Tag: field recording

Chalice Well, Glastonbury

This is the sound of the flow inside the well-house at Chalice Well. Two springs rise in this area – the Chalice Well and gardens are home to the chalybeate Red Spring, rising from a deep underground source with little variation in flow or temperature over the years and seasons. Only a few tens of yards away is the White Spring, which rises from theg round closer to the surface. There is a definite tone to the flow – the well-head has a pentagonal chamber underneath it and the resonance of this makes a peaceful steady sound.

From a field recordist’s point of view life is made more difficult by the A361 carrying HGVs down Chilkwell Street, but the wellhead is far enough away and loud enough that this doesn’t impair the recording.

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 😉

fellow sound recordist on fairground ride

OK kids, knock it off before you end up in Casualty

An exasperated mother has to take a big kid and a little kid to task after Dad pushes his child’s scooter too fast. Overheard on the way to the Ipswich Beer festival by the docks.

New Year 2012 Felixstowe Ship Horns

Even in Ipswich you get to hear the boat horns sounding on New Year’s day, so this time I went to Shotley Peninsula, between the large container port at Felixstowe and another port at Harwich to record the ship horns sounding the New Year in.

A nice touch was the Shotley residents have a sense of timing. Unlike in Ipswich, where people start releasing fireworks all the time as soon as it gets dark, in Shotley (and Felixstowe and Harwich by the looks of it) they wait for the New Year. In the foreground are the sounds of some Shotley residents celebrating at the pub, but it is the ship foghorns that make this for me.

Note the fireworks are quite loud after the horns 🙂

St Paul’s Cathedral Bells and massive reverb from glass-fronted financial district buildings

St Paul’s Cathedral is only a stone’s throw from the tall glass-faced buildings of London’s financial district. I was sitting in the gardens ot the cathedral, and the bells sounded really odd, as if there was an organist following on after then about 2 seconds late. This must be the echo coming from the glass-fronted buildings about 0,5km away, it does nothing for the tone

Spinney Birdlife

There’s a spinney nearby, so over the holidays I got myself into the tree and rigged a pair of omnis, and stood really still. The first thing I heard was the mournful repeated tone of the collared dove, a steady counterpoint to the recording, with its mournful ho-HOO-hoo, with the stress on the first syllable. Later on the woodpigeon appears, with its ho-hoo-HOO-HOO-ho-hoo, and there are various other birds flitting around in the undergrowth.

It was a very windy day, so there is a lot of wind noise in the trees, which adds atmosphere for me, reminding me of a special moment with the birds

Nightingale on the heath

My bike ride to work takes me past open fields and for a short stretch over some sandy heathland. I was surprised to hear a nightingale in the distance – I had to stop and listen to the lovely sound

this was recorded using an omni MP3 recorder so it’s not a fantastic species recording, but it captures the moment for me 🙂 The singing males have come all the way from Africa, and they have scouted their territories. They are hoping to call the females down from the sky as they arrive a couple of weeks later. It feels surprisingly early to hear nightingale song at the moment.

Campsea Ash Auction Rooms

Auction in progress, classic auction patter

The livestock and game auctions at Campsea Ashe bring out a whole much of characters, full of good old Suffolk boys with strong accents. And a few loud cocks too

Loud cocks