I've heard stories of people re-micing a voice or instrument with certain keys of the piano open so the strings sympathetically vibrate with the sound, thus adding more harmonics and another timbre to the sound.
Has anyone else tried something like this in designing a sound? Would it work well to reinforce a creature vocal or creepy pad or synth with? I'm curious if anyone else has thought of this or done this in the past before I give it a go.
This technique works really well for almost anything, especially if you hold down the keys of notes that are either fundamentals or harmonics. Even order harmonics tend to make the sound more harmonious and odd order harmonics tend to make a sound more discordant. The technique is sometimes called 'Dragon's Breath' and is really fun, especially if you have access to a Steinway D.
It's a cool idea…the closest I've come to that recently is using the Bosendorfer IR set in Altiverb to give certain sounds a musical quality or resonance. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't…but you never know till you try!
It sounds like it would work. Of course the sound designers for Treebeard in LOTR re-miced his voice through a wooden box.
