allow very accurate and realistic timing and volume balance.

I would be able to work with a sound from the perspective of the line of archers themselves or a realistic mid-air sound of a volley of arrows flying.

The problem is that arrows don't "whoosh". The flight of arrows sounds very much like you'll hear it in Braveheart, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, etc... The primary sound comes from the air resistance on the fletching, which is more of a hissing noise. Some shows include a medium pitched whine right before the arrow strikes a target. I don't have any personal knowledge on whether or not that is accurate, but it sounds good.

The sound of the dry fired fiberglass bow used in the sample above is problematic for multiple reasons, first of which it sounds distinctly like plastic or fiberglass. Also, you really only get that "whack" sound when you dry fire a bow. I've never noted that sound from a bow fired with an arrow nocked.

I wish I could provide some video clip samples, but I haven't had been home all week (except crawling in late to get a couple hours sleep) and YouTube is blocked on my work network.

This should be a good example, wooden bow with a clearly different snap sound, and the high pitched hiss of the arrow... despite the unbearably high foregr... erm... background music
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcEWCJcvwbQ
(1st shot at 5:13, then 2 others)
Funnily enough, the first LoTR scene I found is quite chaotic and it has both the correct sounds and, more prominently, the kung-fu ones

I'll see what I can do based on this video as soon as you can check it and confirm it's the kind of sound you're after.

-- update:
A better video, long but with many shoots in the first minute:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geNG-Ot40W0
Also, searching Freesound for "whip" may give some usable results, gonna check that too...

Thanks for your help. The "whip" idea is a good one.

I'll give those clips a look as soon as I can.

You're welcome!
I've done a quick check and very few of the whip results are good, but they're all in the first few pages; meanwhile I've also tried some processing on a foley arrow sound:

http://www.freesound.org/people/smcameron/sounds/50773/
I've changed pitch and speed, equalization, and even added a subtle doppler effect on the fade-out, obtaining this:

http://olografix.org/groucho/tmp/50773__smcameron__arrow-whoosh-modified-doppler.flac

Not there yet, I think, but it should give an idea of what we could do on a sound that has something good and something to correct.

Yeah, I've had pretty good success either finding or creating most everything I need, but this one's been more of a pain than I anticipated... Still working on it, though.

It is kind of a pain to combine the individual sound multiple times with enough variations to get something that sounds realistic. I prefer to automate that sort of task, but that in turn requires work of a different kind. For me, it's putting together an Analog Box circuit to emulate the individual sound as best I can, and then making sure it has the ability to be varied according to a random input, and then replicating that many times, firing them off according to some sort of randomized but enveloped trigger, taking the many outputs of that and then combining them in DAW software with layers of filtering and panning, etc. I found this interesting enough to pursue the challenge for a while, so I'll let you hear what I came up with if interested. If I just upload it to freesound, it will take a while to get moderated.

Once moderated [EDIT: now it is], the rest of you can hear what I had in mind as LongBowVolleys. Meanwhile, I PM'ed ArtOrDie with a dropbox link.