Bouncing Balls

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.