Final Project!

Project 3 -- Sonic Sketch

My second location i've decided will be my apartment. I feel there are a variety of sounds that I can work with and I plan on manipulating panning a lot so that I can really give a sense of where you are as you are moving through the space. The variety of sounds include: the door opening and closing, me cooking, the refridgerator, the space heater, the humidifier, and the toilet whining while filling up, to name a few. 

As for the transportation from point A to point B, it will start with the slamming of the back door, shutting out all other sound from location A. You'll hear walking up the stairs with some jangling keys panned left, until you reach the top, where you hear the keys unlock the top door. Once you walk inside the apartment, the sound of cooking in the middle ground and the refridgerator hum in the foreground will fill your ears. The door closes behind you and you proceed to the living room, where the space heater (foreground) and humidifier (middle ground) are chugging away. After a while of sitting in the living room, you hear the sound of the toilet flush in the background. You then hear the whine of the toilet refilling the toilet water tank. I think i might end it with the listener sitting in my office chair and the sound of typing.

With location A staying fairly similiar to the way it was for project 2, i want this project to illustrate the contrast between the noise of indoor life and the beautiful sounds of the outdoors. To remind people to spend time outside once in a while. To not miss out on the wonderful world we live in.

Project 2 - Final

 

Sonic Sketch -- Part 1

These recordings took place at the Menomonee river overflow next to honey creek parkway in Milwaukee. This is a place I used to walk back in high school with a couple of friends. The surrounding area has side streets, so not too much traffic is caught on recording, and plenty of naturally occuring sounds.

My goal for the remander of the project is to capture more ambient sounds (animals, rustling leaves, etc.) as well as more foreground (something rusting in the bushes, any type of small animal, etc.) I feel like the sound of the running water would make a good middle ground sound and I have a couple of good clean recordings during this sketch that will probably be used.

Project 2 -- Editing in Post

For this project I used Adobe Audition CS6 for the sound editing and exportation.


1) For the first clip I attempted to use noise reduction right off the bat. I hoped that it would reduce the massive background noise I was getting from the cars on the freeway but I had little to no success with that. I then started by shaving off a little bit of the high frequency I was getting from the mic. I was able to do that without sacrificing any of the other sounds in the recording. I then used a low frequency highpass filter to take care of some of the freeway noise.

2) The second clip I went through a similar procedure. I took a little off the top of the frequency spectrum, and used highpass filter to lower that rumble from the freeway in the background. After I did that, I used a very light noise reduction to help reduce that background sound. This made the rest of those kid sounds and geese calls much more prominent.

3) Clip three went through the same thing as the previous clip. The recording was in the same location as the last two so the same issues kept popping up. I feel though that for this recording the noise reduction might have been a little too heavy. The mid frequencies are a lot more prominent which makes this a less accurate of a recording.

5) This clip went through a more dramatic version of the  previous treatment, with much better results. The discrete sound recording was supposed to capture not just the goose call, but the movement of water near the edge of the pond. After using the high and low pass filters I used before, and then used a stronger noise reduction, you are able to hear those distinct sounds much better. I then amplified the whole track by using a the normalize function.

6) The sixth recording was extremely tricky. My goal was to remove the rumble from the wind hitting the mic, while not boosting too much of the background noise. I used a highpass to remove that rumble, but after normalizing the track, the rest of that background noise became even more apparent. There was no way to use noise reduction because the sound of wind encompassed a lot of spectral frequencies.

7) For the seventh clip there was a lot of wind rumble that got in the way of the rest of those higher frequencies. By using another highpass with the parametric EQ I was able to normalize the track and bring up the rest of the recording. This was really the only improvement I could make to this clip. The NT4 is really not ment for recording large gusts of wind, even with a wind screen.

8) The final recording doesn't really sound too much different. I attempted to remove some of the handling noise using noise reduction. That does not work with sounds that occur occasionally. I then attempted to reduce just the frequency of that particular sound, which also did not work. I could not find the exact frequency so I did a fairly soft highpass to help reduce the amplitude of the handling noise.

Project 1

My recording locale was McCarty Park in West Allis. I  had two recording sessions; one on Sept. 18th and the other on Sept. 19th. In this post I will list my recording log after the recordings. After the log for each individual recording I will give my opinion on the quality and any other note I have about it.

Some issues I had right off the bat were the lack of a 4 Channel mode, which is the one thing I didn't check when I checked the equipment. Another thing, which I am still confused about, is when I asked the equipment room lady for an NT3 she looked confused and said "did you mean an NT4?" I said that I would prefer both and she only gave me the NT4. Not sure why that would have been confusing for her since I'm pretty sure she is the head of the equipment room.

Regardless of the fact that I had two recording sessions, my location lacked some of the sounds required for the assignment, or were at least near impossible to record. Discrete sounds were few and far to find, whilst there was plenty of ambience from the nearby freeway and the geese on the pond. I also did the recordings in order which would have been fine if it weren't for the massive wind that I had during the second recording session. This rendered my mobile recordings useless.

Here are the recordings:

Here is my recording log:

#1 -- Stationary Ambient 1
Time/Date: 09/18/12 -- 5:15pm
Location: McCarty Park --- Park Bench 1
Mic Type: Zoom
Settings: 90 degrees

I feel that the ambient sounds have a nice range of high and mid frequencies. There is some line noise that I wish I could get rid of somehow but I know there really isn't much I could do about that. Other than that the recording is clean, no handling sounds.


#2 -- Stationary Ambient 2
Time/Date: 09/18/12 -- 5:20pm
Location: McCarty Park --- Park Bench 1
Mic Type: Zoom
Settings: 120 degrees

Less line noise in this recording, possibly due to the the change in degree angle (although I didn't think that would have any effect). Very clean recording with a plethora of high and mid frequencies. Not sure how I could fix the lack of low frequencies (if that is at all possible).


#3 -- Stationary Ambient 3
Time/Date: 09/18/12 -- 5:30pm
Location: McCarty Park --- Park Bench 1
Mic Type: NT4
Settings: 96 Volts

The full spectrum of frequencies is present in this recording. The hum from the freeway in the background fills that spectrum in the lower range and is somewhat overpowering the mid and high frequencies. There might have been a little handling noise towards the end.


#4 -- Stationary Ambient 4
Time/Date: 09/18/12 -- 5:45pm
Location: McCarty Park --- Park Bench 2
Mic Type: NT4
Settings: 96 Volts

I definitely noticed some handling noise in this recording. The NT4 is extremely sensitive to it, like you said in class. Again, not sure if there is much I can do about it in post.


#5 -- Audio Closeups 1
Time/Date: 09/18/12 -- 6:00pm
Location: McCarty Park --- Pond Side Pavement
Mic Type: NT4
Settings: 96 Volts

I attempted to capture the goose's call but when I got close to it it got quieter. After normalizing this one the line noise became more apparent. There was some handling noise


#6 -- Wind 1
Time/Date: 09/19/12 -- 9:00pm
Location: McCarty Park --- Park Bench 2
Mic Type: Zoom
Settings: 90 degrees

I felt for the most part that this recording was a fairly successful recording of wind. The Zoom mic was definitely the better mic for this job, for reasons I'm unsure about since both mics were using wind screens.


#7 -- Wind 2
Time/Date: 09/19/12 -- 9:15pm
Location: McCarty Park --- Park Bench 2
Mic Type: NT4
Settings: 96 Volts

A lot of wind interrupted this recording, even though during this time the wind had calmed down a bit, leading me to believe that this mic was not ideal for recording wind.


#8 -- Running Water/Rain 1
Time/Date: 09/19/12 -- 9:30pm
Location: McCarty Park --- Tree next to Pond
Mic Type: Zoom
Settings: 90 degrees

This recording definitely had handling noise, but I'm surprised that there wasn't more considering I was holding on to the mic with one hand and the tree with the other. I was trying my best to get as close as possible to the pond water to capture the rain hitting the pond. The rain did sound nice though with a lot of high spectral content.

Weekend Soundwalk

1)  Here are some of the things I heard the first time I stopped:

The long continuous vibration of crickets, rhythmic mid frequency chirping.

The clicking of an unknown bug, intermittent but predictable pattern.

The all-encompassing frequency range of freeway traffic hum, frequency in a state of flux.

Slowly descending pitch of an airplane passing overhead, familiar and predictable.

The rustling of the leaves of bushes from the movement of a small animal. High frequency, loud.

High frequency rustling of leaves from treetops. Resembles the sound of waves crashing.

2)  Some details about my journey:

I walked from 79th and Becher to McCarty Park, which is on Arthur St. I felt that the soundscape I heard was very predictable. There were a couple of sounds I wasn't expecting to hear, like the bug I couldn't identify and what I  thought were ducks on the pond. The rest were sounds I was expecting to hear at 10pm on a weekday. Doing this did help me focus on my surroundings more. It always helps to get a reminder to stop and listen to everything around you, to take in the environment. 

3)  Sound Map: