How would you create sound bending?

[u/Hairy-Restaurant-807]

I wanted to create a sound bending villain for my campaign.

[u/Sully5443]

You wouldn’t need to do much. You don’t really need a more specific Exchange Technique than what already exists in the game. There’s loads of “Forceful Airbending” Techniques across the game books, so the concept of those “Forceful Airbending… but with Sound Waves” isn’t going to break or change anything.

Same idea with the Basic Techniques: they break glass with Sound Waves using Smash. They disorient and cause the Impaired Status with Hinder. Etc.

So they’re just like any other Airbending NPC… except when they Airbend, they are manipulating Sound during an Exchange and outside of an Exchange: they just manipulate sounds in dramatic ways to prevent noise from escaping or mimicking sounds and so on. It’s no different than any other NPC bender just acting as a vector for your GM Moves

[u/MinnieShoof]

Make 'em a water bender.

When everyone's confused at the end

have 'em explain he was bending the sound waves.

[u/babykitten2727]

One of my players is a soundbending airbender! He doesn’t have a combat technique for it, it’s a custom move that allows him to bend sound to spy on people, project his own sound, and manipulate the soundwaves to change his voice

[u/Apprehensive-Nose646]

It would be a specialist from air bending the way blood bending is for water, lightning bending is for fire, and metal bending is for earth. I don't think air has one already and so it needs one.

[u/FullTransportation25]

Lighting bending or combusting bending but for air benders

[u/lotofdots]

Of course Airbender would be the simple answer, something similar to the boom boom sparky man, nut instead of concentrated flame exploding it's hella pressurized air. And just moving a plain of air like a speakers membrain can work or maybe some mechanical constructs or just carved or cast objects with a structure that produces some particular soundsin particular way if you airbend at it in some way - like, Aang uses an aeroscooter or whatever that was called, if there was a more or less spherical something held in a ball of quickly moving winds buffeting at it and flowing through it? Idk... Technically, there's thermo acoustics, so firebenders might be able to do some kinda nondirect soundbending. Can check out Fire Force characters castfor a dude that messes with that.
Earthbending can be used to produce sound, if simply by smashing tro rocks into each other, but that's not really it. But there are lithophones - stones whose structure and formation made them good at propagating sound and resonating, so an earthbender that can just create a bunch of lithophones and pinball smaller rocks around these lithophonic constructions can be quiet something. Again a rather indirect thing. But what about mudbending? If an earthbender can liquify rock and make it vibrate, adjust its structure and state to make it resonate in different ways, that can be something, but again idk, and this seems even more complex that thermo acoustics, and those at least can more or less reasonably be somewhat intuitive with experience.
Waterbending... It feels much more flowing or snappy, one or the other but not really both to create like a speakers membrain, but maybe if a flowing water limb can be used as a water whip, that can be something. A cacophony of whipcracks of many water whips? And of course maybe ice crystals can be used similarly to earthbenders lithophones, I'd imagine. And just shattering of ice, rumbling of water flowing around and through obstructed space - not sound ending at that point, just making noise, but if there can be constructed an ice structure that'll make the water flowing through it rumble in resosnant ways, maybe... Eh, idk, I don't have an idea that's any good for waterbenders.
Besides like, messing with the internals. Inner ear, brain itself, vestibular apparatus works based on some liquid iirc, so maybe waterbenders can get some interesting results by messing with all that, but just blasting a waterstream into someone's ear aughtta mess them up too.