Location Melbourne Equipment Zoom H4N DPA 4061 pair The main test for the DPA mics was to see how they coped with high power levels like engine exhausts and machinery. The main reason I have been considering acquiring these mics is because their small size and high power level capacity make them excellent for recording cars, bikes, planes etc. The first test today was to attach them to a motorbike and see how they handled it. One of the guys I worked with has a Honda CBR 600 which was a perfect subject for what I needed. I attached the first mic to one of the rear indicators about two inches from the exhaust. (The CBR has a single central exhaust that comes out from under the seat.) I really wanted to push these mics and see what they could handle. Even though I wanted to capture some bike samples I was happy to risk not getting anything useful to see just how good these were. The second mic I attached to one of the front indicators. The weather was pretty bad on the day so I didn’t have the luxury to really work out a good location for the front mic. Considering this was mainly a test I was more interested in how the mic coped rather than positioning it perfectly. The leads for both mics were taped down with basic electrical tape and attached to the H4N which I placed a backpack which the rider wore while riding. I then sat and read a book while my friend went for a ride. The results were better than I had hoped for. The rear mic captured pure exhaust output with no tyre sound and no unwanted sounds from anything else. The front mic was slightly less perfect. It captured excellent samples, but even with a foam cover and a Rycote fluffy wind jammer it still picked up some wind noise. I think this was largely due to its positioning. The fairing on the front of the bike was deflecting the wind past the bike, but I think it was directing it straight over the mic. It was a good lesson for the future, next time I will place the mic closer to the engine itself. Both mics however captured excellent samples and proved they could do what I needed them to. The second test for the day was to rerecord my friends Nissan 350Z. He has had some new exhausts installed and was quite keen to get me to record it with the new sounds. Last time the biggest issue I had was mounting mics on the car itself. The beauty of the mics I was using is that they are so small I can pretty much tap them to anything. I mounted one near the exhaust and one under the bonnet. Another issue was that the 350Z is such a smooth design that there is nothing past the exhaust and no way to attach anything near its output, so the mic itself was about three inches back from the end of the exhaust. Again the results were pretty good. The mics did what I needed them to, any issues with the material captured was from placement. I think the DPAs have proven that they can do what I need of them, so I plan on ordering a couple. The next step will be to get access to a car I can spend some time on. The make and model is not the issue, its having the time to try a range of mic positions and see what different results I can get. Whenever I have someone help me out by offering their car or bike or nuclear powered tractor to record I always feel awkward if I take too long. Setting up mics correctly and finding the best position can sometimes be very time consuming. The more time I spend on my own finding the best method and mic placements for recording a car generally, the less of someone else’s time I will take up when I get the opportunity to record something new. This won’t always work, cars come in lots of different shapes and sizes, but I should be able to at least come up with some basic guidelines for car recording session. It might be worth putting some of these into a tutorial once I have some good general concepts. I’m travelling to Adelaide in a couple of weeks, I might spend a day recording the hire car in different ways and see what I can come up with.
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Location Williamstown Equipment Zoom H4N AKG D112 Sennhieser MKH60 Single hand setup Commissioned 17th June 1942 The HMAS Castlemain was a Bathurst class minesweeper for the Royal Australian Navy during World War 2. She now resides as a permanent floating museum on Williamstown pier with a great view of Melbourne city from her rear decks. Today I am going to record everything that bumps and squeaks on an old warship. Sadly none of the weapons work anymore because everyone likes a good loud bang, but there are quite a few interesting sounds to be captured from this old warship. I have adopted the same recording setup as I used at the children’s farm a few weeks back. It is fairly practical for having everything setup in one hand, although it can get a little heavy after a while. I have the H4N strapped to the side of the blimp cover for the MKH60 and the D112 also attached to the blimp cover pistol grip. I need something I can move easily with as I will be climbing up and down stairs between decks and warships don’t traditionally have a lot of room to move. Some of the stairs are going to be enough of a challenge as it is with only one hand free. I started by moving around the ship recording the more straightforward elements. Doors, hatches, and switches all made fairly unique sounds compared to their modern day variants. The museum also an interesting variety of ships bells including one from a Japanese ship. I recorded several rings of all of these. The weather wasn’t great today, but I spent most of the time below deck so it wasn’t too much of an issue. Some of the hatches had multiple clamps to seal them and they made nice clunky sounds. Things started to get interesting when they offered to start up the engines for me. Traditionally the Castlemaine was steam powered via giant boilers. These days they have a modern compressor in one of the deck houses that provides pressure to drive the main pistons, but they can only run at a low speed. The pistons themselves were actually not as loud as I was expecting. Being powered by steam pressure and being very well maintained they moved smoothly and quietly. The Castlemaine also has a range of different pumping engines to circulate the water around the ship, run the water purifier (steam engines need distilled water) and maintain things like ballast and other systems. I was very lucky to have all of these started up for me to record. They all made different sounds depending on their purpose. They also started up the diesel engine for me. One of the diesels was used to generate a current that was directed through a network of wires trailing behind the ship. The current in these wires would trigger certain types of mines in the water. As a final treat they activated the ships siren for me. This was a steam driven horn used as a fog horn or to indicate actions in port. Overall I got some really good material as well as a good lesson on Australian Navel history form some of the guys working on the ship on the day. Website http://hmascastlemaine.com/ Location Melbourne Docklands Equipment Zoom H4N H2A Hydrophone For weeks now I have watched party and restaurant boats leaving the Docklands on Friday and Saturday nights. Last night while eating dinner I noticed one loading up with passengers and I noted the time so I could plan a recording session. Tonight I came out at 7pm in time to catch on of the boats loading up and preparing to go. This allowed me to capture a good amount of material over the 20 minutes it took to get ready. Using the hydrophone I got tons of material of its engine running underwater, as well as some material with the H4Ns built in mics to capture the surface sounds. When the boat finally manoeuvred out of the docks I got a good sample of its engines as it reversed and moved out. Just as the main boat was pulling away a second boat headed in. This gave me a great opportunity to capture two boats and to be able to compare the differences in sounds. I could really understand how navel personnel could tell what type of boat they were near by the sound of the screws (propellers) the incoming boat was much older and I could hear that its motors were not running as smoothing as the first boat. I now want to sample some more boats so I can get a selection of different boat sounds. I also captured the bilge pumps pumping out water onto the wharf. I think I might contact some of the boat operators to see if I can get access to one of the boats during one of its outings, I would like to record the sounds inside the boat as it runs, and especially the engine room if possible. I also plan to get down to station pier and record the spirit of Tasmania as it heads out. This is a much larger ship size vessel that transports people and vehicles between Melbourne and the Northern tip of Tasmania. I’d love t o record some naval vessels, but I am not sure they would be too happy about having the sounds of their ships being recorded. Something for the future maybe.
Location Melbourne area Equipment Zoom H4N MKh60 Boom Pole and Zoom H4 D112 mini tripod H2a Another busy day of walking and recording. I realized that even though I have recorded several vehicles and tried to make comprehensive lists of all the sounds of each vehicle I have never recorded general traffic sounds. For a current project I need some large trucks driving by as well as lots of cars passing and general traffic ambiance sounds. So I set out to position myself along some of Melbourne’s busy roads to capture some material. First off I got completely distracted by a nearby construction site. There was a crane with a claw attachment picking up concrete pylons and dropping them into the back of a dump truck. The resulting crashes were really good, so I spend easily 20 minutes standing about 20 meters away recording as much as I could. I am always disappointed that these events are accompanied by the ever present diesel sound of the crane itself. It would be great to be able to get just the crashing sound, but considering the shear weight of the pylons that is never going to happen. The impact itself is always so loud as to cover other sounds, but the trail off of the sound will always include the sound of the crane engine. It amazes me how people react when they see a microphone. It doesn’t even matter if it’s switched on, or if I am obviously holding in such a manner that shows I am not recording; you always get people yelling, calling out “hi mom” or just being determined to get their voice recorded. Its no different when you put them in cars. The number of people that drove past me honking their horns as I was recording traffic was amazing. In this case however it was actually kind of useful to me as it gave a nice sense of city traffic ambience. I walked several kilometres around one of the major freeways into Melbourne and recorded cars both entering and leaving the freeway, as well as a good amount of material of cars running on the freeway. One of the main issues I have found with recording traffic is that the dynamic range is far more that I often expect it to be. A standard car driving past dies not alter the input levels greatly, but a motorbike (especially something like a Harley) is so much louder that it risks peaking the levels. Trucks are similar as they generate a lot more sound as they pass. Its often good to capture the sounds of the trucks, but this means the cars tend to be too quiet. It becomes a bit of a game riding the levels and watching what is coming past next. I caught a train out to where I had recorded some amazing factory sounds a few years back to find the factory was closed down and was now new apartments. This was really disappointing as this factory had some of the best sound machines I have heard and had access right on the street so recording them was easy. I had recorded them in the past with older equipment, but I wanted to get an updated recording and test my new mics. It seems to be getting harder and harder to get access to places like factories as they are all on huge estates these days with giant fences miles away from the buildings. I wont trespass so its great when I do find a place right on the street. I made the most of being right next to a train line and tested out the D112 very close to the rails as a train went past. The D112 is designed to capture loud sounds and dealt with being only a couple of feet away from the train really well. Any of my other mics would have peaked badly. The D112 just took it all in its stride. This will be a good mic to use on firearms more in the future. After I got home and had a bit of a rest. (I have walked over 10 kilometres so far today) I did a few tests in a bucket full of water with the H2A hydrophone. I have bought a couple of cans of compressed air to generate bubbles underwater. The bucket is obviously too small and the sounds reflect of the sides very obviously. The issue with using the pool at the apartment is the water filers system makes a constant obvious hum. So a walk down to the docks was in order. Checkout a review of the H2A XLR in the reviews section I set myself up so the hydrophone was submerged about a foot in the water, then reached down with the compressed air can and released busts of air. I did this until I had emptied the can, shifting positions so the bubbles came up under the mic, past the side of the mic, and away from the mic. Each position produced slightly different sounds. I released short and long bursts. I have since altered the pitch of some of the material and it produces really effective huge bubble sounds like a large explosive device being triggered underwater. I plan to make a whole series of underwater explosions sometime soon. I also want to do a lot more underwater recording as I am really enjoying the new opportunities the H2A is providing me with. Just one note, be careful if you are using compressed air in cans. The water itself was already pretty cold in winter, adding to that a can of air under pressure and my hand got really cold. I actually froze a couple of fingers briefly which was somewhat disconcerting. Location Melbourne Docks Equipment Zoom H4N MKh60 Boom Pole Footscray road is kind of interesting to walk along at night. This is a main road used mostly by commercial traffic as it runs along Melbourne’s main wharfs. There are giant dock cranes and hundred of shipping containers all along the road. There are also dozens of trucks constantly driving along the road which is why I was here. Well actually I was here because I was going for a walk with my wife, but knowing there would be dozens of trucks I carried my gear with me to record a couple as they went by. Semi trailers make quite a lot of noise when they start up and stop, but when they are actually driving by they can be fairly quiet sometimes. Walking 5 kilometres along the road and back provided heaps of opportunities to record several trucks at various speeds, as well as a couple manoeuvring into the market areas opposite the docks. This meant I captured some good thumps sounds as the trailers drove over the gutters. It was good to be able to capture pretty much everything I needed in a short period of time while also being able to do some good exercise. Location Kilsyth Melbourne Equipment Zoom H4N D112 & Beta 58A and Zoom H4 MKh60 Tripod mount This is the first big recording session I have done for a while. Full time work and all the documentation for Sound Library has kept me away from major recording trips for a while, but I do have some good sessions planned over the next few weeks so things should pick up again. Today I went to a car wreckers in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs, just at the foot of the Dandenongs mountain range. The guys at Pick a Part were really helpful and let me wander around and record some busted old cars. The set-up down there is perfect for what I do as all the cars are neatly laid out to allow people to go in and find the car they need and remove the parts they want, so its all very organised. This allowed me to go through and find the specific things I was after. I wanted cars that were already heavily damaged, so if I bashed on any of the panels I would not be damaging anything useful to the wreckers, but also because already damaged panels rattle and squeak better than new panels. I spent three hours moving around the yard sampling various sounds. With the new equipment it is easier for me to record with a range of mics and I am finding this is giving me far more options with the material I end up with. I need to sort things out a little to make it easier to work this, but using the H4N with both two mic inputs and its own internal microphones working is proving to be really effective. I attach my AKG D112 to one channel to capture any high power sounds as well as good low end material, and to the second input I attach the Shure beta 58A which is a straight forward good workhorse mic. The differences in sound colour from the two mics are noticeable on most recordings. I have also found the H4N’s own mics are actually pretty good. I need to be careful to protect them from wind noise, but once that’s taken care of they have been giving me some good sample material. Lastly I have the older H4 running my MKH60 shotgun mic. Its my old reliable mic, but I have found that often one of the other mics gives me a sample that I would prefer to use. With the range of samples I captured from today I am going to experiment with making mix blends of the different mic samples to create a new version of the sound that uses the best elements of each of the mic versions. By mixing them together I can hopefully capture the fuller low end frequencies of the D112 with some of the crisper high end material from the MKH60 and 58A. It will be different every time I record, but having a general understanding of each mics strengths should help me to create better mixes for any situation. The D112 was great for loud crashes and bangs, but struggled a little with something more subtle like bouncing a tyre up and down on the road. This makes it a good complement for the MKH60 as it sometimes struggles with the higher level sounds and can max out if its placed too close to the source. The other advantage of having small portable units like the H4 series is it was very easy for me to place the unit and mics inside areas like car boots, or between panels and then beat on the outside of the panels to capture the sound. This way I can have a microphone outside and inside simultaneously to provide more options of raw material. I may right up a small section on how I go with creating mix blends of some of the material from today’s recording session. I will still archive the multiple mic samples so I have them all, but I don’t think I will include all of these in the library. I think having several versions of each sound to cover various types of microphone and its position is being a little excessive, even for this library.
Website www.pick-a-part.com.au/ Location Portland Victoria Equipment Zoom H4 Zoom H4N MKH60 Tripod Mount A long weekend is a nice break from work, but when it’s raining most of the time it does make it a little less fun. It’s still good to get out of Melbourne though. We hired a car and headed down the Great Ocean Road in Victoria's south west for a few days. There is some great scenery in the area and it was a nice way to relax. I usually carry all my gear even if I don’t have anything specific to record. I did keep an eye out for a good example of an Australia windmill (technically a wind pump) but its seemed that any that were close to the road were not moving. I didn’t really want to go wandering across someone’s property to record one, and I think I need one that doesn’t work properly anyway. I did get nice and close to one once but it was almost completely silent. I need to find a nice old rusty one that’s going to rattle and clank for me. On Sunday we found ourselves in Portland which is one of the western most towns along Victoria’s coast and apparently the first town in Victoria established in 1839. Portland used to have a cable tram network, the cables are gone and I suspect the tracks that still exist are not the original route, but there is still a diesel operated tram for tourists. The engine car sounds pretty much like a small truck, but it was quiet enough to allow me to stand at the back of the passenger car and record the wheels on the track. I was very happy that I was able to record the tram without the motor being audible as this is pretty much how the original tram would have sounded. The cable pulley would have made some noise, but generally the tram would have only made the sound of its movement on the tracks. I’d love to record a working cable pulley system, but I suspect I might have to travel to San Francisco one day to achieve that. I don’t know how many other functioning cable cars there still are in the world. I didn’t have my boom pole with me so I needed to use the tripod as a pole. It was not a bad substitute, but the tripod is much heavier than the boom pole and so it was more tiring to hold it off the back of the tram for half an hour. I had a minor issue with the H4 so quickly switched across to the H4N. I’m not sure if the H4 has a more serious issue as I have not been able to test it properly yet, It was switching between indicating full batteries and then wanting to switch off because of lack of power. I am hoping the rain hasn’t shorted the unit out. It only got slightly wet, but there might be a problem with it. I will test it sometime this week. I’m glad I took the H4n on the tram because it gave me an alternative. Being a tourist tram there were lots of people on board and they were as noisy as most tourists. The advantage of a 60 minute round trip is that it gave me a lot of time to capture footage so I hope there is enough material without noisy tourists in the background. Funnily enough the children were all pretty quiet, it was the adults in this case that were noisy. I did have the microphone positioned almost underneath the tram for most of the journey so it should provide some clean samples. I also made sure to capture the sound of the brakes squeaking and the bell ringing. Lastly on Monday I recorded the engine bay of the Toyota Camry we had hired for the weekend. I didn’t want to do a full recording of this car at this stage. I just wanted to capture the engine bay sound so I can compare it to the Hyundai I recorded a few weeks back. I can record a Camry at any time if I decide it's worth it. I did a few more tests with the hydrophone down at the beach on the weekend, but I am still seeing what it is capable of before I do some serious recordings.
Website www.portlandcabletrams.com.au/ Location Port Melbourne Equipment Zoom H4 Tripod Mount and Zoom H4N D112 & Shure sm58 and R09 mounted I have been meaning to do some proper testing on car recording for quite some time and I finally had the chance today. As I’ve mentioned before we hire a car when we need one and this weekend we had a Hyundai Accent which was a perfect example of a stock standard small car, exactly what I wanted to test on. About a 5 minute drive from where we live is a large industrial area at Port Melbourne which on a Sunday morning is completely deserted and nice and quiet. The perfect location to get some clean recordings. I started by strapping the R09 to one of the radiator tubes under the bonnet. A good length of Velcro strap meant that it was nice and secure and well away from any moving parts in the engine bay, while still being right in amongst the working parts of the engine. This resulted in a very good clean recording of 90% of the material captured. Because the bonnet is closed when driving there is almost zero wind to worry about in this location. I had one short section of recorded material that was effected by wind and only one level peak out of twenty minutes of recording. I made sure I tested the levels carefully before I started by revving the car up to 5000 rpm and ensuring the levels could cope. The good thing about this position is that it is so close to all the integral workings of the engine that pretty much all other sounds are irrelevant. This mic only captured very slight tyre/road noise and almost no noticeable noise from other traffic. The second mic I placed was the D112 plugged into the H4N. I used the anchoring ring on the bottom of the car to slot the D112 through and then bind carefully with more Velcro strap. I was slightly worried about having a $300 mic attached to the bottom of the car, but after giving it a few good solid shakes I was fairly confident it wasn’t going to go anywhere. This mic captured some excellent material when the car wasn’t moving. Idling at different rpms were all clean samples with no peaking. (the D112 is designed to capture loud material) The sound from the exhaust had more bass and was throatier than the direct sound of the engine. When I started to drive though the D112 was far less effective. It has a pretty short range and because the anchor ring was about 50cm from the exhaust pipe once the car started moving and got up to speed the D112 was capturing more tyre/road noise than exhaust sound. I am going to need to find a way to mount the microphone closer to the exhaust. Admittedly the Hyundai is a fairly quiet car with very little exhaust sound, so maybe with a more sports orientated car having the mic 50cm away might not be too bad, but I would still prefer to mount it right next to the exhaust. The other input for the H4N had the Shure sm58 attached to it, and the mic itself was mounted pointing out of the back of the boot to capture more general sound of the car as it moved. This was generally ok, but didn’t really capture anything that wasn’t covered elsewhere. Next time I will try this mic in different positions and see what I can capture. Lastly I turned on the H4 with the MKH60 attached in the boot of the car. Again this did capture some material but I think I could have made better use of a third recorder. I did later try the R09 inside the car as I was driving, and I think this would have been a better use for the H4 with maybe the NT4 mic attached. Overall I got some very good material, but I would still like to perform some more tests before I go off and record anything I cant get access to easily. I don’t want to waste an opportunity on a good sounding car while I am still sorting out the best approach to recording. Once I found a nice quiet place to park I went through all the other sounds for this particular car. I have drawn up a list that I use for recording cars that allows me to check off each component as I record it so I don’t forget anything. This is a result of when I recorded all the old Holdens last year only to get home and discover I had completely forgotten to record any of their horns. I found the D112 was excellent at recording anything with an impact. Closing the bonnet, boot or doors all captured a good clean recording. The same items recorded through the MKH60 were far too noisy as the mic is so sensitive it captured road noise from a mile away and the sound of the wind through nearby grass. The D112’s short range effectively cut off everything but the sounds I needed. It was however far less useful for quieter sound like the washer and windscreen sounds. I have various microphones exactly for the purpose of using the best one for each job, however I am also aware that if I am capturing a series of sounds from one source I should be trying to get the sound as consistent as possible. The boot and bonnet were sampled nicely through the D112, but the door sound was too quiet. Using the MKH60 sample added wind noise and the different sound of the microphone. This is something I will need to do further tests on to see if I can come up with a good compromise.
When it came to the interior sounds I used the R09, but I found later that it was quite a shrill sound in the closed environment. I think I may have had the levels up a little too much, but overall the material is a little harsh. One thing I will say is that I need to be far more patient when I am recording something like an entire car. When cut up I have over 70 sounds to add to the library once I selected the good quality material, this is something I should not expect to achieve in an hour by hammering through every aspect of the car. Its certainly worth taking my time and capturing each aspect properly. I did spend over two hours doing the recordings, but I think I could have spent even another hour making sure I positioned the mics in more locations and doubled up on everything to improve the raw material I had to work from. I plan on having at least one more full session with a standard car before I move on to anything more worthwhile, and just iron out the last few issues I have. I’m still not sure about the exhaust location microphone, but as I said a car with more grunt is going to produce a lot of sound from the exhaust anyway so it might be ok. Location Echuca Equipment Zoom F4 Sennheiser MKH 60 Boom Pole and R09 handheld Last night we stayed in Wangaratta and then headed towards Echuca through the Rutherglen winery region. We stopped off at a winery and bought a really nice bottle of muscatel. None of the wineries in this area had tours of their facilities. I might have to track down a big winery sometime and get some recordings of the production machinery. The weather today was gorgeous and sunny; in fact we both had to make sure we had sunscreen on so we wouldn’t get burnt. I have become really cautious since I got badly burnt at the Avalon Air show last month. As we were driving we came across a farm where they were burning off. This is very common in Australia as farmers want to keep their land clear of dried grass and leaves as this can become dangerous fuel for bush fires. It seemed a strange day to be burning off as it was pretty warm and quite windy. I thought there might be the risk of the fires spreading. I stood about 15 meters away from a large pile of branches that were being burnt. This was about the size of a small bonfire and I was amazed at how much heat was coming from it. A bonfire might be a nice thing on a cold winter night, but on a hot windy day it felt uncomfortable. It also gave me a small insight into how dangerous a big bushfire would be as this fire had flames about a meter high, whereas the bush fires in February had flames over ten meters high. I still have no idea how people fight fires of that scale. Even with the heat being produced the sound itself didn’t carry very well. I could hear the fire crackling, but the distance just seemed to be too much to get a strong signal to the mic. I didn’t want to jump over the fence so I’ll just have to wait for another opportunity to grab some more fire samples. Next we drove on to Echuca which is an old town on the Murray River. The Murray River is the border between Victoria and New South Wales and in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s was a major trade route. Echuca was one of the biggest ports along the Murray and is still home to a collection of restored and working paddle steamers. We went for a ride on the Emmy Lou which was originally built in 1912 and worked for many years along the Murray. The Emmy Lou still has her original wood fired steam engine, which was incredibly quiet considering the power it was putting out. In fact the paddle steamers were the quietest vehicles on the river, all the speed boats and jet skis were much louder, so technology and advancement don’t always make things more environmentally friendly. I captured some excellent material of the noise the engine did make, as well as the paddles pushing the boat through the water, and a few blasts from the boats steam whistle, which were really loud. This boat has overnight trips where you stay in cabins on board so I think we’ll need to come back for that sometime as it was a great trip for just an hour; sailing downriver all night and having dinner on board would be fantastic. www.emmylou.com.au/ Location Albert Park Equipment Zoom F4 Sennheiser MKH 60 Boom Pole array and R09 handheld AKG D112 Well today in some ways made up for Avalon not being quite what I had hoped it would be. The Melbourne F1 Grand Prix is on this weekend and today was a day for some F1 practise as well as some of the other cars doing some short race events. I hadn’t planned much on going down there, but when we woke up and could here the cars from our apartment I thought it might be worth taking a look and see what was happening today. Because I hadn’t organised prior media access I just needed to get a ticket and go in normally like everyone else, which was hardly the end of the world, it would just limit where I could go once I got in. I captured a little bit of material at the end of a GT race, I got some fairly good material of some Porches, Lotus, BMW’s and I think maybe a Ferrari. A guy showed me the program and told me there was going to be a BlackHawk Helicopter demonstration in about half an hour so I headed over to where they had one parked just in time for its pre launch prep. I managed to capture a clean full power up and take off sequence which I was really happy about, especially so since the BlackHawks at Avalon had been a total disaster with all the crap music and commentary going on. This time the helicopter was on a patch a grass miles from anyone or any noise with only a few guy standing around waiting to take photos, so it was a great opportunity. Later on I managed to capture a fair bit of good material as two BlackHawks did their manoeuvres. After that I caught some more Army gear as they had brought along their hotted up Land Rover. This thing is insane; six wheels, all supper slick racing tyres and rims, and a 7 litre super charged Chev engine that sounds like thunder. I got a good deal of material from this and also talked to the guys in charge about possibly organising to visit them in the future and get some samples of it actually on the track, so keep an eye out for that one. Mixed in with all this for some reason the local maintenance guys were trimming some trees. I guess maybe it was for safety on the weekend, but either way I even got to record some chain saw sounds, the guy seemed fairly keen to help out to so I got a few extra revs as he was working which was great. Thanks Mr. chain saw guy! Then we got the F1s. Bloody hell but they are loud! I tried different positions and also used my D112 mic which is specifically designed to deal with high output sounds. Obviously all I could ever capture was the sound of an F1 flying past at crazy speeds, and some general race ambience. I am going to need to be a lot more influential before I’ll get an opportunity to attach a mic to one of those beasties, but I did get some good material today, far more than I was originally expecting. Every day I go out recording its almost impossible to predict the outcome. I guess I just need to get out as often as possible and hope for the best. |
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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