Last week I did my first field recording session, using the Marantz PDM660 recording kit. Although I still have more places to explore around the city, and trying different zoom mics, I first began with some of the sounds that most would think of straight away when asked about urban city sounds.
My first recording was, typically, a car; I live on a road that isn’t overly busy so it was easy to get a clean recording panning left to right with hardly any disturbance. After this I then wanted some train sounds, so I walked to station and managed to get a clean recording of a train starting up and pulling out of the station; even getting the steam sound, that wasn’t planned, which I now want to put into my piece. As the weather wasn’t exactly the greatest, I decided to take advantage of the rain by recording it itself, as well as footsteps walking through puddles; these can become ambient sounds trickling in the background, being layered underneath.
Although I am using sounds from around the city, I will be recording sounds that I will make purposely because I have ideas of sounds I want in my soundscape. The first recording I have included in my piece is that from water going down the drain after I ran a tap, and after putting some EQ and little bit of reverb on this it now has a sort of ‘falling stars’ effect, falling nicely into the beginning of my piece that starts off very eery and space like.
This was my first, what I myself would class as, real experience with a zoom mic, and I finished it feeling more confident in myself when it comes to field recordings. Also realising that when I was walking round with mic I was able to imagine my piece in my mind, seeing the direction I want it to go in and hearing sounds I know could work in it. From the sounds I already have recorded the next I want to use is the recording of the train, manipulating it to use it as a sort of bass rumble, building the piece up, and potentially adding some distortion to it to use it in other areas of the piece.