Tips for creating drama sound FX, background ambient effects and backing tracks

Adding audio to your Christian drama productions can really take the presentation to the next level.
It's the equivalent of good costumes making your play come alive.

And it's not as hard as it... sounds.

How to use sound:

  • Ambient sound: like ocean waves and seagulls, crickets, campfire, city sounds
  • Background music: (especially for mimes) - movie soundtracks or heartfelt christian music on theme.  
  • Intro music: set the scene to a game show or you tube tutorial act.
  • Sound effects: thunder, baby cry, helicopter - whatever is in the story.

How to make your own sounds:

  •  Use freesound.org to get the elements of sounds you need to mix.
  • Layer several sound effects together to make something with a full sound.

Editing Sounds and music: 

  • Use Audacity as a free but powerful sound editor program
  • Use AI when you have questions on how to do something in Audacity. eg. "in Audacity, how do i make the volume go softer for a bit and then louder"

Playing sounds:

  • A sub-woofer is essential for earthquakes and thunder, your venue may or may not have one. Take your home stereo if needing to get that extra bass. A bass frequency sweep will do fun things in the room as the sound passes the room's renascence.
  • Surround sound can be epic for things like battle scenes or ocean storms. Surround sound can be achieved by setting up extra stereos in different places in the venue (in addition to the venue sound system) and have different devices playing their left and right sounds on each stereo. Rehearse when to hit play on each device do they sync.
      

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All items on this site are written by and copyrighted to Scott Wegener, a multi award-winning Australian creative writer, specialising in fun Christian dramas and articles. This site stores Scott's creative works, sometimes without much copy-editing (forgive any spelling/grammar creativity you spot on this site that comes free of charge due to his slight dyslexia).

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