Hiss & A Roar have released UFX036 Guillotine, available at the intro price of $3.00, increasing to $6.00 after the promotion.
Hiss & A Roar primarily bought this office paper guillotine for my dark room, and they can’t use it without noticing the range of sounds it makes as it slices through paper, so Hiss & A Roar made a recording session and found even more sounds. But one sound really caught their ar.
Hiss & A Roar tried cutting a few gauges of cardboard and then tried some thicker water colour paper that they use for making cyanotype prints… Except the pad of A3 pages is ring bound, so removing a single page created the equally spaced holes as per the photo below.
When Hiss & A Roar closed the guillotine blade slicing through the binding holes, it was like applying an exponential curve to a linear sequence. The equally spaced mounting holes being the performations in the paper, and the accelerating blade being the exponential rate of change. Hiss & A Roar found it interesting and it made me wonder about other situations this technique could be applied to… Have a listen, theres an example at the start of the audio preview:
Hiss & A Roar first recorded using the Guillotine competely empty, just blade slices. Next was cutting A4 office paper – blade down, cutting and then back up. Then A4 x4 pages at once, then thicker A3 watercolour paper that Hiss & A Roar use for cyanotype prints. Then four sheets of it. That was when Hiss & A Roar tried the perforated cuts. Next they got three grades of cardboard, and found the corrugated double layer cardboard really had a bite to it, as it was sliced.
All of this was recorded with Sennheiser MKH8040 LR, MKH8050 C and a pair of Trance Audio Inducer Contact Mics. The contact mics were attached to the body of the Guillotone for most takes but Hiss & A Roar also did one take with the contact mics attached directly to the paper and then cardboard. Once they were on the cardboard they also recorded some takes dragging the cardboard across the blade, for a different action and perspective.
This little library will be useful for what is obvious – cutting paper. But it also contains quite a range of sounds with potential for use in sound design, whether conveying the sharpness obviously or as a component or layer.
For more information on UFX036 Guillotine, click here:
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