Lately I’ve been working on a series of underwater and hydrophone based recordings for a sound library.  One of my first stops was my brother-in-law’s pool for some scuba sounds.

He’s a trained diver and he was nice enough to let me come out for the day and put him through his paces.  Unfortunately, we couldn’t get started until late in the day because of this sound:

I consider it a happy accident.  Initially I was really frustrated because I couldn’t figure out where this low frequency sound was coming from and I needed to record scuba sounds!  I kept looking around and there definitely wasn’t a nuclear sub in the pool!  My brother-in-law and I quickly discovered that a neighbor down the block was having his driveway ripped up and repaved.  All of that low frequency information was traveling from down the street and under the pool.  So what do you do when you have a loud hum?  We went out for lunch and then I took my nephew and niece out for ice-cream.  By the time we returned to the pool we were free and clear of construction hums and we could make all of the bubbling sounds we wanted.

Recording Geek Note: Rig consists of 2 Aquarian H2a Hydrophones. It was all tracked to a Sound Devices 744T at 24/96

A few weekends back I got out of New York City with the Missus and headed upstate.  It was a beautiful weekend, but it did rain for a while, which gave me an excuse to do some recordings.  Some family friends have a beatiful old barn on the edge of their property that I have been dying to record in for some time.

The barn has old wooden beams, a metal roof, and a small bat population.  When it started raining, I ran over to start recording, thinking that the metal roof coupled with the acoustics of the interior would lead to some interesting results.

Unfortunately, the rain was a little too light and constant for the impacts on the metal roof to be that interesting, so I was not hopeful when I set up the recorder.  I didn’t think I would get anything worthwhile unless the pattern of the rain shifted.  However, when I got home and started sifting through the recording, I discovered the rain was not the coolest part.  It was the roof itself!  If you listen closely, the roof shifts in the wind and generates wobbly low frequency sounds. Can you say “Roof Drone?”  I had thought I would go home and trash the recording, but am glad I spent the time sifting through all of the content.

Now, I have to go back on a windy day to get just the sounds of the roof moving against the rest of the barn.  In addition, there are occasional bat vocalizations, a few birds, and a couple of planes that are all filtered through the roof and the barn.  It might not be the best result, but it turned out to be a worthy and interesting experiment.

Recording Geek Note: Rig consists of Schoeps CMC5’s setup for MS, with the MK4 as the mid. It was all tracked to a Sound Devices 744T at 24/96

I’ve been buried under a few work projects lately, so my recording trips have suffered.  This week I wanted to revisit an old favorite of mine: ostriches!  Back in 2008 I was living in Minneapolis and I got a call for Ostriches.  Luckily for me there was an ostrich farm not too far into Wisconsin.  Before I left, I really didn’t know what I was getting myself into, so I dragged Rob Byers along for company.  He’s one of my recording buddies.

After we met the woman who ran the farm, I noticed a giant scar on her leg in the shape of an ostrich claw. They kick.  They kicked really hard.  We also quickly learned that the adults only make noise when they are mating (a low hooting noise), and unfortunately we were not that lucky.  We also learned which ones would not be living past the next week (the yearlings):

They barely made a sound, but they did like biting my zeppelin.  I didn’t mind because, I knew they would soon be snack food (“bite away poor fellows”). At that moment I was starting to feel a bit down on my luck since we hadn’t really heard much except the story of how the farm owner got kicked by a yearling.  That was until we discovered the babies!  Not only were they cute, but they made this unearthly chirping sound that I’ll never forget.

When I was working on Radiolab a colleague of mine, actually used them as the basis for the sounds of parasites hanging out inside a large intestine.  I’m good for baby ostriches and parasites.  One of my favorite things about that day was the massive amount of ostrich jerky we left with.  The woman who ran the farm refused to let us leave without 5 pounds of ostrich jerky.

Recording Geek Note: Rig consists of Schoeps CMC5’s setup for MS, with the MK4 as the mid. It was all tracked to a Sound Devices 744T at 24/96

Last week I posted a short recording of spring peepers from my anniversary getaway with the Missus in upstate New York.  The frogs were chirping away, but they were not the only creatures making a racket.   Since it was Memorial Day weekend, it was inevitable that our peace and quiet would be encroached upon once Friday came along.  As our week passed, we were met with sounds of lots of noisy campers and the occasional lawnmower.  However, one of the more beautiful sounds was the bird life every morning when everyone else was still sleeping. There is a tree right outside our window which birds love to congregate in, which leads to a chorus of activity:

I set the recorder up right by the window facing the tree, and I had it kick in at 4:30 AM and go out of record at 8:00 AM.  Not only did the recording turn out wonderfully, but I managed to sleep soundly all morning because I didn’t have to wake up and punch record! I love the timer on the Sound Devices recorders.  There is one edit point in the recording which I tagged.  The file above starts at 4:30 AM and then I cut in around 7:00 AM, so you could hear how the sound changed as the morning wore on.  There are also a couple of nice wing flaps in there.

I’d be grateful for any species identifications.

Recording Geek Note: Rig consists of Schoeps CMC5’s setup for MS, with the MK4 as the mid. It was all tracked to a Sound Devices 744T at 24/96.

The Missus and I decided to take a really long weekend in upstate New York to celebrate our wedding anniversary.  We arrived early evening and, by the time the sun went down, we were treated to the sound of the local chapter of spring peepers.  If you are not familiar with the friendly peeper, it is a small chorus frog that you can find along most of the eastern United States and Canada.  We were sitting in the backyard and these little buggers were chirping away in the tall grass close to the Delaware River.

I set my rig up about 200 feet from the river because I didn’t want to get too much of the river rolling by and wanted to focus more on the peepers.  In retrospect, I might have set the rig up a bit closer to the water and maybe the little buggers would have sounded denser, as this has a “medium, distant” sound.  I might give this another go tomorrow night, if the campsites across the river don’t fill up with noisy campers.  In the meantime, enjoy the chirping.

Recording Geek Note: Rig consists of Schoeps CMC5’s setup for MS, with the MK4 as the mid. It was all tracked to a Sound Devices 744T at 24/96.