The sounds of summer at Bawdsey in the school holidays – a motorboat starts up and moves off, and then the passenger ferry arrives from Felixstowe Ferry
Bawdsey Beach
Bawdsey Quay
Tag: binaural
Brightlingsea
A couple of jetskis in the distance and lots of people enjoying the summer sun
Sounds of our Shores – summer 2015
Great project from the British Library to make a coastal soundmap. I took the opportunity to get under Clacton pier to record this
Resonant sounds of London’s Museumland
I went to university at Imperial College, in the chi-chi London district of South Kensington. The area has much to offer the field recordist in terms of resonant public spaces. If you want to avoid the rain or simply enjoy the soundscape you can take the long pedestrian tunnel under Exhibition Road from the tube station to the museums.
I recently returned to Imperial and went to the Alumni reception who served excellent coffee, gratis. It’s a world away from the machine coffee and plastic cups and ‘coffee whitener’ that fuelled my studies in the Physics department many years ago. The entrance to the College from Exhibition Road is now an enclosed space with lots of glass and hard surfaces, it has an interesting acoustic of its own – I recorded this space from next to the statue of Queen Mary
Footfall Foley wizards will hear the tapping aren’t high heels which most people would associate with the percussive sound but Blakeys on a man’s shoes.
South Kensington has three lovely Victorian museums. Massive galleried spaces over several floors and often a curved vaulting ceiling. These are just made for binaural stereo!
I went to the Science Museum in Exhibition Road, part of a cluster of Victorian Museum buildings. The others are the Victoria and Albert and the Natural History Museum. The latter has an amazing curved atrium and a fine acoustic space.
In the Science Museum on the ground floor near the space exhibition
the next recording is from the Energy exhibition on the second floor, looking over the massive open space to the steam engines on the ground floor
the sharp snap at 00:32 is an art exhibit marked do not touch, which of course everyone touches, resulting in a spark and a slight shock to the curious.
I enjoyed the visit and the incidental soundscapes. It is also good that Britain ended its dalliance with charging for museum entry.
Echoes of South Kensington Station
South Kensington Tube station is the gateway to some of London’s famous museums – the Natural History museum, the Victoria and Albert and the Science Museum. To save people getting wet or wrangling the traffic along Exhibition Road, there is a long pedestrian walkway from the station to the museums.
It has a fabulous acoustic, one that’s enjoyed by small children, buskers and field recordists alike! I went to university at Imperial College and used this tunnel often. Even now, the soundmark takes me back to student times…
Here’s the sound of a busker using the acoustic well, and some kids enjoying the tunnel later on
Robins at Alderman Canal
There is a little nature reserve by the canal near the football ground, an oasis of calm. The water is sluggish with green on top apart from where the water seems to well up from the river bed in these gently roiling clear pools. I don’t think the water makes any sound here, there is some background traffic noise which would mask it.
The nature reserve was improved by the Access to Nature project in 2012. It’s easy to be cynical about some of these projects but this one seems to have worked really well, and there was a lot more birdsong in this part of path by the canal than in the unimproved bits.
Walking through evening nightclub crowd at Ipswich Buttermarket
Wandering through this crowd waiting outside a nightclub to get in. I was on the way to the beer festival, nice expectant ambience
Flock of young Jackdaws begging food, Whitchurch, Hampshire
Flock of Jackdaws with young in trees by playing fields and trees by the River Test in Whitchurch. The calls of the young from all around come out in this binaural recording.
Goods Train from Felixstowe, Ipswich St Mary’s
I have some time to do more recording now. Okay, so it’s not hyper-original recording trains but I liked the screech of the wheel flanges as it rounds a fairly gentle bend. I was at the same level as the track across a dip due to the lie of the land
Also a chance to see how this Audioboo thing works… which seems to be pretty well 2018 update – they decided to start charging $9.99 a month. You must be kidding, guys, I may as well pay WordPress £33 a year to be able to get audio facility. There’s no low-end offering.
Fairground roundabout and another sound recordist at Ipswich Maritime Festival
I was making a binaural recording of this fairground roundabout when another sound recordist arrived to get a clip from the ride itself – he asked the proprietor if it was okay at the beginning of the clip.
The actual fairground organ is a recording played out of speakers either side of the organ facade. The giveaway, apart from no moving parts, was when the operator fiddled with the volume control 😉
