Keep it simple! I know we all like to complicate things with detail and ironically, when it comes to video, if you can do this with subtlety, it really boosts your visuals! BUT if you do it with audio only, it's like there is nothing to ground a million different sound effects going off at the same time; it's really really distracting. If you do this sort of thing, I strongly encourage you to not layer more than 3 things at a time (unless you have a few short things in the mix).

I noticed that the music itself is the main thing, because it gives you the "vibe" of the scene and sound effects only serve to boost the story. For example, if someone came on board, you would hear footsteps, but you don't need the sea and the wind and everything else going at the same time.

NOW, HUGE disclaimer - I do believe that you can have all those things in the right amounts, but you have to make sure that your reader isn't trying to holler over it. The second that your voice, your sounds and music start competing for attention, you have a chaotic mess.

Speaking of music - when I looked for music for inside and over scenes, I looked for stuff that would believably fit the era and that would be more than long enough. The latter was not always possible and the former almost bore serious repetition if I wasn't willing to accommodate various instruments (mainly violin, guitar and piano). You simply cannot have a saloon without a piano!

When I ended up with pieces that were too short, I had to start fading and extending. For example, there is a file that is for a horror or suspense moment. I think it's about 3x it's normal length in this piece and you cannot tell where the seems are! It's awesome! I broke it up into it's swells and scattered it across the scenes it was applicable! You can see this in the image above. The most bottom line is the vocal. The second and third from the bottom contain mostly music and some sounds. About two thirds in, you'll see a denser area - that is where I have a long time of suspense going before the climactic twist!

I also used it's two main peaks (a slow one and a sudden one) to peak at certain moments, such as when the box is revealed early on.

I've written about sound effect production before, but it's really a topic that I just keep learning about - time and time again!

As wonderful as sound effects libraries are, you will be amazed at the 'simple' things they just don't have. Seriously! It's shocking! Different stories and different productions require different niche sounds and while some libraries have 20 toilet flushing samples, they will not have a single frog sound - silly example.

Now, that is not a complaint against the libraries. They are not perfect, just like we are not and they certainly don't always have the access or forethought to go out and record niche sounds specific to our projects, BUT, we have a little something called production & sampling!

One of the more complex sounds I had to make was the crowd in the opening. It is an absolutely massive sound effect. In order to create it, I had to layer various crowd sounds from the YouTube Audio Library and add a little something called MIDI. A lot of you are familiar with it if you are familiar with sampling. A MIDI system triggers a sample based on certain parameters - which makes it extremely useful for concerts and other musical productions, BUT, it's also extremely useful for sound design!

In Jurassic Park, they used this system to generate the dinosaur sounds from various samples like dolphins and horses so they could "play" the sounds the dinos would make.

When you open a MIDI sequencer, such as Anvil Studio, in the composer, you will see there is something called an instrument. Built into Windows, at least, we have a very generic bank of sounds or instruments we can play with, but we have a few interesting ones at the end of the list like Sea Shore, Telephone ring, Gunshot, Bird, Helicopter, etc. These we can use to build new sounds, or even soundscapes, with.

For the crowd, there is an applause sound in the MIDI bank. So, I went in and created a very wide stereo-scape of the applause sound and layered this in with the other layered crowd sounds and that gave the sound of a massive crowd at a special departure. Not that this was a particularly special departure, but it's certainly described as a very busy and noisy one!

The bell sound was very difficult to do, because a bell does not just resonate a single frequency. It has a main frequency, but produces various pitches at the same time, like a chord or other form of harmony. Thankfully, there was a bell sound I was able to octave for uhmf! lol.

And final example, I was able to do a sea-shore sound because of the sea shore sound, BUT, it is a single wave hiss with no rumble. The solution here was, again, to layer the sound at various pitches, to generate a deeper rumble, but still have that high-hat type hiss to the peek of the wave rolling out. I actually produced a looping sound scape of this, because I absolutely love the sound of the sea! I may just post an hour long version on YouTube, you never know, lol.

Two more solutions:

Foley:
Foley is named after the man who is recognised as the man the started the practice. It means to fake the sound you need with something else. For example, dragging a hot water bottle over a table to produce a car tyre screeching sound. Or breaking celery for breaking bones, or coconut shells for horses in an urban setting in the 1800's. There is so much you can do for faking sounds, but you have to go do some research! There are many many websites online that tell you how to make various sounds, including impact sounds. You can also look into old radio drama foley.

Record it yourself:
You may think you don't have anything to record with, but that is probably a lie if you are reading this. If you have a smartphone, you have something that can record. Might not be the best, but you got something! I recommend that if you are able to record what you need - able to fake it or really go and record the real thing, then DO it! Don't wait for it to come your way.

Take the twist's sound effect for example. I have a tendency to think forward for sounds I may need later and on other projects, so if there is an interesting or exceptional sound I have access to, you better believe I'm gonna try to capture it in it's purest isolated form (so I can do with it whatever later on). Turns out, for the twist's sound effect, I had actually recorded it the week before needing it the first time, totally unaware that I would need it! Thank YOU LORD!

To finish off, please don't think of the lack of a sound in a library as a death sentence to your project - there is more than one way to make the sound you need. Sometimes it's a little creativity, other times patience and sometimes it's a ticket to the zoo (be there before they open, bright and early, otherwise you will have a crowd noise issue, unless that's what you're going for) or a trip to the pet store, farm or a show.