A good sound design isn’t only good samples: it is also how to use them. And this tutorial will give you both: great sounds and how to use them.
At the end of this tutorial you’ll have professional pistol sound effects.

These methods and samples are the same that LmK Music Production uses for its own professional audio creations.

Make sure to work on your sounds using a high quality audio system.

A reference listening system would be ideal.

A wrong audio system is probably going to ruin your results.

We’ve deeply covered this topic in another article: Guide: how to recognise the quality of an audio recording

Reverb affects about 50% of the final sound quality.

It’s one of the most important acoustic features. Our brain uses it to contextualize a sound. If it’s absent, or it’s not realistic, our brain will immediatly realize that there’s something wrong going on.

In this tutorial we’ve explained how to create a good reverb.

Don’t you know what reverb is? Don’t worry: we’ll soon release a guide to explain it.

If you don’t know how to create a good reverb, be aware that the final result of your work will not be perfect. In such case, send us an email: we can help you.

Guns are extremely dangerous, loud and frightening.

In hollywood movies they look like toys, and people chatter during a shooting: it’s not like that. They’re meant to kill. During a shooting the noise is so loud that modern armies wear smart soundproof headphones that activate themselves when gunshots happen.

Even a fire-arm professional will always close his eyes for a brief moment and tighten his jaw when he shoots. Every gun has at least 2 different safety locks to avoid it accidentally shooting. When holding a gun, you don’t put your finger on the trigger until it’s time to shoot (“trigger discipline”).

A realistic gun sound must instill this stream of consciousness: fear, a very loud noise, danger of death, a substantial noise.

If you manage to do it, you’ll have created a good gun sound.

Does this seem too much? It’s not: shooting gives lots of emotions. Just think that even shooting at cardboard targets at the firing range is quite thrilling. Now imagine being in an actual shoot out. Obviously, a real shooting has a big difference with respect to the ones we care about (videogames and movies): it’s actually dangerous. It’s not made to have fun.

We could have written about methods that would take you hours of practice and get you results not on par with a real fire-arm. Or give you our high quality samples for a very small price.

We’ve chosen the second option.

Here are our samples.

In this link you will hear the high quality previews, since Pond5 has very low-fidelty previews.

They are dry samples: they lack reverb, so that you can add it later and adapt the sample to any kind of situation.

At these link you can pick them.
Don’t pay attention to the extremely low fidelty previews: the samples are of the same high quality of Soundcloud’s previews.

Carefully follow the instructions provided for each of our samples: a good sound design is not only about having great sounds, but it’s also about their proper usage.

At this point, you’ll have everything you need for a high quality sound design for your creations.

If you have any problem, don’t hesitate to send us an email: contact us.

If you want to know the reason behind the realization of these tutorials, you’ll find it here:

Our first post.

Also, on our website you’ll be able to listen to the products of our expertise.

Let us hear from y!

If you have found this post to be useful, share with us your experiences on our socials!
Maybe you could also add a link of what you’ve created, and by using the hashtag #lmkmprod we’ll be able to find all of you.

We’re looking forward to hearing from you!