Location
Melbourne Update 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.
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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. 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. Location Rainbow Beach Queensland Equipment Zoom H4N H2a XLR 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. 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. Location Noosa Queenland Equipment Zoom H4N NTG3 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.. 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. 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. 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. 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. Website www.vmvc.org.au/ Location Melbourne Equipment Zoom H4N Rode NTG3 Boom Pole Array I am not someone that believes in a higher being, but if I did I would be seriously tempted to believe that this year has been put in front of me to test my patience, and I am not sure I am passing the test. I have had today on my calendar for about 8 months from the time when I found out there would be a large display of vintage cars and trucks at the race track in the town I grew up in. I never really expected to record a lot of sound at a big event like this, but I thought it would be a good chance to make some contacts and maybe get a few sounds. What we got was the highest rainfall for November in 5 years; this was 2 days after we recorded the hottest day on record for November and only a week before summer starts. Trying to hold my recording gear and an umbrella and take notes while I talked to people became a big challenge and everything ended up being soaked. I guess I shouldn’t complain too much as I did get some good information and contacts and I did manage to record a few things, but it was so miserable, and wet and cold that it made it really hard to consider anything positive about the day. This was the first time for me using my new Rode NTG3 which I purchased last week. I didn’t even notice how it was going and forget I had installed it in the blimp cover until later in the day because I was so busy just trying to keep myself and the gear dry. I have not gone through the material yet so I have no idea how it coped with the day or how good it was. Keep an eye out for information about the NTG3 in the next few posts. On the information side of things I have found out about a steam engine club in Melbourne that meet monthly and have their final meeting of the year next Sunday. I might try and get along to that one. Apparently they have a large selection of old steam and traction engines and plenty of things that make interesting noises which is exactly what I am after. I also grabbed the information for a few of the car and truck clubs and I plan to contact them and see if anyone would be interested in me recording their vehicle and doing a feature on it. Because recording a vehicle is such a big task to do properly I plan to do some feature articles on some of the more interesting vehicles. I spoke to some gentlemen from the military vehicles club and found out about a meeting in early December that I am going to try and get access to. Basically it’s a day spent driving tanks around a large property. If I can get permission to record at this event I am going to be very happy indeed. There where two tanks there on Sunday, but the awful weather meant they never got unloaded from their trucks. Hopefully the next meeting will be better. What I did manage to record were a couple of nice old cars. The first one was a old Chevrolet lorry made in 1912. It was rusty and the wood was unpainted, but it ran alright and the engine sounded pretty healthy. The owner very kindly took me for a drive around the display area, so I got both idling and driving material as well as the old horn honking. It sounded so much more interesting than more modern cars. The cabin rattles and clunked because all the wood was starting to rot and the instruments mostly didn’t work. I was amazed at how well the engine was running considering the state of the rest of it. The owner must have done an excellent job of fixing it up. The second really old vehicle was a Thorneycroft lorry from about the same era. This one however had been beautifully resorted to almost pristine condition. I only captured it idling but it was still a great sound. Another interesting truck was an old Mazda flat tray, but it only had one wheel at the front. It was designed to navigate narrow streets in Japan, and having lived there for a few years I can totally understand the concept behind it. Its sound was not that unusual for a vehicle of its time, but it was still good to capture some material from it. I guess this one was more interesting to look at than to listen to. Another guy had restored an old engine and built it into a mini tractor for his kids to ride on. It was sitting on a trailer for the day, but he kindly started it up for me. It was an old “hit and miss” engine that popped and clunked away and had an awesome sound. The tractor itself was very basic but looked like it would be great fun for his kids. Through all of this I needed to be aware of keeping my gear dry as much as possible, but it was very difficult to get into the best position to record things while juggling the boom pole and an umbrella, so often I would just put up with being wet when it was only raining lightly. The blimp cover actually does a very good job of protecting the mic inside from the rain as its fluffy cover stops most of the rain from getting through. You just need to be really careful to dry it our thoroughly afterwards. The Zoom H4N was another matter as I needed to keep it angled out of the rain and constantly wipe off any water than got onto it so it would leak inside and damage the actual circuits. Initially I was trying to keep myself dry as well, but this soon became pretty much impossible, so I just put up with being cold and wet. Not the best of days, but definitely not the worst.
Website http://www.hcvc.com.au/J1/ Location
Warburton Equipment Zoom H4N MKH60 Single hand setup We went for a drive out to Warburton today, just to enjoy some countryside and good food. We stopped briefly at a place called The Peninsular Tunnel, which is a point where the course of a river cuts through a cliff face creating a tunnel. It was a nice area with a water hole where people could swim, and it produced a nice natural reverb as the water traveled through the tunnel. I recorded a little of this before we headed up to the Upper Yarra Reservoir. One the way back through Warburton they had a replica water wheel at the information centre so I recorded some of that as well. It was mainly just a day to relax, but it took so little effort to grab the couple of sounds that I recorded that it would have been very lazy of me not to. Location Melbourne Equipment Zoom H4N Internal mics Just a quick one on the way to work today. Some construction on one of the roads near Southern Cross station. There is an overpass I walk over almost evry day and they had a large machine driving concrete pylons into the ground. The overpass meant I was quite close so I used the H4N with my new wind cover to record some good material. Anna bought me a purpose built wind cover for the H4N’s built in mics. Its quite good and means I don’t have an oversized cover that falls off and looks silly. This one attaches properly to the mics and come4s in different colours. I write up a review for it soon. Location Canberra Equipment Zoom H4N MKH60 Boom pole array Another early morning. Today we are flying up to Canberra for Anna’s father’s 60 birthday, I am not expecting anything specific, but it’s a day out of Melbourne so as usual I will be taking my gear with me. I have another reason to do so and that is because Anna’s father is also a sound recorder for television and he wants to check out some of my gear, so its worth taking it along. We are heading just out of Canberra on road to Yas to a little place called Hull. Its nice and quiet and will be a great place for a family get together. We arrived early so we could help out a bit, there was almost no one there when we arrived, but there were plenty of birds around so I wander4ed quietly among the trees and got some good bird sounds. The first thing I recorded was some young miner birds. These are really common in Melbourne, but because of the amount of background noise in Melbourne I have never had the chance to get a good clean recording. Today I had a nice noisy bird low in a tree that seemed quite happy for me to get up close and most importantly there was no background noise. I also managed to get some sounds from a Plover. I don’t think its nesting season as these birds nest on the ground and are very defensive of their nests and very noisy. These ones weren’t too worried about where I walked, so I got a little bit of material, but I would have gotten a lot more if they had been territorial. There were a couple of dogs in the ar4ea as well so I collected some samples of them while I was wandering. I used the MKH60 on the boom pole for all of this. It was all pretty straight forward directional material as close as I could manage to each animal so the shotgun mic was about the best choice. I am a little upset that since I lost my Shure Beta 58A I have lost the best mic for close recording animals. It was really nice and clean whenever I was able to get up close to a noisy animal. Next I went and played with the wood pile. There was a large pile of scrape wood behind the pavilion, mainly old broken cargo pallets. I still have a lot more metal sounds in my materials section of the library than any other section so it will be good to be able to add some more wood sounds. This stuff was all split and broken so it allowed me to snap and twist and spit it to get some very cool sounds that I don’t yet have. I spent about half an hour tossing, breaking, splitting and otherwise harassing pieces of wood. So I got an unexpectedly good amount of material from the day. I finished of with sampling a little bit of the jazz band that was playing and general party ambience sounds. Oh and the food was great
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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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