Blub..blub..blub

Location
Docklands Melbourne
Equipment
Zoom H4N
H2a XLR Hydrophone

Continuing to test some of the possibilities of what I can do with the hydrophone before I get into planning a proper session with it, I thought I’d try a couple more ideas. (I am also waiting for the weather to not be so bloody cold as one of the ideas involves me being in the pool) I purchased an air horn a while back to record some sounds for sports fans or whatever making noise, and I decided to see what this would sound like if I set it off underwater. I just submerged my arm with the air horn as I am not going swimming on a day like today. The sound was unbelievable. I was expecting some general bubbles from the compressed air inside the can but because of the horn attachment the air created a specific pitch, however it also instantly created bubbles which rose to the surface. The end result is a very strange series of tones that instantly pitch up, sounding slightly like lots of laser blast sounds. No idea what they can be used for but it was a cool effect.

From this result I am going to buy a variety of compressed air sources and record various sounds underwater. I want to capture the sound of large bubbles being generated underwater as this is the core sound I would need to create an underwater explosion or volcano sound, but in general I want to see how many different sounds I can capture underwater and how different they sound. I think the next step will be to fill the bathtub and see if the sounds generated in there are much different to in the pool.  Sadly when I put the microphone in our fish pond I did hear anything, I was hoping the fish might have been having a conversation at the time, but no such luck.