003 | The Sound of Magic behind HitPlay Pulse

Ever since I was a kid, I dreamed of being a sound designer. Watching Star Wars, I used to wonder where all those incredible sounds came from.

Psych!

I actually ended up working on sound design for HitPlay Pulse because my co-founder, Erwick, was completely swamped. At the time, I had almost zero experience with sound design, but I’d always found it fascinating.

Back during my first game jam, I was responsible for all the audio — both music and sound effects. I quickly discovered that one of the most seemingly simple and mundane elements of sound design, footsteps, was ridiculously complicated to create. I wondered, "What do you mean you can’t just record someone walking and call it a day?!”

Then I learned that a single set of footsteps often contains six or seven separate layers of sound. I was both confused and completely intrigued. It became clear to me that sound effects are basically tiny, atonal pieces of music.

Fast forward a year...

Caleb, Erwick, and I were busting our rears working on HitPlay Pulse. There was an overwhelming amount of work to do, and I was asked to handle sound design for our “Magic & Spells” Impulse Pack. Erwick had some experience with sound design — definitely more than I did — and he helped get me started with some magical textures and the Shepherd tone used in a few of the spells. The objective of using that was to make spells sound like they could be charged indefinitely.

From there, YouTube became an incredible resource. There are tons of experienced sound designers sharing their processes, and almost every question I had could be answered there.

One thing I’ve always struggled with creatively is getting started. Because we were under such a brutal time crunch, I needed help organizing ideas and building a plan for each spell.

Enter ChatGPT.

Don't bring out the pitchforks, hear me out:

For almost every spell, I’d feed ChatGPT a long prompt explaining what I was trying to create, what software and gear I had access to, and that I wanted to combine both foley and synthetic elements. It would generate detailed outlines for how I could approach each sound.

Pretty quickly, I realized only 25% of what it suggested was actually useful — but that 25% was enough to get me experimenting.

For example, while working on the Ice Spell, ChatGPT suggested freezing water balloons full of ice and throwing them against a wall to emulate the sound of cracking ice. It also suggested freezing a sheet of water in a baking tray so I could shatter it.

At one point, I placed the frozen ice balls on top of the cookie sheet to carry them outside, and they started sliding around and colliding with each other. The sound was incredible — like the electrical crackle that happens right before a lightning strike. I ended up using that exact sound in the large Lightning Spell.

Whenever I had a decent draft together, I’d send it to Erwick and Caleb for review.

At first, the revision notes were long and honestly pretty disheartening. I could easily spend two full workdays planning and building a single spell, so hearing that I’d completely missed the mark wasn’t exactly fun! But every critique became a lesson.

Over time, my skills improved, the feedback became less extensive, and the whole process turned into the ultimate crash course in sound design. I think I've gotten better, but y'all can be the judge of that! In a city filled with too many musicians, it feels great to have another creative skill that not many people have.

And this is only the beginning.

We’ve got many more Impulse Packs planned for HitPlay Pulse, and I’m excited to make them every bit as awesome as the Magic & Spells Impulse Pack.