How Jean-Marie Viollet captured great exotic bird sound effects:

Hi Jean-Marie, please introduce yourself and the Exotic Birds SFX library:

I’m a sound designer – re-recording mixer based in Paris – France, I’ve worked in the Video Game field for 6 years and I’m presently an in-house sound designer and re-recording mixer for a sound post facility in Paris. I mostly work for animation production and foreign TV series. The Exotic Birds sound library is dedicated to exotic birds and the purpose was to record isolated exotic birds. I’ve recorded a huge amount of sounds, but my purpose really was to provide close and clean recording that could be used for birds sound editing, ambiances, or to for creature sound design.

What are some of the birds featured in the library?

You have the beautiful Paradise Cranes, the White Naped Cranes, a very nice variety of Flamingo recordings (groups and isolated), the Kookaburra a very funny bird also called laughing bird (you’ll understand why listening to the sounds), different kinds of Geese, some beautiful Guira Cuckoo calls, Ibis screeches, the awesome Chilean Lapwing calls, different kinds of Parakeets, a nice collection of Grey Parrot calls and screeches with an awesome cartoon-like whistle, some powerful Macaw Parrot calls and screeches as well, Indian Peacock calls, the amazing Southern Screamer call, the beautiful Super Starling call and few other noisy birds.
 

The birds in the library come from all over the world, so what was your strategy for recording the sounds?

All the birds had been recorded in France in zoological park, so basically the strategy was to go record when the place is empty, be patient – a lot! – and wait for the bird to sing and call. I used to just walk randomly in the park, spot an active bird and wait for him to sing call or screech.
 

What was a typical recording session like, and what was your recording setup?

I had a basic recording set up composed of a stereo cardioid mic set up with a handheld recorder. A typical recording session was to walk from spot to spot and see if the birds were active or “sleepy”, and then just wait for them to sing. Some days I’ve just waited hours for absolutely nothing. The bird activity also depends on climate and season, and since most birds were more active during spring it also was noisier, so recording in spring sometimes led to less isolated takes.
 

What’s one of your favorite sounds from the libraries? And what was your most exciting experience putting the library together?

The most exciting experience was when recording the Paradise Cranes (the close recordings). I’ve spent so much time waiting for them – days and days – so when they started screaming it was just great. It was just a random thing, the cranes used to be very far from the fence and they would only call when excited by something like food for instance. And then one day there were this group of art students around the fence, drawing the cranes, and – I don’t know why – but the cranes were very excited, and they came close to the fence and started to call away. It was like the 20th crane recording.

The Paradise Crane recordings are great for designing creature sounds because the screeches are very noisy and can handle to be compressed, transformed or anything you want to try. The Macaw Parrots are also very interesting for designing creature or large chimeric birds because the screeches are very loud and growly. The Grey Parrot is nice for all the tiny, funny bird sounds, very expressive.
 

Do you have more bird sound effects libraries in the works?

Yes I’m currently working on a Birds Extension sound library, including some others exotic birds like the Great Curassow, the Snow Owl, the Kea Parrot, and also some more common birds. I’ll also release a Seagull library and a Crow library very soon.

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