After listening to some of John Williams' soundtrack from "Star Wars Episode I - The Phantom Menace," I wanted to see if I could recreate the sound of Sebulba's podracer in Reaper. I did some research on Ben Burtt's original sound effect and found that he recorded and modulated the engine sound of a P-51 Mustang airplane.
I grabbed some recordings of this aircraft at this airshow and selected a few highlights. Since most of the recordings from this airshow are from a distance, I knew I'd have to give the sound some weight and motion using a synth/sampler. So I brought in Vital.
But before synthesizing anything, I knew the most obvious characteristic I had to create was this sort of throbbing effect. So, I started playing with tremolos. I took the sound of the P-51's propeller while on the tarmac and ran it through a tremolo of about 6Hz which sounded right to me. I also boosted the lows and high mids, while taking out where I knew I wanted my synth to live in the low mids around 200Hz. I did about the same with a few flybys from the P-51.
On its own, I was already getting close to the sound of the podracer, but I was still missing that iconic "gunk gunk gunk" sound. That somewhat tonal beating that makes the engine sound like it's resonating out. This is where I opened up Vital and started modulating sine wavetables with an LFO that was synced to the tremolos I had made before.
