sounds, sensors, stones
As the pied wagtails swoop over the concert hall that backs onto the reedbeds sighing in the wind, a middle-aged couple climb the steps, the guy sounding knowledgeable, to impress the lady maybe? Or perhaps a couple that have been together for years. The accents are just as you’d expect, middle-class, ever so slightly affected.
The hysterical horse is a bronze sculpture in the distance, looking out over the reeds
It’s not that easy to catch the beginning of swans taking off, but these took off while I was recording near a reservoir at Grundisburgh, with the ungainly splashing and creaking of wings.
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.
The mating call of the nightjar is a very strange churring sound, usually made around dusk, hence the ropey photo. The sound is eerie, as most other birds have stopped by the time this call is made. The claps are wingbeats.
Binaural crowd recording from this Norwich cathedral centenary when the Sheriff was hosting a wine event.
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
Poundland have taken over the old Woolworth’s store in Ipswich at the end of Spetember, and held a Family Fun Day today. I hven’t worked out what the family fun was meant to be apart from getting people to throng to buy poorly made tools, tat and thneeds but it certainly caused a massive queue so at least Mr Poundland was having a fun day.
A long queue snaked past the tills, the hubbub was really quite remarkable. I don’t recall seeing this many people in Woolies.
Poundland Fun day hubbub
Some more rich pickings from the 6th Oct, the Halloween displays are in full swing, and a minute of classy comments 🙂 A bunch of teenage girls are looking to spice up their costumes, one teenage boy charges his mate with looking like a woman in that, and a lady desperately trying to get someone of a mobile phone to erase her messages, all in the space of a minute.
Poundland comments
I’ve came across this post describing how to go about street recording. I had never really thought about the process before, so it was very hit and miss for me. Sometimes I would get good results, sometimes not so good. Des’s idea of creating a sound map of the area before recording is inspiring.
In some ways it is common sense – in tackling anything it is good to have an idea of what you are trying to do. Just as a photographer frames his picture, the orientation and location of a recording is part of framing the experience, it is not enough simply to point a mic in the general direction of the sound.
Sound does not have the frame of a photograph, and most field recording rigs take a wide-angle perspective if they were a camera. So getting in close matters. On a trip to Southwold Pier I figured I would try out the new technique.
Sound walk through the amusements arcade
This is a short walk past a lot of the noisy amusements. The attention-grabbing “Hey, let’s shoot hoops” from the first attraction is so American for what is a quintessentially English resort!
The second is a recording from one place, in the building with the Tim Hunkin artworks/attractions. I did try and get the sea churning to give it some perspective, and the start of the fly attraction “You are a Fly” gives it a discrete start.
Tim Hunkin attractions on Southwold Pier
This one doesn’t quite get the balance between sea and the attraction right, but I am getting a feel for what the sound map can do for me.
1 min short, including the classic ding ding – hold tight
The charismatic London bus is gone from the streets of the city. I recorded one in 2005, as they were being phased out. There are many sites dedicated to keeping the memory of these alive, but not so many dedicated to one of the aspects many Londoners will remember them by – their quite unusual sound.
Part of their sound was a result of the dynamic between the conductor, passengers, and the driver. Unlike modern buses the driver was in his own compartment and never had anything to do with the public. That was left to the conductor, who collected fares and managed the starting and stopping of the bus by signals on the bell, which was the only means of communication with the driver other than the buzzer which performed the same function from the top deck and the open platform.
The bell was mechanical – a cord ran the length of the ceiling of the bus halfway over the left-hand row of seats. This cord went through the front wall of the passenger compartment to a clapper. When the cord was tugged, the bell sounded and both the driver and the passengers could hear it.
In London Transport usage, the bell signals were as follows-
and every frequent user knew the familiar sound of the conductor calling out ‘hold tight’ followed by a ‘ding ding’ of the bell.
The Routemaster had a really unusual engine and transmission sound. I believe that in the early 1970s they had a manual transmission, but this was replaced over that decade by an odd kind of automatic transmission. The engine was in the front, unlike most modern buses, and there was a bell-housing which protruded into the passenger compartment slightly just behind the driver – the passengers in the aisle side of the first row of seats could rest their foot on this. This was the seat I took to record the friendly sound of this bus, with its distinct speed-dependent tone, odd idling characteristics and typical squeal of the brakes.
These buses were about 50 years old when they were retired later on in the year. It took several goes to get a photo of a bus that was in reasonable visual condition.
recorded 12 April 2005
Harmony is not the first thing that springs to mind when you think of chainsaws. I had the advantage of a large beech hedge to soften the sound a bit. Two guys must have been chainsawing away here, and the counterpoint one saw gives to another works quite well for me.
