Music of Sound

On the top of Brooklyn Hill, here in Wellington, there is a huge wind turbine which apparently generates enough power to supply 300 homes (especially during a Southerly!) While there is much debate about the visual aesthetics of wind farms I have to confess I quite like the look of them, in fact IMHO they are more pleasant to the eye than many of the architectural abberations (aka suburban homes) in the immediate vicinity….. But even more so I love the sound of them! Where else can you go to hear the sound of air being sliced by a huge propellor? Its not like you can gaffer tape yourself to the front of an aeroplane….

To give you some idea of scale thats my record kit you can just see sitting on the ground at the base – have a listen, here is a recording from last Sunday, plus one from an earlier visit:

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Matt had the genius idea of recording the interior ambience as an element for one of the locations in our current project & so a number of phone calls later we gained access to it….

And wow, what a great drone!

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Not that either of us were keen, but we were told in no uncertain terms not to venture up the internal ladder – just this view gave me vertigo…

Beside the turbine there is also a tower with various aerials & wind measurement devices… the wind was fair whipping around it…

Of course I had my contact mic with me & after speculating as to what sound could be heard from attaching it to one of the guy wires, we just had to find out:

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And this is the sound from tapping the guy wires:

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Next I attached it to the actual base of the entire tower & wow!!!!!!!
sub bass rumbles galore!!!!

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here is the same sound pitched up an octave, so you can appreciate what the rumble consists of:

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I think this is the best criteria for a successful recording mission:
to record what you set out to, but to also find sounds that you didnt even know existed…
bliss!