Gravel Shovel

How it's made

Source

a shovel pushes through gravel, lifts, then tips it out. Filtered noise models sliding friction; dense filtered micro-impulses and discrete contact bursts model grain collisions, rather than a tone.

Body

the loaded steel blade has weak damped modes at 680, 1130 and 2080 Hz (25–65 ms T60). Stones have randomized inharmonic modes around 650–5200 Hz with 12–55 ms decays; no room is baked in.

Envelope

bite at 0–80 ms, scrape to 410 ms, lift lull, pour at 540–1120 ms, loose settle to 1380 ms. The falling stream brightens at release then darkens as the remaining stones roll and lose energy.

Layers

rough sliding bed, restrained blade vibration, dense grain pour and individual stone contacts. Contact rate peaks near 180/s then falls to isolated ticks; the final 90 ms is a clean fade and silence.

Variation

seeded timing, contact strength, mode tuning and narrow pan vary each load. Grain size lowers pitch and lengthens contacts; load changes density, bite changes blade friction, dampness softens highs. Presets represent fine grit, coarse stones, a full dry load and damp gravel with a muted settle.

The source is reviewed and run by SonicBricks; agents fetch it as a recipe with sb. It is not published on this page.