Mixing in noise

I thought I'd share this interesting experience & ask for tips. I was recording acoustic bass the other day, and I got THE perfect sound I was looking for: dirty, gritty & mean. Today I did another session set up exactly the same, but I couldn't recreate the grit no matter how hard I tried.

Went back to yesterday's track and soloed it to hear what was going on. The answer: rain. It was raining heavily that day, and the pounding raindrops on the skylight bled into the recording which, when heavily compressed, gave me that perfect dirty sound. Whoda thunk.

So this leads me to my question: since the forecast is for stupid sunny skies over the next few days, do you think I could recreate the effect by mixing in white noise somehow? And here's a really dumb question... how exactly do you make noise these days?

ORIGINAL: bitflipper

People have long credited white noise's positive effects, in the context of tape hiss, which is essentially white noise. Analog recordists talk about its ability to "glue" parts together.

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Dither is just noise added in to smooth out audio when converting from higher bit level to lower. But it's not just any noise it's really fancy custom noise made just for that job.. LOL !

Hello Ms. 'Rah, that's a great suggestion! But lordy what a heap of copy/paste/crossfading it'll involve since I don't have a good long section of noise to choose from. It may be easier to pay the neighborhood kids to climb up on the roof and spray the skylight with a hose

Mr. 'Hey & Mr. 'Per, how crazy... this is the first time I've heard of people constructively using noise, other than an attention grabber or gimmick to recreate an old recording. Now that you mention it, I remember seeing a "8 & 16 bit dither" plugin with the JB Ferox suite (a free download if you ever have the need).Thanks for the FX2Tape Sim hint...definitely the easiest way to go, if I can't loop the real thing.

It's funny, I guess most of us are trained to think noise is evil and should be avoided at all costs. Never would've guessed it can be our friend.

ORIGINAL: Spaceduck

But lordy what a heap of copy/paste/crossfading it'll involve since I don't have a good long section of noise to choose from.

Nah. Just find a few sections, of almost any length. Turn on auto xfade. Cut em randomly and overlap them more or less randomly too. It should still sound smooth since the source itself is essentially random. Bounce to clip for easy handling (or group them if that's what Sonar 8's group thing does.) Them just keep copying and overlapping, maybe doing a bit more cutting and shifting if it starts to sound too loopy. But I betcha it won't!

ORIGINAL: bdickens

That reminds me. For some time I've been wanting to record some ambient sounds like that and keep them around. Rain, wind, traffic etc.

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Mike