My first sound effect package is Swamp Thingy which is inspired by Finnish swamps. I have spent lots of time in these swamps when I was young while I was picking cloudberries and selling them to shops. It was kind of summer job for me. The cloudberry is a very tasteful berry and people pay good price for it too. Price is good because it is not easy job to walk on wet swamps. Especially when you have big pickets full of cloudberries.

Wet swamp can be very tricky to walk around. Deep bog holes can suck you deep into it and it is hard to get out from it! You also don´t need to be alone in these places. There is always millions of mosquitos flying around and sucking your blood. It sounds terrible but it is not that bad when you get used to it. When you can enjoy it you can also notice the beauty of soundscapes. Usually swamps are very quiet and you can only hear the sounds of nature – birds, insects and grass movement in the wind. The real fun and nasty sounds come from the swamp itself and from the bog holes in it. These can make very brutal burp and sucky sounds when you step in them. I have listened these sounds so many times and I still love to hear them.

I have recorded swamp sounds several times and I find these very useful for gore and creature sounds. This is the reason why I made this sound effect package. I think sound designers find lots of useful sounds for different things from this package.

I recorded these sounds with three setups. Sennheiser M-S stereo microphone and Sennheiser 8000 series microphones as LCR and with stereo hydrophone setups. M-S Stereo recordings are from very close of the sound source, while LCR is pretty close but not too close and hydrophones are obviously stuck inside the swamp. I think MS stereo recordings are useful when you make detailed sounds or need to use side signal as “distant” sound. LCR is more overall experience and you can play lots of with it because Sennheiser 8000 series have great frequency response and these recordings are made as 24bit/192KHz. Hydrophone recordings are weird – in a good way. They are not crystal clear underwater recordings. They are very deep, crispy and scratchy, combining the movements of water and mud. These can be used for example for sound design stuff or for underwater sounds.

Finally here it is – Kuulas Sound – sound effects webshop. I have been dreaming about this a few years now. But I didn´t have time, budget or skills to make it. I was also starting to focus on foley sounds with my Kaamos Sound business three years ago. It took lots of time and investments to focus on foley. I built a small foley stage and bought some equipment for that. Also learning art of foley is very time consuming so there wasn´t time to focus on webshop. Why am I interested in webshop if I work as foley artist? Even if I love foley work I still love sound effects recording. It is the thing where my sound career started. I did have Tascam HD-P2 recorder and Sennheiser 418 microphone. I recorded lots of sounds with this setup. I was all the time somewhere pointing my microphone. Back then my focus was on custom made sound effects and I worked with indie games which was very nice learning process. Honestly, back then I thought that I will never use or make sound effects libraries. I was thinking that custom made sounds is only way to go. I was pretty noobie then. Of course custom made sounds are nice but there are so many good things about sound effects libraries too. First of all, some sounds are hard to record when budget is small or schedule is tight. Secondly some sounds are so unique that it might be pretty much impossible to most of people to go to record them. Thirdly and not the smallest thing – sound effects libraries are piece of art too! Each recordist and sound effect library brand have their own quality and trademark.

I have been planning Kuulas Sound a long time and I think I have pretty solid plans what I will make with it. At this moment I have 20 sfx package preplanned on paper. Four of them are already recorded but not edited and mastered. A few months I have been busy to organize everything what were needed to open Kuulas Sound. Now things should get easier because there are not any big issues with actual webshop template, arts or technique. Now it is just producing more new sound effects packages and make written plans true. My plan is to release 7-10 sound effects packages in year 2016. It is pretty big job but I think I can do it!