January – bridge to St. Savva well, Epiphany, Trinity-Sergius monastery
February – Maslenitsa festivities, Sovetskaya Square
March – banshee, Zvyozdotchka area
April – before the show begins, Gagarin concert hall
May – early morning birds, Kozya Gorka area
June – train peddler selliing goods
July – grasshoppers, car-sheds half-way from Skobyanka to Zvyozdotchka
August – chav-car taking off, Severny area
September – blacksmiths, city fair, Beliy pond
October – completing of a general census form
November – dentist’s office renovation, Vorobyovka area
December – piano courses, Gagarin hall
Twelve 15-seconds extracts depicting each month – from the local routine to national events. Most of the recordings are binaural, none were published before.
Recorded January-December, 2010 (SP-TFB-2, CA-14 omni, R-09HR)
Published December 31st, 2010.
So what’s next? – that was the question I have always been puzzled by since I started this blog. Collecting sounds was huge fun, editing and posting them online was even bigger fun but wait – do I really want to make just an archive, a storehouse, a sum of sounds?
We don’t hear much about Iceland and even less is heard from there. The only news that reaches us these days concerns the state of the Icelandic economy, it’s all about the recession impact, the debts and the protests.
But there’s something missing from all those reports. For example – the almost shamanic drums of those very protesters appearing on the front page of Hljóðmynd – the field recording blog from Iceland, located at http://fieldrecording.net.
It is not only about the protesters of course. Hljóðmynd features a bunch of impressive nature recordings, a number of live recordings, a bit of technical advice, all muffled up with those beautiful Icelandic letters with lots of dashes and umlauts all over. There is not a single English word in Hljóðmynd except for the url addresses.
Hljóðmynd means Sound Image. This is the case when your trusty Google Translate cannot be fully trusted – what it offers is Sound File which makes the difference. But it could serve as a decent tool anyway if you want to break the spell of not knowing and get to know what this recording is all about.
The website is run by an electrician from Reykjavik named Magnus Bergsson. Last week I contacted Magnus and asked him about Hljóðmynd the inspiration behind it. He kindly answered my questions which I’m really grateful for.
Taking up DIY audio as a hobby in the 70s he got carried away with live performances of Icelandic artists. Magnus wasn’t happy with the quality of those recordings he has heard before so he decided to make his own tapes. From the 1983 to 1995 he has recorded a lot of bands from the likes of jazz-funk Mezzoforte to Sugarcubes with not yet world famous Bjork. But most of his time was spent out in a field after finding out that if listened through speakers those nature sounds may act as a cure or as a lullaby or even as a party background.
Magnus says his major interest still lies in nature recordings but living in the capital means less opportunities available for that. He doesn’t drive a car and has no intention to so he doesn’t take his mics out in the field that often escaping the omnipresent traffic noise. But if he has a chance you can be sure it was worth waiting for.
Listening to those recordings it is hard to believe that Icelandic nature is relatively quiet – as Magnus puts it. The island can’t boast about having noisy wild animals or bugs only birds in Spring, but Hljóðmynd manages to yield great results even in such a quiet environment.
One of my favourites recordings is made on Good Friday this year – the chilling snowstorm easily turns your cosy and warm evening with a cup of tea handy into something different.
Published October 15th, 2010.
A good choice of fascinating outdoor direct sound streams from the main and side streets around the world could be found at the French website called Locus Sonus.
Not that long ago I wondered about those online audio streams that would bring the everyday charm of some faraway places apart from those I have already found – well, Locus Sonus seems to be the best answer to all questions so far.
Supplied with “Audio in art” motto Locus Sonus is the postgraduate lab project hailing from the south of France. It is based at the Art Schools of Aix en Provence and Nice but its microphones deliver pretty decent quality .ogg streams from a number of locations in different countries.
Currently Locus Sonus offers the following 24-hour broadcasts:
- 4th floor window at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston
- 2nd floor window at the apartment on the 13th street in Buga, Colombia
- artist and World Listening Project director Eric Leonardson’s window in west side of Chicago, USA
- Rhizome Art Center in Lijiang, China
- Museum of Modern Art, Medellin, Colombia
- Komplex artist-run studio spaces in Reykjavik, Iceland
- top floor apartment window in Sollefteå, northern Sweden
- dining room/garden in Le Vésinet, France
Here is a short sample from the Buga street recorded yesterday evening:
There’s always a privacy concern hovering over services like this – isn’t it a bit of eavesdroping? It looks like the Google Street View dillemma, some say it staring over their fence, the others say it stares exactly the same way as any other tourist with his point-and-shoot camera does. Locus Sonus encourages people to take part in this experiment. They offer detailed instructions on setting up a outdoor mic to broadcast your street sounds to the world and even provide the most motivated streamers with 170 euro LocuStreamBox already equipped with a microphone, sound card and wireless connection device.
Listeners can also make your own global mix by playing those sounds simultaneously, by doing that on a dedicated page on the website or – as I did – transfer the stream urls they like into the Winamp bookmarks to have them handy all the time. There are couple of dozens of non-active mics markers put on the project map and who knows if they may be enabled one day.
Published August 14th 2010.
Sberbank office sounds once appearing on oontz.ru in May are included in the Klangboot Radio podcast.
Klangboot radio.
Published August 7th, 2010.
Not long ago I’ve received a package from Chris Church in Canada. Chris is a sound engineer who runs a small cottage industry in Hamilton, Ontario making microphones and preamps at his home. Church Audio CA-14 high sensitivity omnis are one of his hand crafted mics, and after a moment of hesitation I made my choice based on rave reviews at the omniscient taperssection.com forum and also on Chris’s advice.
Pros: impressive sound quality, good build quality, low noise level, reliable cables and plugs
Cons: zero stealth factor, poor wind-proof
Ordering CA-14′s may look like buying a pig in a poke but actually it’s not. The arguments in favour of pig thing are quite strong though – there are NO specifications for that model available, at least it is not provided at the Church Audio ebay or home webpage. When asked if he has those figures at all, Chris has also said no. SEE COMMENTS – 10/09/06.
CA-14 are not listed on ebay, they are custom made upon request which takes 3 or 4 weeks to build. Chris looks unwilling to unveil all the know-hows related to the capsules and mods he uses, which is understood really. And on top of it all Church Audio stuff is known to be good for tapers, and little is heard on the subject from field recordists.
Isn’t it strange?
But in his reply Chris has claimed that, compared to his higly-regarded CA-11 mics these mysterious CA-14 are better, at least in terms of self-noise level. That’s not bad taking into account that according to the CA ebay store the noise level of CA-11 is 27dBA.
On the other hand even in the high sensitivity mode CA-14s are not that loud, so recording any quiet sources like e.g. 5 am ambience may require running the internal preamp really hissy. Thus, unless using an external preamp this is a compromise anyway.
Despite having a permanent foam, CA-14 are prone to wind. With a sensible inclination towards catching low frequency sounds, these mics stand unarmed against the gusts. Also, please note that it is very easy to be taken as a Mickey Mouse wannabee with those black foam balls attached to each side of your cap when head-worn.
Apart from this, I have nothing bad to report about CA-14. They are warm sounding, providing a decent spatialisation even if they are not intended to be worn inside the ear canal. Think of this as of an extra advantage because the sounds recorded with the head-worn mics could be perfectly listened through the speakers, not only through headphones as in the case of in-ears.
A few live recordings made with CA-14 found on the web may sound boomy, but this may be influenced by the hall acoustics. Personally, I’m quite happy with the colouring they produce while recording outdoors. They stand relatively high sound pressure level as well, which could be benefited by the battery box – didn’t tested this yet.
They are also available as cardioids, though this means the lost of the binaural magic which I value so much. The Mogami cable is rather long and robust, the plug is made by Neutrik – look out, the cover turns off very easily. Paired with an external preamp CA-14 is a promising gear indeed.
In the meantime here’s a few recordings made with CA-14 high sensitivity omni mics plugged directly into the Edirol R-09HR recorder.
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Morning bird in Skobyanka area, Sergyiev Posad (recorded 14/07/10)
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Railroad crossing, Vifanskaya St, Sergiyev Posad (09/07/10)
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Municipal Band, Sergiev Posad (21/07/10)
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Published August 1st, 2010.
