Interesting field recording subjects?

Coda · Jan 22, 2012

Hi all.

I recently started making field recordings in my spare time just for the fun of it, so far I have made some nice recordings of some trams and I am off soon to record a wind turbine and a few convolution impulses around some interesting architecture in my city.

Feel free to have a listen.

Tram 1

Tram 2

Does anyone have any suggestions for other subjects to record that would be more interesting and what do you feel is a nice sound? Speed, motion, Doppler effect, dynamics, phase, what are some unusual sound properties to capture etc etc.

Coda.

DonH50 · Jan 22, 2012

Birds in a park, or in the bird cage at a zoo, can provide a lot of interesting "zoom" effects.
Trains and jets, of course...
Bands in the park, or street musicians (and the crowd)...

Mark (Basspig) Weiss · Jan 22, 2012

Somewhere I have a 24-bit recording of the sound of pollen falling on the leaves in the forest that I discovered while recording a distant owl's hooting. It sounds a bit like raindrops, but the stars were out on this particular early June evening.

c1ferrari · Jan 22, 2012

Hi Coda,

My ThinkPad is old, circa 9 yrs...I download the file and generate a request for a codec :-(
I'd love to hear it, though!

When my new laptop arrives early Feb., I'll return and give it a listen.

Say, how about a carousel with kids on it?

Coda · Jan 22, 2012

Ahh yes, they are 24 bit files but should play on most media players, though nothing special really just a couple of trams passing, short but nice recordings (I think) with good detail especially when listening on headphones

Nice suggestions all, I think the fair and the zoo should be good!

Mark (Basspig) Weiss · Jan 22, 2012

Found my owl audio.. but can't figure out how to upload it here..

Bruce B · Jan 23, 2012

When I do audio for games/film, I turn to sound effects libraries. I have done foley work in the spur of the moment though. There is quite a market for these sounds.

Tom Danley · Jan 26, 2012

I have a couple environmental recordings I made with a microphone array experiment I am working on.

These are the front two channels that make up more or less something like your field of view.

The average loudness of the fireworks especially is very low (none have compression) but have large peaks. Use headphones first if you can.
At the BOTTOM of the page here;

http://www.danleysoundlabs.com/technical downloads.html

Best,
Tom Danley

JackD201 · Jan 26, 2012

How about the entrance to a bee hive?

DonH50 · Jan 26, 2012

Ooo, ooo, ooo, I've done that! Three little omni Core mics, one centered in the main opening slot, and on at each end so I could get the sound of them zooming in and out at all angles. My grandfather was a beekeeper.

Strangest recording: Stuck a cheap mic in a ziplock bag and flushed it down a toilet. Even managed to get it back...

JackD201 · Jan 26, 2012

Cool Don! I've ALWAYS wanted to do that!

As for how you got your mic back......... LOL.

Bruce B · Jan 26, 2012

Some of the coolest I've heard are by exhaust system manufacturers. Have been shopping around for new pipes for my motorcycle and manufacturers are now letting potential buyers listen to the pipes to see how they sound on their brand. I've seen these for all makes of cars... motorcycles... snowmobiles and etc...

fas42 · Jan 26, 2012

Tom Danley said:
I have a couple environmental recordings I made with a microphone array experiment I am working on.

These are the front two channels that make up more or less something like your field of view.

The average loudness of the fireworks especially is very low (none have compression) but have large peaks. Use headphones first if you can.
At the BOTTOM of the page here;

http://www.danleysoundlabs.com/technical downloads.html

Best,
Tom Danley

I'm a treble, not bass man, and I'm intrigued with the squealing of the insects in the Train Starting Up; or is that something else?

Frank

Tom Danley · Jan 27, 2012

Hi
The Bugs that make the Zzzz sound are Cicadas, in this case a type that emerges in mid August.
We have 17 year Cicadas too but when those are out, that’s about all you can hear haha.
The trains were recorded in my backyard; there is a small marsh between the railroad embankment and the rear of my property.
There are many other insects and birds in the marsh and woods when the cicadas and train are quiet, you can hear them too.

The tracks are on an angle relative to the microphone, a little closer on the left side than right.
The mic array was about 150 feet from the train tracks, about 50 feet from the end of the driveway and motorcycle (I should have been farther) The fireworks were recorded with the same mic location in the back yard so you hear the sounds of the woods after dark as well as fireworks about ½ mile or maybe a little more away.

The setup, partly a result of being a completely different approach has a very low noise floor which makes it kind of weird to play things back at “greater than live” sound levels.
On the motorcycle recording, if you increase the volume, you can hear a very distant neighbor hammering much more clearly than you could live.

I have a couple recordings he web guys have not posted yet ( sooo slooow), one set was made at a friend’s son’s birthday BBQ. The family is in an Irish heritage club and the kids (8 to 17) got together and played a few traditional Irish folk tunes. I was really pleased how well it captured the live event.
Anyway, hope that explains more of what you’re hearing.

Best,
Tom Danley
Danley Sound Labs

JackD201 · Jan 27, 2012

How about the top of the biggest ramp at a Super Cross event, or WRC cars on a gravel road before they grab air. Lot's of doppler, engine noise and loose debris. Yeah, I'd love that.

fas42 · Jan 27, 2012

Tom Danley said:
The setup, partly a result of being a completely different approach has a very low noise floor which makes it kind of weird to play things back at “greater than live” sound levels.
On the motorcycle recording, if you increase the volume, you can hear a very distant neighbor hammering much more clearly than you could live.

Thanks, Tom.

What I love is that people still periodically rant about digital not being able to capture low level information, ambience, instrumental decay, when it is all so obvious that this is untrue. Simply because it doesn't work well with music on their playback setup, they then interpret that as something being intrinsically wrong with digital ...

Frank

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Interesting field recording subjects?

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