The other day I went out for a walk and I noticed a flock of Black-Headed Gulls roaming about and being annoying, as they generally do. Whenever I hear these creatures I (1) inevitably think of Angry Birds and (2) make yet another mental note to someday go out with the purpose of recording them. For some reason seagull (and especially black headed gull) sounds are quite difficult to come by, and their calls are excellent for designing monsters.
Read MoreField recording trip to Romania
I recently got back from a three week trip to my home country, Romania. After a year of hard work I needed a vacation, and what better way to relax than seeing old friends and relatives, traveling and most importantly, doing extensive field recording.
I started planning weeks ahead, thinking of ways to fly with all my recording equipment without getting it broken or lost, and making lists of interesting sounds I needed to record. I put together a small cardboard case for my Sound Devices 633 so that I could take it along in my backpack, and I built a more robust cardboard box for the two Rycote XBG blimps which ended up in the checked luggage. The recorder bag and various cables, tripods and other bits fit quite well in my luggage along with the bare minimum of clothes. I also had to purchase a 50cm Ambient boom pole as my 80cm Rode one didn't fit into my luggage.
Read MoreFree recording of a wire fence vibrating in the wind
Every once in a while I take my JrF contact mics and go out looking for a good sounding wire fence. I learned this technique while on the Wildeye courses with Jez and Chris Watson a couple of years ago, and I've kept my eye out for this type of fences ever since. Hopefully someday I'll have enough material to put together a library, but until then I find great pleasure in sticking the contact mics to a random fence and listening back while looking like a complete weirdo to passers-by.
Here's a short downloadable and royalty free snippet from a recording of a fence I found today:
Recording of woodland and water on a still day
We've had an unusually still couple of days this weekend. Yesterday it was quite moist so I just went out for a walk, but today the forecast was clear and frosty so I woke up at 5am and went out recording.
I parked my car on the side of a single lane country road close to Threipmuir Reservoir and proceeded to laying 100 metres of cable as usual. After half an hour of shuffling in the dark the cable was set, the mics were connected and I could go back to the car and listen back to the environment while sipping on hot tea.
At first everything seemed still and I the only thing I could hear was the preamps noise. Just a few minutes (and gain adjustments) afterwards I started to hear patterns and to make out distinct bird calls, albeit quite softly under a blanket of noise. It was like a suspended "room tone" moment with just a few noisy creatures refusing to comply.
Unfortunately the moment didn't last for long as planes soon started to depart from Edinburgh Airport close by. Here's a short snippet that I recorded while it was still nice and quiet:
Recording wind part 1 - in the woods
It's winter, so there isn't much to record in Scotland apart from wind and rain. We've had plenty of stormy weather since mid-November and I recorded it from several completely different perspectives. In Part 1 of this series I'm going to talk about recording wind in woodlands and forests.
There are several advantages to recording this kind of weather in the woods. First of all, the gusts aren't nearly as potent as they would be in open areas, therefore basic wind protection will do a decent job. Secondly, the sound of wind blowing through trees and vegetation are loud enough to drown out distant traffic or other man-made noise. On top of that you can generally get pretty close to interesting sound sources.
As with everything, there are disadvantages to recording wind in the forest as well. Some persistent wind gusts can sneak up on the forest floor, so setting the correct levels becomes a bit more difficult. Trees can break down or be uprooted by heavy winds, so I have to be very careful where I choose to stand and record. I often have to walk for miles through 60mph winds before I can find interesting sounds that I can record. Sometimes in order to get close to an interesting sound source I have to jump over ditches and navigate through twigs, branches and muddy terrain.
At any rate, today the weather was particularly windy but not that wet so I took a few hours off and went out recording. I only took my small kit (PCM D100, small mic stands, GoPro and binoculars, all in my backpack) since navigating in the woods with my recording bag and the MKH 8040s on a mic stand would have rendered me less mobile.
I was looking for trees that creaked or groaned menacingly which would provide an interesting twist to the wind-through-trees noise. As expected the wind was pretty strong but I had to walk for a few miles before I found a good spot to record in. There were plenty of creaking trees about, but some of them were in exposed places which would have definitely ruined my recordings. Others were almost horizontal or looked like they were close to collapsing so I stood well clear of them. I finally found a couple of good sounding places and recorded excellent tree creaks accompanied by pretty strong wind gusts. Here's a short excerpt that you can download and use in your projects for free:
Recording ravens
I've had a small fixation with recording ravens for years. They aren't the rarest of species but they're quite difficult to spot in Eastern Scotland where I live. They also fly quite high so unless they're directly above their calls sound muffled and are buried in noise. I've encountered ravens on several occasions, but it was never possible to get a relatively clean recording. I either didn't have my recorder ready, there were people around making a huge racket or it was raining.
Today I was out in the Pentlands enjoying a relatively still day when I spotted two ravens coming towards me, doing all kinds of crazy aerobatics and calling each other. Wind speed was about 5 mph, there was a rare lull in the usual plane noise and no joggers or dog walkers were around. On top of that I already had my recorder at the ready having tried to record swans flying overhead. Without thinking I pressed record and froze in place while they passed by me completely oblivious to the human pointing a fluffy device at them.
At any rate, this isn't the cleanest or most useful of recordings so I'll have to go back and refine my process. Until then here's the actual recording for your listening pleasure:
Click image to buy the Woodland Atmosphere library. Scroll down for free sound.
Woodland Atmosphere retrospective Part 1
My first commercial sound effects library Woodland Atmosphere has been out for almost a month, and so far the feedback is quite encouraging. Shortly after release I wrote a Q&A for A Sound Effect, but I feel there's a lot more I can share about recording and mastering the library.
First of all it was never my intention to put together and release Woodland Atmosphere. I had several excellent nature libraries (the Quiet Planet series comes to mind), and this took care of my requirements for nature ambiences for a while. The situation changed as soon as I had to recreate a typical UK woodland ambience however. Everything sounded exotic and out of place, so the only way to fix this was to go out and record my own ambiences.
It's much easier to spot birds in early spring as they can't hide in the brush as easily
Fortunately I live in Edinburgh, so I have to drive for less than an hour before I can reach quiet areas of dense woodland that are teeming with wildlife. On top of that I'm familiar with the surroundings as we're out hiking quite often so I didn't have to waste time scouting locations.
The first time I went out to record the dawn chorus was in February this year, when the birds had barely started to sing. I was not going into this blind, as I had attended this Wildeye course in which Chris Watson and Jez Riley French covered the basics excellently, and other recordists and ornithologists shared invaluable insight and experiences with me. I had also read several books and countless blog posts on nature recording so I thought I'd be somewhat prepared for what lay ahead.
Dirt roads = less traffic
I was soon going to find out that no amount of discussion can replace first-hand experience. My first mistake was going out at 3 am, as I had noticed the birds in the trees beside my bedroom started to sing as early as 4 am. My plan was to go out even earlier so that I could record the full dawn chorus. Imagine my surprise when I got there on time and I could only hear the wind and a very distant owl hooting. I had to wait until about half past 5 before the first birds started to make themselves heard.
All this seemed peculiar enough, but I was enjoying the experience of being there too much to give it more thought. Only when I got home I remembered a discussion I had with other recordists from whom I learned about the influence of artificial lighting over birdsong. Birds in well lit areas such as cities will start singing much earlier than their rural cousins who see longer and darker nights. At any rate, from then on I would check the exact time of sunrise and time my recording trips so that I'd be on site half an hour earlier.
Laying cables
Once I got to the site, a nice and dense woodland area far away from traffic and settlements, I would park the car and start laying cables. This was an excellent opportunity for me to make mistake #2, i.e. not checking if the XLR connector I had in hand was male or female. This is usually not a problem with short cables, but I was laying down 50 metres of cable in dense and muddy brush. The flies, spiders and other insects made things worse, not to mention I was scaring away the birds. Fortunately it only happened a couple of times before I learned my lesson.
When the microphones were in place and connected to the recorder in the car I went out and placed my Sony PCM D100 about 500m further, with the input levels set at about 50%. This got me a different perspective on what I was recording, and occasionally a close-up of a few crows or Robins. I once made the mistake of setting the levels too hot (about 70%), and a pesky wren came too close and ruined an otherwise perfect recording. Setting them too low didn't work either, but once I'd done it a few times I learned to roughly predict how loud the dawn chorus would get based on location, weather conditions, time of the year or simply by listening.
Spot the recorder
Speaking of weather, the BBC Weather app was an excellent companion before and on recording trips. On top of providing accurate weather info (at least for the following day), it also displays daily sunrise/sunset time and wind speed and direction. If I didn't want to specifically record wind I wouldn't even bother going out if the wind was over 5 mph. Even if the Rycote fluffies that I use can easily block 10 to 15 mph wind, the sound of it blowing through leaves and the wood creaks would make the recordings unusable.
Another element that made more than 80% of my recordings unusable was also far less easy to control, predict or avoid. I'm talking of course about the ubiquitous sheep, but I'll leave this along with equipment and mastering details for Part 2. Until then enjoy this bit I dug up from the archives, recorded in March with the DPA 4060s into the Sound Devices 633. Follow the Soundcloud link if you want to download and use it royalty-free:
Field recording on rainy days
I've been slacking off for a few weeks, only working on urgent projects and enjoying the short Scottish summer. Today I didn't have any tasks for the morning so I decided I'd go out and record material for my next library. According to my weather app sunny spells were going to alternate with showers, so I went out hoping for good weather.
As soon as I drove off the wind picked up and it started to rain. When I reached Harperrig reservoir I realized the wind and the rain would make it impossible to record anything, so I just sat in my car sipping on coffee and listening to the weather. Although only a 30 mph breeze, the wind was powerful enough to rock the car at times and the occasional rain sounded like a huge centipede crawling on the roof of the car. (I have to remember to go back come winter when the gale force winds of 70 mph or more are in season.)
I have countless rain and wind sounds in my library, but most are recorded outside. Last winter I tried recording a storm from indoors and got great results so I decided to not waste the opportunity and record this as well. After trying different ways of placing my PCM D100 I ended up leaving it on the passenger's seat facing the window. This got me a great deal of wind gusts and rain drops hitting the window, which I'm sure will be handy in recreating a storm as perceived from indoors.
I recorded three 10 minute takes of wind rumble and rain drops. I also tried leaving the car windows slightly open but the rain drops falling on the interior plastic didn't sound that interesting so I gave it up.
Back home I was surprised to see the recordings were clean and didn't sound that boxy. I put together a 5 minute demo that I'm giving away for free via my soundcloud account. The first half is just wind blowing while the second half also contains water drops hitting the car at various speeds and intensities. The file can be listened to and downloaded from Soundcloud: