In the past I’ve always just used Pixabay or Freesounds to find sounds for my projects, but recently I’ve started trying to think more intentionally about sound design and actually “make” my own. By no means does this mean I’ve figured anything out or am suddenly an office chair expert, it just means I’m realizing the benefit of more cohesion and the time savings from having to hunt for sounds that compliment each other.

For Vibe Coder Tycoon, I started out with some core guidelines based entirely off my own preferences and the knowledge gleaned from a YouTube video and a couple blog posts. Very scientific stuff.

Guidelines

• No sounds above C5 (523 Hz) except the win sound
• No music track – ambient room tone instead (60hz)
• Softer sounds for things that happen often
• Sound dB should be reflective of the vibe. App promotion falls flat -16 dB @ 148 Hz vs app goes viral -5 dB @ 392 Hz.

All sounds for Vibe Coder Tycoon were generated using a Python script (I reverse 37% of my previous hurtful things I’ve said about Python), here’s an example of the code for the broke even sound (obviously not including the mixer, envelope, etc. part of the script, just the individual sound definition):

def s_broke_even(rng):
"""~600ms quiet."""
a = triangle(note("D4"), 0.22) * perc(0.22, decay=0.16)
b = triangle(note("A4"), 0.38) * perc(0.38, decay=0.3)
return db(seq(a, b), -14.0)

It remains to be seen if my brain and my Python skills will allow me to generate more complex sounds for future projects, but I’ll certainly try!

If nothing else, my wife says the room tone is perfect for white noise and she’ll use the app when traveling.