Tag Archives: field recording

Back from a quick retreat!

tim | August 24, 2008 - 9:55 pm

Phew I’m fully recovered now after 4 days off in New Plymouth… Attempted to record some bamboo forest knock/knocking sounds but despite having two bamboo groves lined up to record there was NO WIND!!!!! A cold front was forecast & rain did eventually arrive but it did so very slowly, with no noticeable wind… Coming from Wellington that just seems wrong – usually when it rains in Wellington its at a 45 degree angle! So I was forced to forget about work…. Anyway heres my little portable studio setup – didnt have room for speakers this time round (as had HD camera, stills camera, 2 tripods, full sound record kit with 3 mics) so took my Sennheiser HD545 headphones and my favourite USB MIDI controller: the 84% scale model MS20

I did record some nice metal pings where I was staying,
created by the chimney as the fire heated up:

In nearby Patea, at the ruins of the old freezing works, I also recorded some impulse responses:

And this, also in Patea, was just odd/disturbing to come across:

And this, was just beautiful:

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Lens vs Microphone (& why i love myopia)

tim | August 14, 2008 - 10:04 pm

My fundamental creative core is sonic, make no mistake: whether its sound, music or that glorious blurry region inbetween; my ears are my primary sense. If it came down to some apocalyptic trade off of losing a sense & surviving I would instinctively sacrifice my sense of taste or vision or touch or smell, so as to retain my hearing… but as time passes I slowly become more & more interested in my sense of vision…..
It may well be inspired by my myopia: I am short sighted & have been since age 15 +/- but that is a ‘flaw’ I hold dearly. Both my brother & sister-in-law had laser surgery to have their short sightedness erradicated & when they confronted me as to whether I was going to follow suit I said HELL NO!!! Reason 1: I dont like the smell of my retina being burned off by a laser… but more importantly, reason 2: I love wearing glasses – people with ‘normal’ eyesight dont realise what they are missing out on & I am seriously reticent to share the secret that is common to all my myopic percentile of the population, whether they realise it or not…. ok, let me explain, lenses are like microphones….

Lenses are like microphones. This is a relatively obvious conclusion that makes total physical sense, but despite all that it never even crossed my mind in the previous 3 decades. I fully appreciate light & sound are just arbitrary zones on a spectrum that extends down to earthquakes & light years…. and extends up beyond the frequency of electrons in various orbits on the periodic table…
But I love shallow focal depth; sonic or visual…. and if you are myopic you have an instinctive appreciation of intensely shallow depth of field well before any of those words had any meaning to you. For an experienced cinematographer to achieve what I am talking about would require an informed & prolonged discussion with many departments of a film shoot… and yet, I take off my glasses & there it is: absolute beauty, surrounded by a sea of lovely analogue blurr…. and that proximity to something, or more impoertantly;someone, carries with it an intimacy the instinct of which is far more important & emotionally valuable than any premeditated intent….

And as I learn to appreciate lens, first on my stills camera & recently on my HD camera, I find myself more & more translating their behaviour & response relative to my microphones…..
ie that zoom lens is like my shotgun mic!
& that macro lens is like my contact mic (if its quiet) or a dynamic mic (if its loud)
& that 50mm prime lens is like my Neumann…

it really is a continuum…. of frequency & response….
but it makes me wish for the character of one format to translate to another
for example, why cant I take a Sennheiser 816 microphone & follow focus?
why?

I totally recognise my own (& others) ability to shift focus on the sounds they hear in an otherwise dense soundscape, but that is psychological focus as opposed to the physics of visually shifting focus…. We often emulate the phenomena in a mix, but it doesnt exist in a single microphone as far as I know……..?

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Beach Record Mission

tim | July 16, 2008 - 10:17 am

Spent yesterday at the beach, no not relaxing – working! We were on a mission to record a lot of sand FX; body falls, bodies being dragged on sand, objects being dropped on to sand, sand debris… Getting packed up always takes ages as there is nothing worse getting somewhere remote & remembering a prop or tool that was really essential…. the beach in question is a small town called Foxton, two hours drive from Wellington and the main reason I chose the location was because there are massive sand dunes that are well back from the ocean – we needed to be recording sand FX without ocean roar in the background. And we needed quite a few props, hence this pile of gear & objects:

We stopped at a vegetable shop on the way & bought pumpkins, cabbages & a sack of potatoes. And I am sorry to say they all died a sorry death. The pumpkins got stuffed inside a jacket & then dragged by a long rope… and then thrown from quite a height…. ditto for the potatoes, but the cabbages were killed slowly and with a big nasty looking sword:

As the location was very quiet we also did a lot of cloth recording – as tent flaps for ambiences but also close up & violent moves as elements for character movement & wooshes… Using such a long piece of cloth made for very nice stereo movement – I’ll post some examples once all the has been split up, named & organised… My recorder captured 5.7GB of 96k recordings, and Matts would have been a similar amount. I used my Sanken CSS5 stereo shotgun mic while Matt alternated between a pair of Oktava mics and then dual recording with my Neumann KMR81 and his hydrophone, which we buried in the sand – I am very intigued to hear how the latter sounded… I also tried burying my Sanken mic (in its rycote) under a cloth & then tipped sand (& potatoes on it) and got some really interesting sounds – slightly muffled but with an interesting low frequency acoustic….

Back in the studio now, and all my muscles are achey… and I guess that is the vegetables revenge!

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