Star Legation Update (part 3)

An alien forest wouldn’t be complete without background sound and music, however, so I spent countless hours playing with my sound design programs. I finally designed what feels like a common forest soundscape, with a full orchestra of birds chirping and tweeting. However, I didn’t want to stop there. This is an alien planet, after all, so I used my digital audio workstation to play around with various sounds. By manipulating synthesized sounds, I was able to design the sounds of a few alien lifeforms. For instance, one synthesized instrument sounded like a series of fast blips, so I took this sound, arranged the pitches, adjusted the tempo, and played it backwards to achieve a somewhat “alien” bird chirp. In another instance, I took some metallic grating sounds coupled with a few mumbles and groans, producing the sound of an alien forest mammal somewhere in the distance. I then added in these alien animal sounds periodically in among the more natural forest sound effects, producing a very “alien jungle.”