Field recording and found sounds
Target recordings are those made of a specific sound or sounds which are distinct from the background atmosphere or the location in which they occur.
There’s a characteristic sound of bearings seizing up, and I first came across this with car wheel-bearings – they screech for weeks before going, but car sounds are hard to localise. Feeling the massive heft to the right in the fast lane of the A12 as the driver’s side wheel-bearing collapses and jams means I know that this sound means a bearing on the way out, even if here it is only on a neighbour’s Flymo 🙂
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Pair of blackbirds kicking up a hell of a racket and chipping noise, I was too far to see the offending predator, probably a squirrel
I like this sound, it’s calming, in a lumpy and random sort of way. A gas stove is seriously noisy, too, from a six-inches away sort of perspective.
Even in Ipswich you get to hear the boat horns sounding on New Year’s day, so this time I went to Shotley Peninsula, between the large container port at Felixstowe and another port at Harwich to record the ship horns sounding the New Year in.
A nice touch was the Shotley residents have a sense of timing. Unlike in Ipswich, where people start releasing fireworks all the time as soon as it gets dark, in Shotley (and Felixstowe and Harwich by the looks of it) they wait for the New Year. In the foreground are the sounds of some Shotley residents celebrating at the pub, but it is the ship foghorns that make this for me.
Note the fireworks are quite loud after the horns 🙂
Auction in progress, classic auction patter
The livestock and game auctions at Campsea Ashe bring out a whole much of characters, full of good old Suffolk boys with strong accents. And a few loud cocks too
Loud cocks
Tim Hunkin’s madcap creations at the Under the Pier show at Southwold have their own soundmarks. This rhythmic squeak from the animated sign is the one that most reminds me of this attraction.
This fairground roundabout was set up in the town centre, and seemed to have some sort of mechanical organ contraption in the middle which delivered this hurdy-gurdy melody.
In Christchurch Park in the centre of Ipswich near the Mansion, there was this mistle thrush giving off the football rattle sound, a welcome piece of wildlife in the town centre on a freezing day. Somehow the city sounds in the background give him some edge, even though it’s hardly a classic species recording.
The sudden boost at the end is the bird diving off to take up some issue with a bird in a yew in the graveyard
It’s not that easy to catch the beginning of swans taking off, but these took off while I was recording near a reservoir at Grundisburgh, with the ungainly splashing and creaking of wings.
