Friday, September 09, 2005

How to record a Tractor without Really Trying

Recently found myself in the woods when I spotted the rare 1940's International Harvester Tractor making it self useful.



Millionaire Marv was operating the vintage beast in a most deft manner due to the fact that it has an accelerator pedal FOR EACH WHEEL.
Drive By/ Bucket Dump


It was almost like dancing the way he was able to guide it through it's tasks with the utmost gracefullness while my audio rig sat idly by soaking up every moment through it's synthetic ear-drum.


At the end of the session, I left wondering what it would take to realistically simulate JUST the sound aspects of this beauty...here's what I came up with:



1. Independant wheel traction sounds panned stereo wide that correspond to the movement/turning of the tractor.


2. The engine has a idle pitch that changes based on the acceleration, but there is also the sputtering of the muffler that could be seperated from the engine pitch and modeled and randomized to react differently under different situations. This would add a level of diversity to the sound of the engine that you wouldnt get in a typical loop.
Engine Loop
Acceleration Ramp Up


3. These was this loud high end fand belt wheezing on the right front side of the tractor that could be panned and acceleration pitched accordingly.

4. The bucket on the front end is hydraulic based and run off a compressor (i think?) which makes a hiss of sorts, along with various rattlings of the bucket at varios points that could be triggered intermittently when raising or lowering.

5. The exhaust stack at has this great metal flapper on top of it that bounces up and down when idling/ exhasting and makes a great noise that could be modeled and randomized to correspond with the rpm of the engine/ movement.

6. The chair that you sit on has a giant spring under it...which squaeks intermittently.

Am I overthinking this? ;)