Gruber

Creating SFX (Explosions) - Pico-8 Music Tutorial #49

Added 2019-02-25 15:01:01 +0000 UTC

Happy Monday!

Attached is the Pico-8 tutorial and explosions SFX pack!

Explosion SFX are lots of fun. In this tutorial, I play with a few different workflows. Here’s a summary:

To start:

Create a pitch curve with instrument 6
Create a volume curve
Set SPD: 1-3 for short explosions, 4-8 for long explosions

To play:

Create different sequences of instruments (2+6 for example)
Listen for too much pitch and buzz, try adding effect 3 to lessen the “pitch”
Create more chaotic sequence of pitches
Create more complex instrument sequences (2+6+4+3+6 for example)
Experiment with different/random sequences of effects (1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)
Play with different SPD values

To have more control and deliberation when playing with the instruments, it’s important to understand their different timbres. For example, if your explosion SFX sounds too “smooth” and you want it to sound “grittier” and “harsher,” what instruments can you use to achieve that texture?

Personally, I’m always thinking about how all the instruments have a spectrum of brightness/harshness, and I think it’s really important for maintaining a fun, creative flow.

I made a tutorial on this if you’re interested.

Attached is the tutorial video file and a Pico-8 cart with 30+ explosion sound effects. Also attached is a .zip file with 30+ .wav files. Use them in your games!

Below is a list of where these sounds came from. I tried my best recreating the sounds from, say Contra, but because the noisy ones are so chaotic, it'd be more proper to say they were "inspired" by these games.

Explosions