There is a skateboard park underneath “The Connector” in Boise with the usual ramps, pyramids, & rails. I stopped by today and made 2 recordings… The first is behind one of the ramps, and the second is out between both ramps. It was damn cold!
Thanks to the motivation from the folks at Sound Diaries here is my first recording of 2009… I guess the geese were startled by all of the fireworks & gunshots on New Year’s Eve.
Recorder: Fostex FR2, Microphone: R0de NT-4
I worked on a project with Craig Clark & Susan Valequette during Boise State’s “Christian Week” in October of last year. Craig recorded some video & Susan shot some stills of the Christian Club’s event. Any of the school’s clubs can request a week to display & inform the rest of the student body about the nature of their club.
The Christian Club brought in 3 full-size wooden crosses and mounted them on one side of the Quad sidewalk, near the library. On the other side of the walk they set up tables with info pamphlets & free bottles of water. The student body had to run this “gauntlet” to get across the quad. Now, I must say that the Christian Club was quite polite- not stopping people & pushing pamphlets in their hands, but the gauntlet was rather intimidating… Especially with the 3 giant wooden crosses!
So- I was recording some of the interactions and general ambient sounds when a man walked up to talk to a couple of the Club members. When he looked over at me this is what he remarked:
Recorder: Fostex FR2, Microphone: Sennheiser ME66
One of my first early morning sound hunting forays to a local pond taught me to pay attention to what is sometimes hard to see. I set up my microphone in a parabolic dish to record the sounds of the pond animals as they started their day. Once I got everything hooked up & turned on I heard a buzzing in my headphones. Thinking that I might have a short in my cables, or a malfunctioning microphone, I started checking each of my connections and swapping microphones. I turned the dish around to look at the microphone & the buzzing stopped. When I turned the dish back toward the pond the buzzing started again… I did this a couple of times until I thought to look through the clear dish to see what the microphone was pointing at: about 10 feet away was a hovering dragonfly. The buzzing sound turned out to be the wings!
Recorder: Sony PCM-D50, Mic: Sennheiser ME66 & Sony parabolic dish, Date: 08/30/2008