I
hate it how when they have some shot in a film or tv series that includes a baby,
they always seem to use the same 4 or 5 samples.
(you can even notice the same time intervals between the samples playing)
And there's almost never any bloody automation in it anywhere.
Not in pitch, not in volume, not in length,...
And you can sure as fuck forget about realistic reverb attached to the samples !
Whether it's a junkie mother with sibling in some abandoned subway station or a non that just gave birth to the local bishop's love child in some medieval cathedral, the reverb on the crying baby samples is just
all the same.
What are we ? 1985 ?
I can assure you that when I was a younger breeder,
I was perfectly able to tell when one of my poor girls (that ended up having me as a father) was crying,
even if this happened in the company of many other babies yelling for totally undeserved attention,
I was still somehow able to tell if the highly annoying sound came from my own offspring or not...
That's when I usually knew it was just the right moment to dip their pacifier in whiskey and a little MDMA,
put in my professional earplugs, and leave the rest to the mrs after she went to grab me another beer or two...
Fact : Only thing original about the sound of a real life crying baby is the proper automation in the audio output...
Honestly though, is it really that expensive to just mildly torture some real life babies for a day or five and then sample the sounds ?
This way we can build a proper sample library that we could use and abuse for countless years to come !
Unfortunately, my girls are already to old for that shit, but I'm fairly sure some of our more younger members are aspiring techno DJ's/producers here who have a GF or mrs that have been secretly dreaming about starting a family any time now.
Why not combine the emotional with the practical, and give in to their naïve hopes and dreams while getting ourselves a unique chance to build our own decent original sample library ?
My inbox gets spammed on a daily basis with new sample libraries that are about as interesting as watching paint dry... So surely there must be a market for these types of sounds ?
It's time for you young aspiring fathers to put one in for the sound design team !