How to Create Footstep Sound Effects: Krotos Studio Pro 101
Follow along in this tutorial to understand how footsteps presets can be designed and operated in Krotos Studio Pro.
Building a basic footsteps preset
- In the hamburger menu, click load factory presets
- Open the preset templates folder and select footsteps template.
The XY pad on this template is designed to hold a different surface type in each corner. There are pitch and pan macros, plus trigger buttons for scuff and stop sounds.
The sampler core engine is recommended for footsteps, as we can trigger the sounds in either a random order, or sequentially. Use one sampler per surface, as these will be mapped to their own corner later on.
The note trigger button is enabled on the XY pad. With this enabled, sounds are triggered when you click on the XY pad itself. Lets load the first engine with some footsteps. Once the sounds are inside the engine, you can trigger them and they will play back accordingly.
Now lets load another surface into engine two.
Now, when we gradually click from surface one to surface two, you can hear the surface change.
Now let’s load more surfaces into engines three and four.
Now we can click in various directions across the XY pad and mix our four surfaces together.
We can customise the sounds further. The pitch macro enables you to control the pitch of all of the footstep sounds you have loaded in. You can also pan the footsteps around with the Pan dial, and all of these parameters are fully automatable in your DAW.
Adding scuffs and stops
There is more involved in footsteps than just placing one foot in front of the other. Scuffing shoes and stopping sounds are also needed to make your footsteps sound as authentic as possible, and you can do this with the trigger buttons. With this workflow, you can have full control over the surface and footsteps, as well as additional buttons for triggering these less-often-needed sounds.
Creating a footsteps preset from a template
This template is set up to allow you to create your own version of the Krotos Studio footsteps workflow. This is not the only way to trigger footsteps of course, but we believe this is a quick way to start.
Using this template, the core engines are already setup to trigger from the XYPad4Zone and for the 4 surfaces to mix between one another, as in the footsteps presets that ship with Krotos Studio.
Tip: Steps can also be triggered with MIDI Note C3, scuffs with C#3 and stops wth D3.
To add your own steps, we will start with tab0 (labelled ’Steps’ in this template (you can right-click on any tab in Krotos Studio to rename it). This template is setup to mix between up to 4 different surfaces.
If you only have one surface, this is also fine, just use the first core engine in each tab throughout this tutorial. Each tab has already been setup and assigned to the perform area to match the 4 surfaces you can see labelled in the XYPad4zone on the right hand side.
Drop your own step samples into each of the 4 core engines of the ‘Steps’ tab, with steps for surface 1 into the first engine, for surface 2 into the first second engine etc until you have filled all 4 engines.
Remember you can use the scroll wheel on you mouse to scroll the core engine area to reach core engines that are out of sight.
You can add any many samples as you like into each core engine (up to 250 samples) to help avoid repetition.
These steps will now be setup to be triggered from the Xypad in the performance area. You should also be able to mix between these surfaces by clicking in different corners.
You can right-click on the names of any of the 4 corners of the XYPad4Zone to rename them.
You’ll see that the ’note trigger’ button has been activated underneath the XYPad4Zone. When activated any click in this XYPad will trigger any core engine set to ‘All Notes’ or ‘C3’. This is a handy way to build presets that can be triggered with your mouse.
You can also use the XYPad4Zone as a mixer, without triggering with the mouse, by deselecting this note trigger toggle. Now you can trigger using midi, and use the XYpad to mix between surfaces using your mouse.
Scuffs
The ‘Scuff’ button is setup to trigger core engines in the ‘Scuffs’ tab. You’ll see this is set to MIDI note C#3 in the core engines, on the left hand side. In the Trigger button menu directly underneath the button in the Perform Area you can also see this is set to C#3. This is how we connect the triggering to the core engines. If you want to change the trigger note, make sure you do it in both places if you want to use this button in the UI.
To add your own scuff sounds, simply drag and drop them into the core engines in tab 1. If you have multiple surfaces you want to use, add them in the same order as you did for the ’Steps’ tab, so that you can mix between the scuffs using the XYPad4Zone.
Stops
The ‘Stop' button is setup to trigger core engines in the ‘Stops’ tab. You’ll see this is set to MIDI note D3 in the core engines, on the left hand side. In the Trigger button menu directly underneath the button in the Perform Area you can also see this is set to D3. This is how we connect the triggering to the core engines. If you want to change the trigger note, make sure you do it in both places if you want to use this button in the UI.
Pitch and Pan are already assigned to the appropriate core engines as well, so once samples are added, you can use these macros straight away!
Remember you can use this template for many types of sound design use case, not just footsteps. You might find it useful for any scenario where you want to mix between multiple layers of material as you move, or have 3 different types of interactions under different circumstances.
HOT TIP - when mixing between multiple layers of footsteps, make sure you have edited the start points of your samples to be at the same point. This will ensure smooth mixing of layers. You can also adjust the start/end points of each sample you import into a core engine, but careful editing ahead of time will save you a lot of time.
