Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Need Help IDing Sound Effect

This is topic Need Help IDing Sound Effect in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Jeremy Weigel (Member # 4208) on 10-19-2010, 01:52 AM:

Hoping someone can help ID the back ground sound effect in the clip. It starts at 38sec and last til the 40sec point. Its a commonly used effect in many sci-fi films.

Posted by Rick Raskin (Member # 1561) on 10-19-2010, 07:42 AM:

It sounds like a varible oscillator being tuned and detuned. I used to play around with those things and get the same effect.

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 10-19-2010, 08:27 AM:

It's a theremin with some funky distortion added.

A theremin is a variable oscillator that is tuned/detuned by waving your hands in front of a pair of metal antennas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theremin

A professor, here, at Mercyhurst wrote a book about the theremin. Lydia Kavina, Lev Theremin's neice, came here to demonstrate and lecture on the theremin.

Posted by Christos Mitsakis (Member # 143) on 10-19-2010, 09:34 AM:

A classic theremin use:
Spellbound trailer
Miklos Rosza was one of the first, if not the first, to use Theremin.
Also here:
the Spellbound Concerto

And a recent use by Elmer Bernstein:
Gostbusters