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Location Melbourne Equipment Zoom H4N AKG D112 mini tripod Today we meet Oscar. Oscar is my new stunt bin. I always try to keep a stunt bin handy as its often very useful to have something metallic and disposable that I can throw, crush and generally abuse, Oscar fits the bill perfectly. I will often use the various impact sounds from bins to mix in with other sounds, in this particular instance I needed Oscar to sound like an actual bin for a film clip I was working on. I spent about half an hour throwing and kicking the bin around on the roof of our studio to get a variety of sounds from it. I actually found the after the bin has been beaten up a little it actually sounds better I think. The main issue with this type of recording is that you need to get the impacts to occur as close to the microphones as possible but obviously hitting them with a flying bin is a really bad idea, so it pays to aim carefully.  Oscar the stunt bin I also needed to record some witches hat sounds, quite conveniently the door to the roof area had a couple used to mark areas when repairmen were working so I borrowed one for a while and proceeded to record it as it bounced, fell and general got tossed around. Generally this was easier than the bin as the main sound was from kicking the cone in front of the mic so there was less chance of accidentally hitting the mic. Both of these were fairly minor sounds that will certainly not amaze anyone, but they were also both quit distinctive sounds that are easily recognisable. Sometimes the best way to get a sound is simply go through the time of getting the object and moving it around.  Bins and witches hats
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Location Miteamo, Victoria Equipment Zoom H4N D112 & Beta 58A and Zoom H4 MKH60 Boom pole and tripod I love trips to the country. It’s great to get out of Melbourne, and even better to be somewhere quiet with lots of green. About three hours north of Melbourne one of my work colleagues parents own 400 acres of farm. Anna and I got to spend a day on the farm recording all sorts of interesting things. It was the most fun I’ve had in weeks. This farm is what I see as a typical Australian working farm. Lots of sheds, lots of space and LOTS of stuff. I love rusty bits of machinery and junk, I think the rust looks interesting, and it often produces really good sounds. The main reason we went to the farm was to record the sounds of my friends off road buggy that they made, but I decided to start the day with some of the sounds around the farm. Chopping firewood, hammering railway tracks, and generally bashing and crashing metal, wood and a ton of other junk took me a couple of hours. Each time I set up the MKH60 on the tripod close to the source, as well as the D112 on a mini tripod, and the Beta 58A usually just lying somewhere close. (I need to get another mini tripod) This gave me great coverage as I also had the H4N’s inbuilt mics working. The mix of microphones achieves several things. Firstly it means I will usually get at least one good recording of any source as the mics are set to different input levels and all have different levels of sensitivity. The other aspect is that each mic has its own distinct sound characteristics. The D112 is great for low frequency sounds, while the built in mics capture nice crisp high frequency sounds. When I come to editing I will often blend the different mic recordings together to get a good final sound to add to the library. If a mic has too much noise or some other issue it can be dropped from the mix. I am still getting used to this process and on a couple of occasions I did place the d112 and the beta 58A too far away from the source. They both have fairly short range pick-up patterns so I need to place them carefully or I waste them.  Don't hit the microphones My H4N received a few more battle scares today as well. I placed it too close to the logs I was cutting and one of them fell onto it and cracked the screen protector. It still functions fully, but its starting to look a little fragile and I’ll need to be more careful with it in the future. If I lose the screen its going to be mostly useless for recording. One thing I still suffer from is that when I have a lot of things to record and I am going to be moving around a lot I sometimes get lazy with mic placement and this is bad. I find myself putting the mics just generally where they need to be instead of spending the time positioning each mic to get the best result. I often feel that if I am just recording metal going crash it doesn’t matter too much if the mics are exactly right. If I am recording animals or sounds that are less common to find I am usually really careful, so I need to extend that to all things I record. On the subject of animals, the chickens refused to do anything but quiet clucks, even when they were picked up. (damn domesticated animals :-) ). And the Cows were also stubbornly quiet. We did manage to get a nice snort or two out of a beautiful quarter horse, but I think I will need to plan another trip out here specifically with animals in mind.  Lots of noisy stuff in the shed After a fantastic lunch we headed out to do some buggy recording only to have the buggy break after 3 minutes. My initial disappointment disappeared the instant I heard they would need to disassemble the buggy and grind and weld the parts to fix it. So instead of getting some buggy sounds I got a huge number of mechanical repair sounds. Grinders, hacksaws, arc welders and saws kept me busy all afternoon and I captured some great material. I think I could keep myself busy recording sounds on a farm for a couple of weeks, there are so many potential sound sources as well as a few challenges in capturing clean recordings of them all.
We both had a good day and it confirmed that I think I would prefer to live out in the country somewhere. I like trees, and I really prefer a quiet environment. Location
Melbourne Equipment Zoom H4N Shure Beta 58A Another quick session today. I needed some soft drink can noises for a small project so I grabbed a can of drink and recorded opening the can, and then bending, crushing and dropping the can. I used both the on-board mics on the H4N as well as the Shure Beta 58A. When mixed together this often produces some good results. I’m still working on new set-up to use the mics more efficiently. I’ll add some pictures of the set-up when I finish it. Location
Melbourne Equipment Zoom H4N Shure Beta 58A Once more its time to yell my head off. We needed some vocalisations for a video we were doing at work of people fighting and yelling. The roof of our building is a convenient spot for some privacy to do recording, except for all the noisy air-conditioning units. The Shure Beta 58A however was the star of the day. I did a few test recordings to see how much background noise I would pick up, only to find that its active pick-up area is so close in that it captured my voice beautifully and nothing beyond a few feet away. So I got my vocalisations in a noisy environment with no background contamination. I think the Beta 58A is going to be my new best friend for a while. I have very much neglected many of my microphones over the years tending to do a lot of my work with only one mic. I am now discovering this has been much to my detriment and I am trying to make up for it by really testing out what my other mics are capable of. I also needed some female vocalisations, and with a little help from one of the girls at work I got some suitable material. She had a much softer voice, but even when I increased the amplitude afterward the Beta 58A retained a good clean signal. I am going to start using a new set-up for location recording which I will post up here when I have it finalised. I do however have a new kit bag that fits all my recording gear and is small and lightweight. It makes getting to places to do recordings heaps easier, and having a dedicated bag means I don’t have to repack every time I want to go out. Location Monash University Australia Equipment Roland R09 I was asked to present a talk at an event this week. The Computer Games Boot Camp is a yearly event organised at Monash to give high school students the opportunity to learn about working in the games industry. I enjoyed the talk and everyone seemed to get something out of it. When the organiser asked the kids to applaud I asked them to wait while I got the R09 out and then I recorded them cheering. After that I asked them all to yell and recorded 500 odd kids screaming their heads off. That was great fun and I now have the sound for a horde of orc if I ever need it.  Computer Game Boot Camp Location Melbourne Equipment Zoom H4N Mounted and Zoom H4 MKH60 Boom Pole Set-up I needed some skating sounds for a pitch project I was working on and I also wanted some more skateboard material for the library. Luckily a bunch of guys at work go out pretty regularly with their skateboards at lunchtime down to the nearby skate park. I followed along to see what I could get. I mounted the H4N on the bottom of one of the boards with some Velcro straps. It was generally ok, but meant no rail grinds for the rider. It did capture some very clear samples from the board’s trucks (wheels) it came off once and got a little scratched, but it was otherwise ok. This made me appreciate the more rugged construction of the H4N over the H4 even more. I did have an issue with placing the Velcro. I wanted it nice and tight, but I kept switching the H4N out of record mode with the strap, so I needed to move it slightly. I think this is why it fell off. After a couple of attempts I managed to get it secure so it would not fall off or switch off. I was also using the boom pole to capture extra material. At one stage I got one of the guys to go for a ride while holding the boom pole angled at the board. This got some good material over various surfaces.  Velcor is one of my main tools Capturing grinds and jumps was a little more difficult, and we did end up faking a few extra ones by just holding the board and running it along the rails. This wasn’t because the guys couldn’t grind, it was more for safety and practicality. I needed to get as close to the board as possible to record a good sample, and that became difficult with a real grind. The last thing I wanted to do was trip anyone off their board with a boom pole. One of the guys cracked his board on a jump which sucked, but it did mean I got the sound of him snapping it in half when we got back to the studio later on. This was a good use of time an gave the guys a reason to perform some crazy moves, not that they usually need much excuse.  Rail grinds made to look easy Location Docklands Equipment Zoom H4N H2a XLR Hydrophone I did a quick test today to see how a bike pump would generate bubbles underwater and if the sounds would be any different from the compressed air cans. The stream of air is slower and lasts for a shorter time with a bike pump, but it is good for producing a controlled stream of larger bubbles. I will have a good listen to the material recorded and work out if it is worth doing a bigger session on this. |
AuthorStephan Schütze has been recording sounds for over twenty years. This journal logs his thoughts and experiences Categories
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April 2019
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