Hello.
I am here to explain how to create a quick, simple, and easy way of making realistic gun SFX.
Lets start off with your settings.
PART 0.1
This isn’t really a part, but will give you detailed explanation of what your gun SFX should sound like.
If your trying to make a handgun fire sound, you can consider other factors to make your shot sound realistic.
- Is the gun shooting outdoors or indoors? Most people would most likely not know, but inside a building, the noise from a gun bounces off walls, making it louder, and shorter. Plus, the bullet itself (most likely supersonic) won’t create a super sonic crack, since the distance is so short. Outdoor shooting is different. When your outdoors, there is nothing to block the noise of the shot, so the sound continue to travel until it finally fades off. There is also super sonic cracks to consider (although you don’t need to add these). Here are some examples.
Indoor:
Outdoor:
As you can hear (if you listened to them), the indoor shot is much shorter and higher pitched, the outdoor shot is much longer, a slightly lower pitch, and has other details in the sound.
Now, lets get to the main purpose of this.
PART 1
So, lets say your creating SFX for a gunshot for either a game, an animation, or whatever else you can use them for. Mattering on the gun, what it shoots, and a few other factors I won’t get into, your gunshot should sound different. Lets start off with where to get these noises from.
For me I use a website called Epidemic Sound. It’s a free and easy website to find music, sound effects, or other things you may need. Of course, you can use other websites, or record your own sound, but for now we’ll just use this website.
Once you’ve gotten all the sound you need, try listening. For handguns, you can use sounds such as this.
If you want to create a powerful sounding handgun, try to find something similar to this.
Once you have the actual gunshot, now look for the sound of an ejected casing, such as this.
For rifles, you can try to adjust this, meaning change the duration and the frequency of the sound. You can do this by going into your video or sound editor, and simply extending the length.
For shotguns, try to find something like this.
Now, when your adding SFX for rifles or shotguns, I wouldn’t recommend using pistol examples of sound, they don’t sound correct for the gun, and make the gun sound “weak”
For rifles, try something like this.
For shotguns, try something like this.
(I do understand that this shotgun SFX isn’t the greatest, I didn’t want to spend 20 minutes finding a good one)
Now, for a quick and basic lesson for those who don’t know much about gunshot SFX, in simple words, a less powerful shot (22 long rifle all the way to 45 ACP) should sound light, quick, fast, and not so powerful.
For a powerful handgun shot (44 magnum all the way to 500 magnum) should sound slightly deeper, slower, and have a large “boom”.
For rifles (.223 all the way to .308), it should sound light, quick, fast, and have a powerful boom.
For shotguns (specifically 12 gauge, other rounds also work), it should sound deep, slow, and have some sort of “boom”.
Now, lets move onto part 2, which will show you what not to have.
PART 2
So, I would assume you’ve heard gunshots before (video to reality), but I wouldn’t know if you know what an unrealistic gun SFX sounds like. Here are some examples of what not to use, as they will ruin your SFX.
Bad example 1:
Bad example 2:
(I couldn’t actually find anymore bad gun SFX)
As you can tell from these examples, you can probably tell what I mean by “unrealistic”.
Was this helpful? If it was, please leave a reply. Did I miss anything? If you need anything else for gunshot SFX, and did not get what you needed to learn from here, reply and I’ll try to help the best I can.