Fingersnapping sound

Hey guys,

I am working with ST for a while now, but I am not able to create a cool & clear „fingersnapping“ sound. Does any of you have an idea how to tweak the clap machine or so, to create this?

Best regards, Chris

I’d start by adding a low pass filter with high-ish resonance to the clap machine, maybe a little envelope.

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Hi Chris, welcome to the forum!

I had a go at this, but didn’t get quite where I wanted. The result is useable but maybe a little harsh? It would have been fun to do a scientific breakdown of a finger snapping sound, but I just went by ear this time. I used 3 instances of SY Bits, high pass resonant filtering and noise modulation. Three variations, put into a simple musical context.

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I go by ear and break it down with like science.
I thought about it a minute and prevent you from a wall of text:

  • one of the few sounds we/humans make, that has a sharp transient → dirac impulse + increasing attack in 0,1 ms (or whatever small increment) until dull enough
  • cavitation between fingers gives tune → sine with longer decay tuned by ear
  • our hands most of the times are in front of us shifted to r/l, so their interaural level and time differences are part of their characteristics to our ears → delay/level or panning/frequency response
  • so are (relatively) early reflections because of a sharp transient nearly every room responds to
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Hey Nils, that`s a great one! I will now try to rebuild it as prescribed. Thanks a lot! Best regards, Chris

Great! Let me know if you need the project file :slightly_smiling_face:

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this is so great

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Doubt this will be helpful but I remember being amazed when I figured out that the snap sound is created by the finger hitting your palm more than the two fingers themselves.

Love that this is actually a current field of research

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They go quite deep into dynamics, less deep into acoustics.
you can approach from different directions, as deep as you wish.

headline itself is not that surprising :smiley:
you could go deeper into checking how much of that friction is delivered by mechanical interlocking and how much by van der Waals interaction, what humidity/pH value/skin fattyness and what rheological properties give the fullest snap. and what shampoo obtains that condition best.
then you could design an adhesive and/or surface coating for your (artificial) thumb, adjust its adhesive- and cohesiveness according to your goal, the nicest snap. maybe a meaty thumb helps tremendously. larger hands maybe do so as well? maybe a certain thumb to middle/index finger length ratio is ideal. fitting of ring finger inside the palm of your hand. maybe the shape of your fingernails also does things.

oh, you could go deep.