SoundBlog: Excerpts from Ambient Soundscape Recordings
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- last updated: 6-11-08
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Helicopter Air Rides
Aircraft sounds can ruin some recordings, but they can make for great recording opportunities too, like this one, when Twin Cities-based helicopter service Hawk Eye Helicopter, LLC offered air rides at the 2008 Tower Days festival in my small suburban community of Spring Lake Park, MInnesota.
To my left are carnival games; to my right and slightly behind me is a small assembly of classic cars; pedestrians and vehicles are passing directly in front of me. The helicopter landing site is in a ball field at the center of the soundstage, about 100 yards distant. By pure coincidence, at about 2:40 into this clip, another helecopter flies overhead at a higher altitude. (Note: air ride customers got considerably more for their money than this heavily edited clip might seem to indicate.)
Recordus Interruptus
Sorry about that... but imagine my disappointment at this commercial aircraft intrusion into an otherwise nearly ideal recording. This is a common challenge, faced routinely by almost everyone who attempts to make sound recordings in quiet natural settings.
Peeper Frogs, Crow and Trumpeter Swans
Just before sunset the evening after making the swan recordings below, I stopped on a trail along the edge of a state waterfowl refuge. This short soundscape features Spring Peeper frogs, a Crow and at least two distant Trumpeter Swans, among other critters.
Two Trumpeter Swans Land on Frog Pond
At approximately the same time as the events below were happening, on a small pond about two miles away, a pair of Trumpeter Swans come in on a long approach to a landing.
Trumpeter Swan Takes Flight
It's mid-May 2008 in northwest Itasca County, Minnesota, USA. A Trumpeter Swan swims close to my recording equipment, calls a few times and then takes flight. Unfortunately, there's a small outboard fishing boat running on a nearby lake, to the right of the microphones. And -- wouldn't you know it -- a car drives into the soundscape just before the big bird launches. But I'm happy to post this clip anyway.
Note the sweet natural reverberation off the trunks of hundreds of thousands of budding aspen trees lining the shore of this tiny remote lake.
Sound Portrait for Public Radio: John Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon
Here's a sound portrait commissioned by HearingVoices.com and aired nationally on the public radio broadcast Weekend America January 26, 2008.
The John Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon commemorates the son of a Chippewa chief who delivered mail by dog sled along Lake Superior's rugged North Shore in the late 19th century. The Beargrease race draws world-class sled dog teams from around the world.
Amtrak Running Late on Christmas Eve
Here is yet another recording that includes trains -- not by design, but by pure circumstance of where I've happened to be with my recording gear. In this clip, the Empire Builder, a daily passenger train between Seattle and Chicago, pulls into the Amtrak station in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota, eastbound, mid-morning on December 24, 2007. The train was carrying a record number of passengers that day, and was running almost three hours late, which an Amtrak employee explains over the loudspeaker system.
Evening Campfire in Silent Woods
This clip borders on being slightly boring, but I enjoy hearing the fire's crackling sounds reverberate into dense young aspen growth that surrounds this remote Minnesota camp site. Mics are standing about 20 feet from the campfire.
Barred Owl Breaks Pre-Dawn Quiet
It's early on October 13, 2007 at a remote camp site in north-central Minnesota. The sky is clear with temperatures in the upper 30s; there is no wind. Calls from a Barred Owl reverberate through the woods while a flock of Blue-winged Teal flies overhead. Notice also the distant engine noise. In such a quiet setting, with recording equipment turned all the way up, every little disturbance and every bit of electronic "hiss" can be clearly heard.
Ten Sleep Creek, Washakie County, WY
By Labor Day weekend 2007, the Big Horn Mountains in Central Wyoming, USA, were absolutely bare of snow. And the Ten Sleep Creek, which flows from Medowlark Lake down the western slope of the Big Horns, was running lower and slower than usual. Here's a six-minute sound clip of this mountain creek, pieced together from three separate recordings made at the Circle J Christian Camp & Retreat Center on US Highway 16 in the stunning Ten Sleep Canyon.