Vocal Recording Pt. 2

Machine

Vocal Recording pt. 1

Interview with Dan Seals - a Chicago based audio/video technician

Final Paper

John Armleder - "16 Great Turn-Ons"

Ambiguous Sound

What is it? (1:18)

I did not take a bus trip for this assignment, however I did go to New York by plane. For the majority of my time there I meandered around Manhattan. The recording was taken at a...wait for it
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Subway Station!

Drift Field Recording

For this project I really did not use a specific drift strategy. I just walked around and went to wherever seemed interesting to me at the moment. This allowed me to more freely pursue interesting sounds. Throughout my drift I ended up on the prairie path, close to the beach, and in a parking garage.

10/14/09 - 4:10 pm - under a bridge
Sound Recording 1 (mp3) - :32
Spot Explanation

10/14/09 - 6:30 pm - in an alley
Sound Recording 2 (mp3) - :30
Spot Explanation

10/14/09 - 6:55 pm - parking garage
Sound Recording 3 (mp3) - :30
Spot Explanation

My drift started near North and Prospect in Milwaukee. Although my walk did cover a large area, I was in a pretty traffic heavy place so it was hard to find noises that did not include some level of cars. However, my favorite noise was more separated from cars than the rest of the sounds I was able to obtain. It is the second recording of my post. In the beginning there is static noise accompanied by a soft ringing bell in the background. This is quickly followed by the sound of a bird cawing. The bird continues to caw for a while as the noise of the bell disappears. It slowly drifts away from the microphone as the recording progresses and soon a car drives by. This drowns out the bird for a little bit, but it soon returns to the foreground of the audio. The bird stops cawing for a little bit and the sound of the bell reemerges along with more traffic. Finally, at the very end of the recording the bird is heard again, but this time very far away from the microphone. To me in this recording the most interesting thing was the varying distance of the bird from the recording equipment. Overall though, this recording is haunted by the stale and ambient noise of traffic. It is nearly impossible to escape this in Milwaukee and therefore I am sure many others had to put up with this. The traffic does create a certain texture of audio, but for the most part it is boring and too familiar to be of any real interest to me. I think if I am to ever record sound for a specific project I will either need to find a desolate location in Milwaukee or just do it somewhere completely different. Also, though I was impressed by the quality of these homemade microphones, the Sonys we used to record were not all that great to use.

Found Audio

Click here for .aif (Mac)
Click here for .wav (Windows)
Total Running Time 00:51

My sound is about me losing my religion, because of this I do not want to get specific about why I used certain sounds the way I did. The start of it represents the period of time that caused me to begin to latch onto Christianity. Then it goes into a church where a preacher says 'hello hello' and music begins to play in a warped manner. The windy cyclical noise that accompanies the organs represents beginning to doubt until I finally walk away from the church. The beach, being a soft sound, is about finding more peace outside religion.