Enquiring Ear

Field recording and found sounds

Category: soundscape

recordings of specific locations with distinctive sounds which clearly define the location.

  • Southwold Pier

    Southwold Pier

    I’ve came across this post describing how to go about street recording. I had never really thought about the process before, so it was very hit and miss for me. Sometimes I would get good results, sometimes not so good. Des’s idea of creating a sound map of the area before recording is inspiring.

    In some ways it is common sense – in tackling anything it is good to have an idea of what you are trying to do. Just as a photographer frames his picture, the orientation and location of a recording is part of framing the experience, it is not enough simply to point a mic in the geenral direction of the sound.

    Sound does not have the frame of a photograph, and most field recording rigs take a wide-angle perspective if they were a camera. So getting in close matters. On a trip to Southwold Pier I figured I would try out the new technique.

    Sound walk through the amusements arcade

    This is a short walk past a lot of the noisy amusements. The attention-grabbing “Hey, let’s shoot hoops” from the first attraction is so American for what is a quintessentially English resort!

    The second is a recording from one place, in the building with the Tim Hunkin artworks/attractions. I did try and get the sea churning to give it some perspective, and the start of the fly attraction “You are a Fly” gives it a discrete start.

    Tim Hunkin attractions on Southwold Pier

    This one doesn’t quite get the balance between sea and the attraction right, but I am getting a feel for what the sound map can do for me.

  • Chainsaw Harmony

    Harmony is not the first thing that springs to mind when you think of chainsaws. I had the advantage of a large beech hedge to soften the sound a bit. Two guys must have been chainsawing away here, and the counterpoint one saw gives to another works quite well for me.

  • Resonant Bridge

    Resonant Bridge, contact mic

    060817_bridge_p1000662

    Resonant Bridge, contact mic with no mass coupling to back of element

    Resonant Bridge, contact mic with mass coupling to back of element

    To a man with a contact mic mounted on a magnet, every sound source looks like a large lump of steel, same way as the guy with a hammer sees nothing but nails…

    My luck was in when I came across this concrete footbridge across a dual carriageway. So I set up, carefully placing myself over the central reservation so drivers don’t get paranoid I’m about to zap ’em with a speed camera or throw stones or drop magnets on them. You get some funny looks attaching magnets and a piece of wire to a bridge by the other people, and the regional Police HQ is only 1/2 mile away. This unpreposessing bridge has a decent tone to it, presumably ringing to the vibration of the traffic passing by. Which was awesomely noisy – you don’t realise just how loud the tyre noise is on a road until you try and cycle a stretch like this and find your ears ringing afterwards. The contact mic worked its usual magic in getting rid of all this racket.

    Resonant Bridge, traffic noise, OKMII binaurals w battery box

    The two recordings with the contact mic were made, one with the mic held to the bridge with a strong magnet, the other with the same mic held to the bridge in the same way, but with an approx 0.5kg weight acting as a reaction mass on the other side of the piezo, to see if this picked up low frequencies better. You can hear the difference – or not, for yourself!

    the traffic seen from the footbridge
    the traffic seen from the footbridge

    Piezo contact mics seem to cause a lot of pain for people losing low frequencies, but I do not feel I am short of low frequencies here, using a basic FET buffer. The peaks of the bridge resonance are 120Hz, 240Hz, 380Hz, 760Hz. There is, however, energy at 22 and 43 Hz at -36dB on the resonant peak, at a similar level to the broad peak around 3kHz which is probably the percussive sounds amplified by the piezo self resonance. The piezo was a Maplin YU87U 27mm 1.8kHz item terminated in 3.9Mohms, but the circuit could be improved to work better with a HiMD recorder mic input of 5k.

  • Women singing in Ferihegy 1

    Women singing in Ferihegy 1

    Women singing at Ferihegy

    No, I don’t know why they broke into song here. However, the old Ferihegy 1 airport terminal has an air of faded grace that the more modern Ferihegy 2 just doesn’t. That is a soulless modern airport building. This is a marble-panelled cavernous space that clearly inspired this lot to sing.

  • A blackbird sings boldly, Hotel Anna, Budapest

    A blackbird sings boldly, Hotel Anna, Budapest

    A blackbird sings boldly into the enclosed courtyard of this hotel in Budapest. Around him, the city gets ready for the evening. The wind blows some paper cups in the cobbled floor and then some people get chairs ready.

    I was in Hungary to do some bird recording, so I had an SD702 and MKH30/40 mics. I wrote this post some fifteen years after recording him, but I still remember a magical urban moment. This male used the echo of the courtyard to amplify his song, the resonance adds richness to his tone.

    He was in what looks like an ash tree in this enclosed courtyard. It goes another floor down into a cobbled floor that I couldn’t get in the photo, it’s stitched from four. Towards the end the hotel staff get ready to set out some tables and chairs.

    I had another charming urban field recording moment in Hungary. These women broke into song in the marbled hall of Ferihegy I as I waited for the return flight. That airport was a throwback to when flight was glamorous, and the resonance added to the song.

    location on radio aporee

  • Lowestoft Wind Generator

    Ness Point windmill, from the mic position
    Ness Point windmill, from the mic position

    Windmill in 15mph wind 1 min 10s

    Some subjects you know are going to be a challenge. A wind generator, not surprisingly, needs wind and this was recorded in a 15-17mph northeasterly wind. That’s not the sort of weather made for easy sound recording!

    This recording was taken about 100m from the generator at Lowestoft. The sound probably impacts about 500m away at this location next to the sea. This generator is sensitively sited in a really ugly industrial part of town next to a gasometer, and is visually reasonably well shielded from the town.

    A gull turned up later and made a nice counterpoint to the blades

    recorded 19 Feb 2006

  • Amsterdam Rising

    Amsterdam Rising

    I looked for a cheap dive close to the city centre as I wanted to record a repeat of a concert from the late 1970’s which was repeated on DAB. I requested a room high up, and installed a DAB tuner with a wire aerial slung out the window.

    Loads of signal strength, as to expected in the middle of the capital city. The concert was recorded digitally with HiMD and from the analogue output using my old MDLP as backup. The HiMD failed. Moral of the story is don’t edit your HiMDs on the deck if you want to be sure – Anyway, the backup was good.

    After the concert, I stoked up with a few beers, and in the morning heard the city come alive to the sound of the bells. The first one started a good five minutes before everyone else, though the 1 minute format lops most of the overzealousness off. It’s a rotten recording, hissy as hell, even though the sound was loud enough to be easily heard through the window. I think this was using OKMII

    Why is there a hook sticking out of the roof, you may ask? It puzzled me too, but all was explained when I took a canal boat tour later on that day.