Location Melbourne Cricket Ground Equipment Zoom F4 Sennheiser MKH 60 Boom pole array and Roland R09 Handheld Today is going to be the last of my crowd recording sessions. With this material I should have a good cross section of sporting crowd situations and samples. Today was the first one day match between Australia and South Africa for the 2009 season and a pretty big crowd was expected. I wanted to get there early so I could get a good range of crowd sounds as the number of people there would increase over the day with a surge expected around 6.30 pm when people finished work for the day. By the time I got in the game had started and the second over was being bowled. There would have been between 10,000-15,000 people there by that stage. One of the things I always try to do when I am in a situation where I have pre planned and know I have time to set-up properly is have both the H4 and the R09 running. This increases my chances of catching anything that might be good material. I set the input levels for the R09 at a constant low rate so it can hopefully capture any very loud sounds, and I use the H4 for more specific targeted sounds, often varying the input levels on the H4 through the course of the day. Even when I am relocating from one part of a stadium to another I will usually have one of the devices running just in case something noteworthy comes up. This of course takes its own planning as I was at the MCG for over 6 hours and I needed to ensure I could cover that time with both battery life and recording capacity. Currently the H4 is using a 4 gig SD card which is giving me about 5 hours of recording time at 48 KHz sample rate. I would usually need to change over the batteries if I was going to fill the full five hours. I try to use rechargeable batteries as it can get really expensive otherwise, but I always carry a spare set on me. In the future I plan to get a second H4 but before I do I need to work out the best way to rig it up and what kind of mic set-up I need. The game progressed as expected. Cricket is a slow sport to watch at the best of times. I got lots of material time wise, but most of it was just background crowd chatter. There were actually less sound events in 6 hours of cricket than 90 minutes of soccer., but I got a fairly good selection of cheers and other crowd related sounds. I relocated at least 5 times in at 6 hour session. I also took something to read with me as even though I was recording for all that time, there was very little for me to need to monitor. I am not a big fan of cricket and it can get a little slow at times so I just relaxed and read my book for a lot of the time. This was a long but pretty easy recording session.
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Location Port Melbourne Equipment Zoom F4 Sennheiser MKH 60 Boom pole array More sport sounds today. I wanted to get some good kicking sounds recorded, and I needed to go out and pick-up the new cable I had ordered, so it was an afternoon outside for me. It was really bloody hot today 38 C and being out in the sun for over 3 hours was way tiring. When I did finally find somewhere to buy a drink I drank half a litre of water in about 60 seconds because I was so incredibly dehydrated. I am also really glad I put heaps of sun block on because I would have gotten very badly burnt otherwise. All good things to consider when you plan on being outside for a long time, especially in summer in Australia. I picked up my new cable and also ordered some thread adaptors that should allow me to mount the microphone on a standard camera tripod. (more on this later in the week) I walked for about half an hour down to a really large park in Port Melbourne where they had 4 sports ovals. There was a bit of traffic noise from the surrounding roads specifically from the regular semi trailers driving by, but it was infrequent enough to allow me to get some good samples. This is one of the biggest issues about any recording session outdoors. Obviously for things like sports and especially actions like hitting or kicking balls you really need to be outdoors to record. But unless you are lucky enough to live or have access to somewhere very remote there is almost always the issue of background noise and usually its traffic. The advantage of a directional microphone is that it gives you some ability to focus it away from the worst source of background noise. I always make sure I walk into any park area as far as possible and usually try to choose an area with lots of trees. Trees do a really excellent job of absorbing or blocking noise. Then I’ll set-up my microphone so its pointing away from the worst noise and preferably towards the largest area of park. (Hopefully I’ve chosen a day with no people around as well. In this case being nearly 40 degrees certainly helped on that front. No one else was crazy enough to be outside today). I spent about an hour alternating between kicking a rugby ball and a soccer ball. Being there by myself meant I spent more time going and retrieving the balls than I did actually kicking them, but that was ok. I got some very good samples of both balls and made sure I recorded kicking in various styles. From hand, off the ground, drop kicking, bouncing etc. I then added some bounces and other incidental ball noises. On the walk back I managed to record a large industrial complex that has some noisy boiler fans running and a electrical power station that had a good hum sound going. A bloody hot day, but a fairly useful recording session. Location
Melbourne Equipment Zoom F4 Sennheiser MKH 60 Boom pole array Adding some more sounds to the sports section today. There are going to be a bunch of new sounds for sports over the next few weeks as several of the projects I am working on currently involve sporting sounds. Today it was just some simple sounds of catching various balls. Rugby, soccer and indoor soccer balls all got thrown around a little as I recorded the handling sounds. I did try to record some kicking sounds indoors into a special net but the sounds were very flat. I need to go outside to do this properly so There will be another session next week out in a park somewhere. I am trying to organise some access to various sports events and I have tickets to go to a one day cricket match next week so there will be plenty of stuff there as well. I am always reluctant to record sound indoors without a proper studio (my current workplace doesn't have anything even remotely studio like) reflective sounds and background noise often make it pointless to try and capture material indoors, but depending on the sounds I need and the microphones I use I can often get usable material. Really quiet sounds or sounds with a long duration are not possible, but short sharp impact sounds like catching footballs is pretty easy to record cleanly. The impact itself is loud enough to cover any background noise and the short nature of the sound means there is little chance for contamination. I always try to use an area with the most carpet and soft furniture to absorb reflected sound which I don't want. Location Docklands Melbourne Equipment Zoom F4 Sennheiser MKH 60 Boom pole array News Years Eve at Docklands means lots of people and lots of fireworks, so it was a great way to see out the year with some friends and an easy way to grab a few final sounds for the year. We could see the fireworks from our apartment so I thought I may as well switch on the recording gear to get samples of all the party people and the fireworks. It was a good display that will hopefully give me some good sounds when I cut them all up. It’s been a really busy and hectic year but also incredibly enjoyable both professionally and personally. I am really looking forward to 2009 and finally getting Free to Air up and running as well as recording some great new sounds. I have plans to go down to the Bellarine Peninsula Railway to record a bunch of Steam trains as well as going along to the Avalon Air show and see if I can expand on my range of aircraft samples. I hope everyone has a safe and happy 2009. Location Docklands Melbourne Equipment Zoom F4 Sennheiser MKH 60 Boom pole array I finally had enough time to get down to the gym at the apartment and record some of the equipment down there. I had already done a proper workout and run today so I didn’t feel like pushing it too much; however I did get running on the treadmill at various different speeds up to 15KPH. I then did a short stint on the cross trainer, the rowing machine and the exercise bike, although I do have say the exercise bike made almost no sound. I did a few reps on some of the weights machines but I may need to go back and record some more. I didn’t feel like I got good enough material out of them. Apartment building gym The advantage of having a sound source location right next door means I can be really picky with the material I record and go back and do it again if I don’t like it. It also means I can experiment a little and see what I can learn about recording particular groups of machinery. Hopefully I can learn what there is to be learned in an environment I can make use of again and again. I wish I had such access to firearms and fighter plane sound sources. Typically it’s the sounds you have infrequent and limited access to that prove to be the hardest to sample cleanly. Location
Docklands Equipment Zoom F4 Sennheiser MKH 60 Boom pole array I guess the Police were chasing someone or attending a major accident nearby as the Police helicopter spent around 20 minutes circling around the docklands very close to our apartment. After about 5 minutes of this I realized they were here to stay for at least a few minutes and definitely close enough to warrant going out on the balcony with my gear. The interesting thing about recording a flying vehicle around tall buildings is that it can often be hard to tell exactly where the vehicle is. The sounds of the helicopter reflected of the buildings a lot and often gave the impression it was coming from the opposite direction. I managed to capture a good two minutes worth of constant hovering at a distance and a couple of nice flyby samples. I would like to try and record a close up idle or hover sound sometime in the future, but I was surprised at how much material I captured tonight. I still don’t know what they were doing and I didn’t hear any other sirens in the area so if there were police ground vehicles then they were keeping quiet. It did occur to me to run down outside and try to get closer, but one of the advantages of being on the balcony was that I was away from any traffic noise, so the advantage of getting closer to the helicopter could well have been mitigated by having traffic noise contaminate the samples. As it is I got some nice clean (if slightly distant) helicopter sounds from a model I have not yet recorded. (I’ll need to look up what model helicopter the Victorian Police use) Location Telstra Dome Melbourne Equipment Zoom F4 Sennheiser MKH 60 Boom pole array and Roland R09 Handheld A Melbourne Soccer Club vs Sydney Soccer Club match seems to be a game of old rivals and 25000 people made their way in to Telstra Dome to see the game played out. Considering I still need some more sports crowd sounds and that the match was a five minute walk from home I though I’d go along and see what all the fuss was about. I arrived just before half time and Sydney was leading 2 goals to 1. The Melbourne crowd was a little subdued accept for the Melbourne Cheer squad who alternated between abusive chants at the Sydney fans and abusive chants at the police. It seems they have been taking lessons from the English soccer fans J. I got some good general ambience and found that soccer crowds BOO much more than rugby crowds do, so I got some good material there. When Melbourne finally scored an equalizer half way into the second half the crowd went wild and all my levels maxed out. This sort of location is really difficult to predict. 25000 people provide a good general level of hum when they are talking and watching a game, but when someone scores the leap in levels is like sticking your head in backwash of a fighter plane engine. Its sooo bloody loud. The cheering and clapping continued for at least 30 seconds, but it was the initial roar that I really wanted to capture. I set the levels on the R09 to the lowest possible level, and cranked the F4 down heaps as well. This of course meant that all the intervening ambience was really soft, but it was the cheer events that were the most important to capture. (I’m starting to think I need to buy a second Zoom F4 J ). Towards the end of the game Melbourne scored a third goal putting them into the lead. The crowd naturally went wild again and I was monitoring my levels through all of this. I think the F4 managed to capture some good material without peaking, but the poor old R09 even on its lowest input setting just couldn’t cope. The actual samples might be usable as a crowd cheer is basically white noise so a little peaking may not be too badly distorted, but its little inbuilt mics were just not designed for the level of sound it was trying to cope with.
I am planning to go to a one day cricket match in a couple of weeks for one last round of crowd recordings and I might see if I can rig something up that can cope with the high levels better. Overall it was a pretty good session and I now have a collection of crowd chants expressing their true feelings towards Victoria’s Police Force. (Although I have no idea what I’d use them for.) Tonight we went to the grand opening of the Southern Star, supposedly Melbourne's top new attraction. Its a giant Ferris wheel essentially, although I believe they prefer to be called an observation wheel. So far the thing is two years late in its construction and apparently $100 million over budget. It also seems to be located in a strange place for an observation wheel as mostly you would be looking at our commercial dock areas from the top. I guess someone thought Melbourne needed it so it got built. The grand opening had some music and a speech and some fireworks, but there weren't really very many people there, almost as if everyone was over it before it even opened. In the following few days of operation it barely seemed to re4ach half its capacity for passengers. I waited until after the actual opening to record the drive system as I wanted to record it on a day when there were not too many people around. That proved to be a lot easier than I was expecting as most days it seemed mostly abandoned. The wheel itself is driven by rotating wheels at the bottom and I was surprised at how quiet it was considering it was pretty big and must weigh a fair bit. It really just sounded like a small electric engine.
Less than two months after opening the wheel shut again as there was some major design and construction fault with the thing. It now seems it is going to be a further two years to disassemble, fix and rebuild the thing. I personally am not sure if it is worth the effort when even at the height of tourist season it looked like it was struggling, but I have never claimed to understand how businesses make their decisions. I'm just glad I recorded it when I did. Location Melbourne Equipment Laptop sound editing software I have decided to start the process of creating a large number of “sweetener” sounds. Most of these are not things that can be recorded in the usual way I work, but will need to be constructed to suit. I do plan on having a fairly large section of constructed sounds so it’s a good start to that and I can start to schedule in regular sessions of sound creation as well as recording and cataloging. The sweetener category will consist of a series of sounds that can be very useful as building blocks or sub elements in sound design. Sweeps, hits and low frequency booms will be the first elements I will start to create, and as I find a need or think of other elements I will add them as I create them. With a lot of the material in Sound Library these sounds are designed to be small core sounds that anyone can use to create larger more complex sound events. I will add some tutorials with suggested ways of using these elements, but it is really only limited by peoples imaginations. Location Melbourne Equipment Roland R09 Handheld So what do you do when the fire alarm goes off at work and everyone has to evacuate the building? Record the alarm of course! What was otherwise a usual day in the studio became a brief opportunity to grab a new sound as we had the fire alarm activate in the building forcing a full evacuation. I took the opportunity to record the alarm as we made our way out. This also reminded me that being in a new work environment meant I had a whole new range of sounds I will need to get around to recording sometime soon. |
AuthorStephan Schütze has been recording sounds for over twenty years. This journal logs his thoughts and experiences Categories
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