I had the pleasure and privilege to bring you “The Record” a short tale of a vinyl enthusiast who finds an unexpected LP in his crate. Hear it now on Season 5, Episode 13 of the NoSleep Podcast.
I had the privilege of a co-producers credit on this one for additional sound design on the LP tracks.
SPOILER ALERT
Here is some of the sound design for this story. There were two tracks needed, that are played during different parts of the story. They get cut up during the story , interspersed with the narrator, but I thought it would be fun to present them as the full tracks as if they were actually on the turntable.
First, this track is designed to sound like a creepy damaged track on scratched up vinyl. Here is how the author described it in the story:
...what came out of the speakers was pure chaos. A garbled hiss was lost in heavy static and a sudden, shrill screech made my ears ring. Somewhere in the cacophony I could make out the sound of voices. The voice in the foreground sounded distant and muffled. I leaned close to the speaker to decipher the words, but it was as if the singer were speaking gibberish. The words were at once familiar, but completely alien.
Later in the story, another track is played. This is a spoken word track. First, I needed to differentiate the voice on the track from my voice as I was also the lead narrator.
During the playing, the turntable is supposed to speed up, slow down and skip several times during the track. I needed it to sound like an old LP and it also needed to have the speeds be roughly representative of 45RPM and 78RPM modes, and still have the narration be comprehensible. Normally 78RPM is too fast for 33 1⁄3 RPM to remain comprehensible on first listen.
It was fun recording the sounds of some old LPs into my Audio Technica turntable in my trusty Zoom H5.