In the lead up to Halloween we will be looking at what you can do to create your own ghostly themed room. The first thing any Halloween theme needs are spooky sounds, here’s a quick look at what sounds there are out there, and how you could be using them.
When you install the Ensemble software, it also installs our media library as well. This is a collection of sounds, images and videos that you can use to create your own themes using the Designer software. The Halloween sounds can be found in C:\Apollo Ensemble\Sounds\Halloween – have a listen and see what you think.
If you had something else in mind for your theme, you could always download some free audio clips from websites such as: FlasherDotOrg, freesound, or free-loops.com. A quick search for ‘free halloween sounds’ on a search engine will point you towards a lot of websites that have sounds you can use.
A good starting point for your theme might be to have some creepy sounds looping in the background. To do this, drag an audio clip block onto the map and connect a startup block to its trigger input. Now set ‘Loop’ to yes and load in your sound file. When you play the map the sound file will loop continuously in the background allowing you to use your other switches and sensors for the rest of the spooky sounds.
You can of course use the inbuilt MIDI instruments as well as using audio files. This will give more flexibility as you choose what to play, and when to play it. Most MIDI instruments will not be particularly suited to Halloween but some, such as organs and strings work well. Try dragging a MIDI Notes block onto the map and double click it to open the note editor dialog. You can either add in your own notes, or press Load to use one of the presets. Minor or diminished scales will work well for Halloween. After you have added your notes, select all and change the MIDI channel to number 3 which defaults to a type of organ. Now go back to the map, connect a switch or sensor and have a play.
Hopefully this should give you a few ideas of what sounds you can use in your Halloween theme, next up, images.
Follow this link for quick access to all the DIY halloween theme posts: Halloween Theme Ideas.