Synthesising thunder?

[Arpangel]

I need some thunder sound effects "without" rain, I can record them myself, but their aren’t any storms on the horizon!
So I’m thinking about synthesising them, I have a few storm sounds but they all have rain, I’m looking for just thunder, distant, rolling thunder.
I used to have a great convincing patch for my VCS3, but that’s long gone, I’m thinking of using my modular, or the Berry 2600, I know to start with noise, and filter/amp modulation, but any tips would be useful.

[Bob Bickerton]

Well the best thunder I’ve recorded, real or synthesised, was by tearing a flax leaf, dropping it down a few octaves and adding sensible amount of reverb and delay - perfect.

You can hear it 28s into this track: https://bobbickerton.bandcamp.com/album/ng-t-rino-2020

Bob

[Kwackman]

Got a spring reverb you could kick?

[MarkOne]

There's thunder and there's thunder

It all depends on how close you are to the lightning strike, and whether it's a ground strike or a cloud to cloud discharge.

As it's air expanding very rapidly, it is a genuine crack and followed by reverberation from surrounding hills, or the flat surface of the earth/ocean.

As it gets further away the HF is attenuated more and more until you just hear the rumble

I would start experimenting with white noise and envelopes, pitch shifting down and copious amounts of filtered long tail reverb, also you hear thunder bounce around as it reflects of the geography so a couple of long delays might help with that.

It sounds like a fun little project to try and synthesise it.

Or failing that there are these
https://pixabay.com/sound-effects/search/thunder/

The 3rd one down might just fit the bill

[ken long]

Got a spring reverb you could kick?

Yes! I made convincing (to me!) thunder like this before with a noise generator through an envelope and filter and into a tank.

[James Perrett]

Have you got a cheap dynamic mic handy? Try blowing hard into it (and preferably turn the preamp gain up so that it overloads a bit). Maybe pitch it down a bit too. A friend of mine became quite expert at creating thunder this way.

[tea for two]

JP kinda said it already.
Just record blowing some raspberries thereafter synthesizing raspberries recordings.

[Stuart79]

BBC sound effects library? Or some creative Foley work with a sheet of some kind (e.g. aluminium, heavy paper)?

[resistorman]

Have a browse at freesound.org.

[Arpangel]

I don’t believe it, so many great suggestions here, unbelievable.
Bob, loved that track, but the thunder is too percussive, I’m looking for very distant "rolling" rumbles.

[nathanscribe]

I don’t believe it, so many great suggestions here, unbelievable.
Bob, loved that track, but the thunder is too percussive, I’m looking for very distant "rolling" rumbles.

I did this about 15 years ago using white noise through two passive filters, some S&H on a Yamaha CS5, and Dave Smith Mono Evolver on the actual thunder – I don't have the patch any more but I think it was more S&H with some filter resonance on noise. Nothing really specific to the synth, so you could do this on almost anything.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/bjmej21x ... bi19g&dl=0

[Arpangel]

I don’t believe it, so many great suggestions here, unbelievable.
Bob, loved that track, but the thunder is too percussive, I’m looking for very distant "rolling" rumbles.

I did this about 15 years ago using white noise through two passive filters, some S&H on a Yamaha CS5, and Dave Smith Mono Evolver on the actual thunder – I don't have the patch any more but I think it was more S&H with some filter resonance on noise. Nothing really specific to the synth, so you could do this on almost anything.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/bjmej21x ... bi19g&dl=0

Thanks, OK, we’re getting there, all I need to do I think, is attenuate that overall S&H filter modulation, and close the filter on the main thunderclaps, so they are more "dull"

[ef37a]

Or! Go to your friendly local car body shop peeps and get them to make you a "thunder sheet".
If you still have a 'rep' near you I bet they have one, might let you record it?

Dave.

[ken long]

was curious to see if you could get one of those online and Sabian do one. Might be a pain to store when not making thunder with it!

https://www.gear4music.com/Drums-and-Pe ... -x-30/170X

[Arpangel]

Thanks, but I’m OK for thunder at the moment, there’s quite a bit of it rolling around in the basement.

[Bob Bickerton]

Beans for dinner?

Bob

[Matt Houghton]

There are loads of thunder samples on freesound.org Some decent, some less so, some real, some Foley, some with rain, some without...

[ef37a]

I got my very own proper local thunder and rain yesterday. Unfortunately the garden system was not recording at the time.

Dave.

[DGL.]

Well the explosion sound on Tragedy by the Bee Gees was simply Barry making an explosion sound into a microphone to which effects were added, so simply recording yourself can create good effects.

[Stickman0_3]

That's easy - choose a smooth pad or lead sound and get a Saw down waveshape on it. Then change the sound to a noise sound. Then change the shape again so that is has a sample and hold waveform.

[Stratman57]

Plus one for Freesound, I've used some great thunder sounds from there for several drama productions.

Regards, Simon.

[Arpangel]

There are loads of thunder samples on freesound.org Some decent, some less so, some real, some Foley, some with rain, some without...

Thanks for that Matt, sorted.
I’m fed up with trying this with synths, it’s not working.

[Matt Houghton]

Thanks for that Matt, sorted.

de rien!

Freesound is such a great resource.

[tea for two]

There's lots of fun to be had in making our own sounds : I dig this.
Butt there's untold people out there miles better than me at sound design. So instead of my pants sounds I just use their sounds : libraries, samples, vsts, free stuff as Matt linked to.
I can always poke around with others sound designs.
Saves me a lot of faff, leaving me to crack on with trying to make some museek.

[Matt Houghton]

Yeah. Plus, if you feel the need to call yourself a 'sound designer' you can always 'do stuff' to make existing samples more interesting/suitable for the project in hand. Time-stretching, pitch-shifting, formant shifting etc... I don't think that's cheating, is it?