Happy New Year, Again!

Location
Melbourne City
Equipment
Roland R09
Handheld

I was very happy again today that I have made a habit of carrying at least the R09 with me at all times. We were in the city today to do a bit of shopping and discovered it was a day of celebrations for Chinese Luna New Year. (I forgot the celebrations went for a full week) There was a parade as well as small groups roaming the city giving traditional new year’s blessings to businesses. These blessing are focused around noisy drum and gong rhythms as well as a dancing dragon and fireworks. I think the idea is that it scares away troublesome spirits and helps to ensure prosperity for the new year. From my point of view it’s a ton of great sounds to record.

We caught at least two separate blessings at different ends of town as well as following a parade along the main street for some way just because we were coincidentally going the same way. The good things about parades and events like this is that they are often quite loud and so its easy to get a good strong sample, also general people noises are as much a part of the event as everything else so having people walk past doesn’t tend to spoil the recording. The R09 is perfect for this kind of situation, it kept a constant strong signal but didn’t pick up my movement from walking (although I have gotten very used to walking smoothly from time spent recording). The stereo samples are also really good for the depth of sound of these events.