A gunshot sound effect recorded for a high school production of the musical Heathers. It was recorded on a Zoom H1 and was made by a theatrical cap gun. I recorded it at a distance of about 5 feet and then again at a distance of about 40 feet from the audience and allowed the sound to reverberate both times. Then I duplicated both and mixed in both original sounds on top of each other, plus each sound pitched down 1 octave and the 40-feet away recording at 2 octaves down, plus the closer recording pitched one octave up. We then added and adjusted reverb in Audacity and adjusted the sync of all the clips to be aligned, and adjusted the mix to make it sound as real as possible.
Type
Wave (.wav)
Duration
0:01.917
File size
1.4 MB
Sample rate
96000.0 Hz
Bit depth
32 bit
Channels
Stereo
Comments
7 years, 6 months ago
Ah, that makes sense, especially with the boiler room part.
And yeah, indoor ranges echo like crazy, any rifle bigger than a .22 or any pistol larger than a .40 cal in one sounds like the end of the freaking world! LOL
7 years, 7 months ago
Sure, thanks for the feedback. There was reverb added or adjusted in Audacity. It depends on what wall materials and what caliber. For me, most of what we hear of a gunshot is resonance off of surroundings, because the shot is so much louder than what we can comfortably hear. Without ear protection, a lot of times you hear a whining sound right after concussion. In the show, I believe it was used as a backup for a gunshot in a boiler room scene (in case we had issues with our stage prop in the show). I'm also probably influenced by the most common location where I hear gunshots, which is an indoor range, which has a lot of concrete in it. Keeping that (and our original recording location in mind - a large theatre), that explains the echo.
I'd like to get some outdoor range recordings of .223, 9mm, .45, and .270 later on. I'll upload them if I'm able.
7 years, 7 months ago
Makes a decent crime Noir type element, or a low caliber Victorian to WWI era pocket/dueling pistol.
Looped it could make a decent WWII era 9MM SMG sound, like the Sten gun for instance.
A bit heavy on the reverb near the end, causing that tunnel/rubber ball sound, but still a nice editing job.
Thanks for sharing!
