I was testing the Zoom H4n with a couple of external omni microphones while walking in the backyard. It was quite windy, picking up around 30″ and then the dog coming and sniffing the mics at around 45″.
Category: field recording
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Jetsam 13: dump
While disposing of some garden waste in Christchurch’s EcoDrop—which processes recycling,
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Jetsam 11: Two hundred beetles
I am a fan of Tim Prebble’s The Music of Sound, where he deals with field recording and the role of sound in general. Tim is running a field recording competition which requires ‘a cardboard box, a microphone, a recorder and you. Thats it! No processing allowed, submit a single take’.
I decided to go for something a bit creepy given the time of the year: getting close to Día de los Muertos. My setup was fairly simple:
- One (empty) box of Weet-Bix apricot bites.
- One JrF c-series contact microphone.
- One impedance transforming thingy.
- Two pieces of masking tape.
- One Sound Devices Mixpre-D.
- One USB cable to record in a mac air using Audacity.
- Two hundred (200) mealworm beetles (Tenebrio sp).
The setup looked like this, except that in the recording the box was leaning while the insects went in:
I was pleased with the final result, although I would have liked a more full boxy sound. I’ll have to train the beetles to behave better in the box.
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