Unheard Sounds – Audio Project 1

The hydrophone was quite fun to work with. The main issue I had was wasting water, so that reduced the amount of opportunities I could record. This was also the only time I repeated an audio clip, as I didn’t want to record for as long as the However, I still managed to get some good sounds, although in future I would think ahead and plan my recordings to coincide with cooking for instance, if I needed to boil some water and wanted to record the water pouring in the pan.

I also used a clip recorded with the contact microphone, as I wanted to capture the sound of the water going through the detergent compartment of the washing machine. This made for an interesting recording, and I actually found that water travels through there a lot more often than I expected, so managed to get quite a bit of useable sound.

There were sections of the fish tank recording were you can hear talking from outside the tank. To begin with, I took it out, but then I decided to leave it, because my first idea for the water, was to make it seem like the listener was underwater, and the muffled, deadened dialogue that you feel you should be make to make out fits in with that.

The track ended up as quite a bit shorter than I would have liked, but I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing, as if I had tried to forcibly make it longer, it would have been incredibly boring and drawn out. As it is, it may well be switched off half way through!

I discovered a totally different problem when editing the coil pick up clips, and putting them into a piece – there was too much. By that, I mean I could have happily created a piece 30-40 minutes long with the audio I had, but had to restrict it, as it would better fit with the other pieces. It has been my most successful track by far, probably based on nearly all of my recordings being useable and interesting.

The only issue with having a track that long is that is may not hold the interest of listeners. Whilst I find these sounds fascinating, one thing I have always kept in mind is how long someone else would listen to it before they started getting bored. I think this track in particular, because they likely won’t have heard these sort of sounds before, outside of a science fiction movie, they will hopefully want to listen for longer.

The audio also seems to fit well together, likely because it all has a similar static quality, and all sound electronic – unsurprisingly. This made it very easy to overlap, fade into new clips and have more than one playing at a time. Very often the two sounds actually complimented each other.

Another observation I made with these clips was the unexpected regularity some of them have. This wouldn’t have been discovered had I recorded for only a short while. I’m not talking about the constant bleeps, those can be noticed from just a few seconds of listening, I mean, for instance, the seemingly random burst of static every now and then in the track with goes all the way through the piece, and can be heard at the beginning and end. The bursts are so far apart, you probably wouldn’t recognise any repeated sequences, but upon loading the clip into Pro Tools, the waveform revealed these regular bursts. I find it interesting that something as random as static can still have a pattern.

As I have recorded most of the sounds I am using, I thought it would be a good idea to reflect on the sounds I collected for this project, and for any that went wrong, a suggestion as to why that was. I have already gone through a couple of sounds in particular in the posts about problems with the recording process, but I’m also going to talk about some of the better sounds too.

Without a doubt, the easiest microphone to use has been the coil pick up. Not picking up any ‘normal’ outside noise, it can’t pick up any dialogue, people moving around or general background ambience. This means anything can be recorded at any time. This microphone also comes with a suction cup, so it also doesn’t need to be held or stuck in place. Aside from the ease-of-use, it also creates the most interesting sounds. By interesting, I mean intriguing, sounds that you can never hear normally. You can also find these with the other microphones, but not all the time. At the start of this project, when I first heard about coil pick up microphones from Jez Riley French’s website, I knew I was going to enjoy using them, and I was excited to start recording with it, but I didn’t realise how fascinated I would be with every single clip. Even just slightly moving the microphone over my laptop can produce two completely different sounds. Additionally, recording a plug socket for an hour is much more exciting than recording a washing machine for an hour with a contact mic, because the sound varies so much. Static builds up and then falls again, and random bleeps surprise you in the middle of the track. It has been a joy discovering this microphone.

Using a contact microphone on metal objects has been the best material for me during this project. The resonance creates some amazing effects, and I love the way a leaf hitting it further down the line can send an echo all the way along the material, something you wouldn’t hear usually. Household appliances were not as exciting to record, they sound very similar to how you would expect, but higher or lower in pitch. Some of them produced noises or pitches you can’t hear usually, but most of the time is was almost exactly the same. This mic caused the most problems during recorded, both with attaching or holding the mic, and also picking up a lot of background noise due to it’s sensitivity.

Equally, with the hydrophone, the sounds were basically what you would expect most of the time. However, the pond and fish tank did have the occasional quiet ‘click’, which are presumably the creatures in the water interacting with the hydrophone. Another surprise was the bath bomb dissolving in the bath. What started off as a fairly expected sound actually became something quite interesting. The sound began as a bubbling mass, fairly similar to recording a boiling pot. However, as the bath bomb dissolved, the sound started to lose the higher frequencies. The whole process of it dissolving was a gradual frequency change that was very interesting to listen back to. Using the hydrophone wasn’t too difficult, though I did need to time my recordings due to sound’s ability to travel through water very well, and I didn’t need to worry about attaching the mic or holding it, as I could just hand it over the side of the bath/pond/tank/sink etc.

I came into this project not wanting to use any effect, but instead keep the sounds as natural as possible, inspired by Jez Riley French’s unedited recordings. When it came to editing, I realised that some of the sounds had so much dynamic range, the boiler for instance with a low rumble and regular loud blips, that it wasn’t possible to include those clips without either having the loud parts clip, or not being able to hear the quieter bits. This meant I had to use a little bit of compression in order to for them within the piece. This has been the only editing I have included, so whilst I am disappointed that I felt I needed to use it, I’m glad that I have barely used plug in effects.

Another problem I have faced when editing, which has not been so easy to fix, has been the huge difference in recordings from the same mic. Trying to piece together sounds from different mics was difficult, but I am facing similar issues with certain recordings from the contact mic. For instance, the contact recordings taken of the metal fence were full of higher frequencies, and contained a lot of natural reverberation due to the material. Compared to the boiler recording for instance, which is much lower in pitch and has very little noticeable reverb, it has been hard to blend these sounds together. Because of this, it is easy to see why recordists such as JRF separate dedicate a track t each sound, and leave them as they are.

Lessons learned:

– Try to keep similar recordings together. Collect sounds that have been recorded from the same type of material, to ensure better combination.

Continued from the previous post, I found some further practical recordings when I was going through the sounds and editing the pieces.

The noise of the recorder/mics is very loud when you are recording quieter sounds. This was particularly evident when recording my pond – the occasional sounds were incredibly quiet, so in order to make them loud enough, they needed to be turned up. Needless to say, this also increased the volume of the machine noise, so then ruined the recorded sound. That said, it wasn’t just the hydrophone recordings that had a problem with internal noise; a couple of the contact recordings have an unmistakable, constant tick through the recording. When the sound builds up, the tick can’t be heard, but it is very distracting during the quieter periods.

Partially related, before I starting using tape to hold the contact mic to the surface, I just held the mic there with my fingers. However, the mic picked up the creaking in my fingers as I was pressing it down, which also meant those recordings were mostly unusable.

Lessons learned:

• Record louder sounds, or on a lower gain setting, until I get a new recorder with less internal noise
• Be sure to keep an eye on the recording level. If outside noise is too loud to be able to hear it, it might be noticeable on the levels