Crickets

Recently I had to create a sound effect similar to crickets chirping or to be added to a night time ambiance sound clip, the whole thing was catching me off as I couldn’t properly record the sound of chirping crickets under my current situation.

So what I did was put small marbles into a ceramic bowl. Spin the marbles around the bowl and it creates this nice steady sound which is really quite gritty but reminiscent of chirping crickets!

Bring it into your DAW, roll off the low end leaving more mids and highs, turn the volume way down and automate the volume fader to rise briskly up and down over the track. Really sells the effect but the level of the chirping has to be just right – less is more.

– Thomas Harris

There are also several dedicated crickets sound effects libraries available.