Laser Swipe

How it's made

Source

a synthetic energy beam, not a physical object: a band-limited saw (the buzzing "beam") and a detuned square one octave up, both gliding down from about 4 kHz to 350 Hz in an exponential zap sweep; a thin layer of high-passed white noise adds the crackling air around the beam.

Body

a resonant low-pass (Q 2-9) tracks the pitch at 2.5x its frequency, so the harmonics open and close like a vowel sweep; a narrow resonator at 1.5x the sweep gives the ringing "pew" edge. Q is bounded so the resonance stays musical and never whistles at a fixed pitch.

Envelope

4 ms attack to avoid a click, a fast fall over the first third of the length, then a smooth release to silence (a final fade guarantees a clean tail).

Stereo

two voices detuned by a fraction of a percent beat and widen; their pan positions are offset and both travel from one side of the field to the other over the length of the sound.

Variation

`rng` shifts the start pitch and sweep curve by a few percent; parameters set length, start pitch, resonance, noise grit, travel and width; presets: quick zap, long swipe, blaster, soft hum sweep.

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