Return of the Waller Creek Toads
Got some more good audio of the Waller Creek toads who serenade my neighborhood every spring. This time I got them early in the spring when they're most numerous. This excerpt was recorded inside the storm drain where my street crosses the creek so it has great natural echo.
Return of the Waller Creek toads
2m41s 2.78MB stereo mp3 (click above to download)
| (Fri 13th Jun 2008 01:02) | phonography |
binaural NYC
had a working vacation doing videography in NYC this September and decided to take my personal equipment along. i didn't really want to use my big stereo mic, since i actually wanted to enjoy the city, so my little in-ear binaural mics came in very handy.
here are a couple of subway recordings i made with them. #1 is a ride on the W train, from 14th to 34th street; #2 is my favorite i think: a dopplering bagpiper in a Times Square station tunnel. the echo was gorgeous.
W train, 14th st to 34th st
6m03s 6.40MB binaural mp3 (click above to download)
Times Square bagpipes
2m19s 2.51MB binaural mp3 (click above to download)
| (Thu 06th Dec 2007 08:24) | phonography |
binaural Mexico
drove to Mexico with Denny in April for a big family reunion (hers not mine) in a little village not far from Nuevo Progreso and actually managed to get a few minutes of audio amongst all the partying (i must have drunk a few cases worth of coronitas while i was there). it was a wild time and i had a blast, even though my Spanish isn't so great and only a few people there spoke English.
even got to kill one of the pigs. or try to. i shot the sucker right between the eyes and it still took a knife in the heart to kill it. wish i'd thought to get audio of that! then again, considering the strange looks i got in Progreso while wearing my binaural mics (which i thought were pretty well-concealed!) it's probably best i didn't. (the recording from Progreso is perhaps for another post.)
this recording is from the first night we were there, while the pigs were cooking and the women were making fresh gordas. from scratch. the high-pitched tapping sound you'll here is them flattening the masa (made from corn that was ground on the spot) before they go on the fire. you also might hear some bufo valliceps (Gulf Coast toads) in the background. this little village is in the middle of farmland and there are irrigation canals all around; i wasn't adventurous enough to walk around the middle of a strange nowhere in the pitch dark by myself carrying a bunch of recording equipment. it was quite loud, but what impressed me most about the soundscape there was the underlying silence. there was no traffic drone, no AC compressors, no aircraft, no sirens. according to Murray Shafer this is a high signal-to-noise ratio. i thought it was beautiful.
so, here it is; a binaural recording from Ebanito Nuevo (headphones recommended); people cooking, eating, drinking, playing, toads croaking. pictures to come....
and oh btw, the food was fantastic.
Ebanito Nuevo, April 20, 2007, 7:11pm
3m5s 3.6MB binaural mp3 (click above to download)
| (Thu 06th Dec 2007 08:06) | phonography |
fire hydrant
this was a pretty amusing situation. i stepped out onto my front porch one morning to find the fire hydrant in my front yard blasting water onto the street. turns out the city of Austin sent a worker out to open the hydrant in order to flush out the water lines in the neighborhood--apparently they were getting reports of funky-tasting water.
so i thought i'd take advantage of the situation and set up my gear right behind the hydrant (AT-822 on a regular stand with boom arm, pointing in the direction of the water flow). not long after that the fire department showed up, thinking i'd openend the hydrant myself so i could record it. so i got some good-natured hassling from the AFD guys and after explaining what i knew of the situation they told me to keep on recording and took off. about 10 minutes after that an APD cruiser shows up and the officer tells me he'd gotten a report of a guy opening a hydrant to record the sound of the water. it was like a game of "telephone." i told my story again and referred the officer to my neighbor who provided independent confirmation.
nothing serious, but amusing, and maybe slightly confusing.
this recording is a 2-minute excerpt from the whole minidisc i recorded; you can hear the fire engine pulling up in front of my house, but the rushing water is so loud that's about all you can hear. even loud conversations 3 feet from my mic can't be heard in the recording.
gushing fire hydrant, March 2, 2007, 3:39pm
2m01s 3.46MB mp3 (click above to download)
| (Thu 26th Apr 2007 06:12) | phonography |
Patrick's Ferry never gets old
here's one more piece from my last trip to Onalaska, TX that i've finally got round to editing. it was recorded from the Patrick's Ferry boat ramp pier facing toward the parking lot and the ramps, where the best wave action was. sunset was approaching and the only other people there were a family with a small child whose voices i captured.
i'm interested in what i record, obviously, or i wouldn't record it in the first place--but recordings from this place move me like no others i've done. i never get tired of them.
Patrick's Ferry boat ramp, November 25, 2006, 3:18pm
5m37s 7.71MB mp3 (click to download)
| (Thu 01st Mar 2007 07:50) | phonography |
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