Field recording and found sounds
I was making a binaural recording of this fairground roundabout when another sound recordist arrived to get a clip from the ride itself – he asked the proprietor if it was okay at the beginning of the clip.
The actual fairground organ is a recording played out of speakers either side of the organ facade. The giveaway, apart from no moving parts, was when the operator fiddled with the volume control 😉
An exasperated mother has to take a big kid and a little kid to task after Dad pushes his child’s scooter too fast. Overheard on the way to the Ipswich Beer festival by the docks.
Borough Market is under the arches leading in to London Bridge Station, and this trader was hawking snacks and decent fast food, like wild boar sausages and hare. I couldn’t work out what the heck he was calling out when I was there and I still can’t work out what his exhortation is.
At the beginning of the track there is the shrill call of starlings. I was chuffed, because something really bad has happened to London’s birdlife over the last thirty years, as many once common birds are common no more. There used to be thousands of starlings in London, there was an enormous roost at Charing Cross station decades ago.
Most tragically, the humble house sparrow seems to have surrendered the fight. As a child growing up in London they were everywhere, in the parks you could sometimes see some old boy feeding hundreds, in the ways tourists feed the sparrows outside Notre Dame in Paris.You’d walk past the hedges in suburban London and be chided with the peremptory chirp of a house sparrow. No more – in the last three decades the chirp has fallen silent as the cockney sparrows have abandoned the city. Central London is now pretty much a bird-free zone apart for the ubiquitous pigeon.
Starlings have also abandoned the city, so it was a treat to hear their call. Perhaps these have worked their way up the river, for Borough market is near the river at London Bridge.
St Paul’s Cathedral is only a stone’s throw from the tall glass-faced buildings of London’s financial district. I was sitting in the gardens of the cathedral, and the bells sounded really odd, as if there was an organist following on after then about 2 seconds late. This must be the echo coming from the glass-fronted buildings about 0.5km away, it does nothing for the tone
I was recording the waves at Southwold pier as darkness started to fall. The air was still enough to give it a go without being taken down by the sea winds.
Suddenly, in the distance I hear the sound of geese, and a massive vee of geese pass overhead, possibly a hundred birds in all
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
The Fat Cat pub in Ipswich is a fine real ale pub, which serves many of its beers gravity-fed. Sound-wise, however, the pub is a nightmare – lots of glass which reflects the conversation, to the extend that on a full Friday or Saturday night you struggle to hear your mates over a small round table. Thankfully they don’t have muzak or a jukebox! This was only made worse by the addition fo a conservatory extension with a plastic pitched roof that focuses the sound onto the middle tables. However, the beer and the ambience makes up for the odd lost word.
This recording was made on a Wednesday so there were fewer customers, it was okay for conversation.
This guy had chutzpah. setting up with a few boxes of bananas and the aim of flogging them all in a day. He delivered his patter with gusto
