Field Recordings Playlist:
https://soundcloud.com/amanda-61017344/sets/field-recordings
For my three exterior recordings, I went to the Day Hall stairs. The first recording is me walking by some buses near the stairs because I thought that the engine noises they were making was an interesting sounds. The second recording is me entering and walking up a short portion of the stairs. I tried my best to capture the sounds of footsteps on wood for this one but the buses from the previous recording could still be heard in the background. My third recoding for this would be me exiting the stairs. I recorded this in order to try to capture the change from being inside a somewhat enclosed area to one that is completely open.
As for my interior recordings, I decided to go to Archbold gymnasium since I knew that I would be able to get a variety of sport related sounds. My first one would be a recording of people playing basketball. I started the recording before I walked into the court and was able to get some nice echoey sounds of people talking as well. I think that the music playing in the background once you enter the court also gives the listener a good sense of how big the space is. Kendo was the next sport sound that I recorded. This provided me with the sound of a clack, followed by a loud shout. The last recording I did in Archbold was the sound of people playing Racket ball. I feel that the echo of the ball bouncing off the wall in this recording also gives the listener a sense of how big the room is.
I went around to different places on the campus in order to get recordings of my object exploration. My first object was the creaking of a door in Archbold. I feel that this recording really captures just exactly how old this door was and, listening back on it, I find that the creak is so high it’s actually somewhat painful to listen to. The low moaning sound of the room tone also gives it a sort of spatial aspect to it. The rustling of leaves was my second object. What I did was use a stick to move around some leaves on a bush and rotated the mic a bit. I also may have ruined the recording by accidently touching the microphone itself when rustling the leaves. My third object was the sound of a mail box. I opened and closed the lid multiple times in order to get the clangy metal sound. This mailbox also happened to be under a streetlamp so the humming of the electricity could be heard in the background. I moved around the mulch on the ground for my fourth object recording. What I did was shuffle around on the ground in order to get the crunching sound. I tried to move the microphone from left to right in an attempt to get some sort of moving motion the recording. My last object was more of a performance then an object. I went to the dome and stood in between the pillars. The way the pillars are made allows for a nice reverberation that can only be heard when you are standing there. What I did for this, was get me and my friends to make sounds that went high to low and vice versa. I thought that this was interesting because it was very similar to a warning siren.
I think I was able to nicely explore a lot of different sounds when doing my field recordings but it was unfortunate that the room tone/ wind noise was quite prominent in many of them which, despite sometimes adding to certain recordings, might have taken away from some of the sounds.