I finally found some very old source material I have been looking for for ages. I knew I had it somewhere and I wanted to add it to the library. Years ago I was working on a pitch for a game project that subsequently went nowhere, but I did enjoy making some of the sounds for it. One of the primary sounds was a giant explosive scream that the main character had as an ability. It was supposed to be pretty much the biggest thing int he game and as such needed a big sound. I spent some time at home screaming into a mic to get some good raw material to work from. It was that the screams are particularly brilliant, although I do think they worked fairly well, it is more that it took over a week for my throat to heal as I seriously damaged it from screaming so loud. For this reason alone I wanted to make sure the sounds found their way into the library because I am certainly not going to try and record them again.
Looking back at the old project files I can see how I put it together and even now its not too bad an end result. I think I was having so much fun working on it that I really put a lot of effort into the final sound. This would have been 8 years ago at least and back then I didn't spend the same amount of time on recording raw material, so I am really glad I found the old source material for this. I won't add the final sound to the library, but I will put it hear as a taste of some of the crazy things I used to get up to working on pitch ideas.
I now have the database tool in my hot little hands and after some tweaking will be ready to start inputting all the data for the current library sounds. That's nearly 13,000 sounds to be added to the database. As soon as that is done the full Sound Library website will be ready to go live. On target for a February launch. I am very happy to be so close to finally going live with the full site.
As part of preparing the library for launch I have been going through and checking all the sounds, making sure they are levelled well and generally have no problems. Initially I did not included many stereo sounds in the library, but I have been going through all the raw material and where available replacing the sounds I down mixed to mono with stereo versions.
Initially I think I was trying to reduce file sizes as most of the ambiance sounds were already quite long, but the ambiances also benefit more from being stereo than most other sounds. I really need to get a stereo shotgun mic so I can record the majority of my material in stereo initially as currently most of my samples are recorded in mono. I would not always choose to include stereo versions of all sounds, but I do think I should increase my options when recording raw material. Over the years I have evolved the way in which I record my raw material with a wider range of microphones available and better equipment to capture sounds, but there will always be room for improvement, so this year I plan to add both stereo and surround sound versions of a range of material.
Well this turned out to be a disappointing experiment. I have been thinking about doing a lot more recording with the hydrophone as I have captured some great material and want to continue to see what interesting results I can come up with recording under water. I decided to see if I could capture the sounds of ice cracking as it froze and melted so I placed the hydrophone into a plastic container, filled it with water and put it in the fridge. I attached the H4N to the mains power supply so it could run without fear of battery failure and left it on all night. 5 hours worth of recording later I an have nothing at all except the background hum of the refrigerator. Ok, so maybe ice doesn’t make much noise while its freezing, but I thought at least it would crackle and snap as it thawed out. So the following night I took the whole lot out of the freezer and left it to melt, again with the recorder running. Sadly I recorded another 5 hours of absolutely nothing. I was disappointed, but more than that I was very surprised, I really thought there would be some sound generated as the ice melted. I am going to do some more tests on this, but so far it has been a bit of a failure.
On a more positive note I did record a train today. There is a major freight terminal not far from where we live and some pretty big freight trains head out across the creak at the edge of the terminal. This means they spend several minutes clunking across the old metal bridge which makes a great sound. Anna and I were going for a walk as one went past so I got out the Zoom H4N which I was carrying and got some material. The sound these things make is pretty impressive and I want to find out if there is a regular schedule for them so I can bring down all my gear and do a proper recording session. Placing some mics right on the edge of the bridge would get some awesome sounds as these trains can be really heavy. For today I got a good short sample that I will use as motivation to get more.
I am continuing the process of creating some more sounds through manipulating recorded material. I have been getting some excellent and surprising results from stretching the sound files. In some cases I am using extreme stretch functions to create new sounds and the results have been a lot of fun. Most of the resulting sounds have a ghostly quality to them, and many of them would be very useful for science fiction or fantasy type sound effects. The most surprising result was a series of sounds that sound very much like whale song, but with a metallic quality, so I named them all Cyber whale calls. I’m sure they will be very useful for all those people who need the sound for a cybernetic whale singing. I still want to add more melee weapon sounding effects and a new task for next week is to try and create sounds for magic and spell effects, I have never created anything of this nature so it will be a good challenge for the week.
Back to Melbourne and back to work for the new year. I have now set myself a firm deadline on the website. For various reasons I have very good motivation to get everything finalised and up and running. It has been a lot of work so far but January is going to be even worse as I try to get it all finished. I plan on having the entire website including the fully functioning sound library launched before the end of February 2010. There is still a lot of work to go and I have a variety of other things I need to get done this month as well, so January is going to be a busy month. I hope it all comes together so that I can finally launch Sound Library and make it available to everyone.
Location Noosa North Shore Equipment Zoom H4N DPA 4061
What a great way to spend the last day of the year. Anna and I went horse riding along the beach just north of Noosa on the North Shore. You have to get a ferry across the river with your car and this is where the beach highway starts and heads north. We only went just across the river to where the horse rides started and then we rode for two hours out to the beach and along. I attached the two DPA 4061 mics to my belt to see if I could capture any of the sounds of being on the horse. I knew I wasn’t likely to record much, but I thought maybe I could record some of the clinking and creaking of the saddle and other bits. Sadly this was another failed session as all I really recorded was my pouch bouncing off the mics, possibly useful for something, but not really very horsie.
Clint Eastwood I aint!
The ride itself was one of the best things we have done, it was so nice to ride along the beach in the surf and the sun. I hope that this is a sign of things to come for 2010, because if it is then next year is going to be a fantastic year. I think this is a good place to say Happy New Year to everyone, I hope 2010 is a year of great opportunity for everyone and that we can all live happily and safely through another year.
Today is our last full day with the hire car so we decided to go for a drive north. We drove through Gympie and up to an area called Rainbow Beach. This is part of the area near Fraser Island and the beaches are so huge that they also function as a highway to travel north. Only 4 wheel drive vehicles can use the beach road, but it is such a popular area that many people make use of it. The beaches themselves are really beautiful at this time of the year. We decided to go for a walk along the beach because the weather was quite cloudy. I took the hydrophone along because I have never thrown it into surf before and I was curious what sounds I would get. After walking for a while I started to drop the mic into the waters as we walked. I captured some pretty good wave sounds but I also captured a lot of noise as the undertow of the receding waves would pull the mic along on the sandy bottom, so I recorded lots of scratchy sand sound. The sand noise wasn’t really usable, but I did get lots of great wave sounds. While we were walking the sun came out and the sky cleared so we got our towels and went for a swim, the water is fantastic and warm in this area and it was nice to cool off.
One of the recurring issues with recording underwater is the large extreme range of sound levels that occur. For instance a small wave will create a whoosh and some bubble sounds and be fairly quiet, however a large wave crashing is extremely loud with the hydrophone. This means I either need to constantly alter my input levels or decide I am going to try and capture either one or the other. I plan on getting an inline pad unit for my gear. This is essentially a small plug that is placed between the microphone and the recording device that reduces the input level by a certain level (in this case 20dB) with two inputs I can put the pad on one of the line in inputs and use that channel to capture the loud waves while still capturing the quieter waves with the other channel. I will need to investigate this further in the new year.
Location Noosa Queensland Equipment Zoom H4N NTG3 & DPA 4061 Single hand setup
Anna and her mother have gone down to Brisbane for the day so I am going to use the time to collect a few sounds that I have been thinking about since we arrived in Noosa. Like many houses in hot climates the house here has ceiling fans in most rooms. On the high setting the fans rotate pretty quickly and one in particular sounds a little like a helicopter in stealth mode. I made sure I captured some material from different angles as the sound generated from below is quite different from when the mic is positioned above the blades. Even at right angles and close to the blades you get a different sound. This material would be perfect to use for a slow motion clip of a helicopter flying or something similar.
Ceiling fan of doom
Next it was Dotti’s turn. She doesn’t bark very often but I have captured a few barks since we came up here. I wanted to record her panting as she is a fairly large dog and with the temperature being typical summer weather she spends a lot of time panting, so I got her to sit still while I stuck a mic in front of her nose. I don’t think animals like having a big fluffy mic in their face, but she was well behaved and I got some good material. As usual capturing animal sounds is a real challenge so I will always spend the time to grab anything that might be a chance for a good recording.
One day till Christmas and we are up in Noosa for a couple of weeks. The year is nearly done and its great to get out of Melbourne for a while. We are staying with Anna’s mum in her lovely house, and its great to see Oscar the cat again. This time there is a new member of the family as Anna’s mum is helping to train a guide dog puppy so we have Dotti the Golden Retriever as well. I am going to make sure I record some sounds from Dotti as she is lively happy dog and I am sure I can get her to bark for me. While on the subject of animals I have also recorded one of my other favourite sounds from Noosa. In this area it is common to find Geckos living around people houses. Geckos are small lizards with sticky pads on their feet that allow them to walk up walls and upside down on ceilings. They are really cute and are super helpful because they eat insects. They also make a really cute chirping sound when they talk to each other. I really like the sound they make and its one of the things that reminds me how much I like living in an area with natural animal sounds like birds and insects. Sadly where we live in Melbourne all we get is traffic noise. Hopefully sometime soon we will be able to move back to somewhere with less traffic and more nature.
Location Cape Shanck Equipment Zoom H4N Rode NTG3 Boom Pole Array and Zoom H4 Sennheiser MKH60 DPA 4061 Mounted
Well it took a couple of weeks to organise, but as promised today I went to play with some tanks. I was worried the weather was going to betray me again, but it turned out to be a fantastic day. (so nice I got sunburned again even though I used sunscreen). We drove down to the Mornington Peninsular where there is a ranch where you can go for rides in the tanks. Today was a member’s only event for the Victorian Military Vehicle Corps, but I had gotten prior permission so we were allowed to come along. The first thing I noticed was that there were a lot of vehicles around and that there was no way I was going to be able to do a full recording of all of them. I had come for tanks so I thought I would concentrate on them, and anything else was just icing on the cake. The main tank on the property was a British Centurion tank. This was one of the most widely used tanks since World War 2. Originally of British design, Australia used them in the Vietnam war. They were active around the world from 1945 right up to the 1990’s.
I have no experience with recording tanks, so it was a day of trial and error. I mounted some mics onto the back of the turret on the Centurion. There is a cage at the back that I think is used to carry jerry cans of water or fuel. The good thing about the cage is that if any of the mics came loose they would fall into the cage and not get lost. Also the cage was positioned pretty much right over the main engine so it was a good location. I used the Zoom H4 as I wanted to keep the H4N on me. I mounted one of the DPA 4061 mics and then strapped the MKH60 in its blimp cover to one of the cross bars with a roll of Velcro tape I had recently bought. I think this Velcro is going to be really useful in the future. I had had really good timing this week as my new Rode blimp had arrived just on Friday so I could use both the MKH60 and the Rode NTG3 in blimps which was excellent. I think I will need to make future trips just to get a full recording of this one tank alone. I did capture some excellent material, but I would like to grab some more sounds of the caterpillar tracks isolated from other sounds..
Various military vehicles
The Centurion was not going to be used till much later in the day. One issue with a casual event such as this is it is difficult for me to plan what to do and when. I might have been able to use the mics on other vehicles, but I was determined to get a good recording of the centurion so I left those mics where they were and used the NTG3 and H4N for everything else. I did spend quit a lot of time chasing after vehicles, standing behind them when they were idling or positioning myself on corners to catch them as they zoomed past. One of the club members has an air force Humvee which I think I am going to do a feature on as it’s an excellent example of a modern military vehicle. (And sounds great) There were also lots of jeeps and a couple of land rovers which I decided to leave for future dates. I did capture quite a bit of material from an FV603 Saracen APC. This is a British made vehicle used from the early 1950’s to the late 60’s. The Saracen had an entirely metal suspension system which on a vehicle this old meant it squeaked and creaked a lot. This might not be good for creeping up on the enemy, but it certainly made it sound more interesting. This one had a little trouble starting up and they needed to use another armoured car to jump start it. I even captured some material inside the Saracen by setting my R09 recording it and asking a young guy to hold it for me while he went for a ride, he was happy to help and I got some good material.
Two gentlemen had a converted Bren Gun Carrier that their grandfather had built years ago. It had had a lot of the armour removed from it so it could be used for farming, but it still operated well and sounded really good. They kindly took me for a ride in it. The small size of the carrier allowed me to lean over the front and capture some sound from a different angle, as well as the usual close micing of the engine. The tracks on the Bren Carrier were quieter than I expected, that might have been due to the vehicle being a lot lighter than a full sized tank. The engine overheated a little towards the end, but it was a tough little tank and had a very distinctive sound that I liked. Between riding in it and following it around for a while I think I probably captured as much of that vehicle as I would ever need, so it was good to get such a good range of sounds without needing to attach extra mics to it.
Universal (Bren Gun) Carrier
I managed to grab some snippets of other vehicles during the day. A tank transport truck, a Ferret armoured car, the siren of a US Army Jeep. These were simple captures made by positioning myself in a good position and recording with the NTG3 on the boom pole. The pole itself is handy for quickly changing positions and allowing me to angle the mic under a vehicle, or close to its exhaust or from above. Once I have captured some material from one angle I will usually walk around the vehicle to test how the sound changes. Some vehicles produce a very different sound from different angles. The exhaust usually has much more low frequency material where as the front end will include the sounds of cooling fans and drive belts that can’t be heard elsewhere. I can’t always capture every angle, but when I have time I captures as much as I can. The boom also allows me to position the mic closer to where a vehicle will be when it comes around a corner. As much as I don’t want my equipment getting run over, it is a much better option to have a tank run over one of my mics than to run over me, so it can be a good safety function as well.
M4 Sherman & tank transport
When it came to the Centurion tank I made sure I was on top of it when it started up. It has two engines, a secondary engine that is used to power a lot of the electrical equipment on board also helps start up the primary engine. I captured a good clean sequence of the secondary engine starting up and running for a few minutes before the main engine started. I also captured the main engine from several positions before they started moving the tank. The attached mics captured a good constant amount of material as the tank was driven around. This combined with me following the tank with the boom pole gave me a good mix of close and distant mic samples. The only thing I really missed was some good track movement noise. I think next time I will mount some mics right at the front of the tank on the track guards just over the front curve in the tracks. This should be far enough away from the engine at the rear to capture some good clunks and squeaks from the tracks without too much engine noise. This was a good lesson to learn, but even if I had known this beforehand I didn’t have a third recorder with me on the day anyway so I wouldn’t have been able to do it all in one recording. I am happy with what I did capture, but a tank is a complex enough vehicle that I think it requires more mics that a standard car or truck. These are all good lessons to learn for next time.
Centurion Battle Tank
The final vehicle for the day was the Sherman tank. I only captured this one with the boom pole setup as I didn’t have time to transfer the mics from the Centurion onto the Sherman, but I still got some excellent material. The Sherman has a new engine in it as it was restored to use in a movie. The engine is a massive and noisy thing that produced the most amazing sound. This combined with the tank’s driver who was very good and could control the vehicle as well as any racing driver provided an incredible series of sound samples. Tanks are also very interesting to record from a distance, and the property allowed the tanks to be 300-400 meters away behind a small hill. The main thing I noticed is that when a tank is moving away from you, you can hear the low frequency rumble of its exhaust, but when a tank is travelling towards you, you hear far more of its track squeak than its engine. I suspect this information is something that a lot of soldiers around the world are very aware of and use as a survival skill. It is important to point out that sound over distance change a lot more than just getting quieter. While you can simulate a distant sound by playing it at a lower volume most sounds change dramatically as certain frequencies are easier to hear over distance. So when you are recording it is worth capturing distant samples as well if it is possible and practical.
I plan on meeting with the people from VMVC again and eventually archiving as many of their vehicles as possible. Not only are military vehicles something that are popular subjects fro films and games, but they often have very distinctive and interesting sounds, so I think the time will be well spent, not to mention its loads of fun.
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