#32

I’ve recorded the galahs that nest in a park at the end of my street.

Their chatter is a sound I associate with the town of Leeton and hearing them helps me recognise first light when I’m at home.

4 Likes
#33

recording of the wind through the bamboo in my neighbor’s yard–the bamboo has been the source of some controversy. Recorded on my phone using Sennheiser binaural recording headphones.

3 Likes
#34

This is a recording of the sounds of the backyard, which is coming to life gradually as the weather improves and since it is the main chunk of our outside time. I wasn’t aware of there being so many sounds until I was editing the file. Of course I heard the birds, but I could not hear the kids inside the house, barely a neighbor, much less the sound of somebody working or the dog in the distance… all of that I became aware after the fact. I recorded with a h2zoom and then added a little EQ and compression for clarity (I apologize because I totally underestimated the breeze and later I tried to clean, but there are still big blurry chunks in the mid frequencies).

3 Likes
#35

Hey folks, just came across this topical article recently published here in Canada discussing the growing interest in soundscapes around the world. My favorite sentence relates to Rome: "The chirping of birds, she added, is ‘almost too loud.’”

1 Like
#36

this is ¶radio hummingbird’s contribution to this week’s disquiet junto with the serial number 0436. in short, the requirement for this contribution was to provide a recent fieldrecording reflecting the changes to our sonic environments inflicted by the arrival of the corona virus pandemic.

location of recording: cologne, germany - inner city/barbarossaplatz
day of recording: may 09, 2020
time of recording: approx. 05:50 am

context: in the early morning of may 09th i recorded a little more than four continuous hours of the sonic urban environment from my balcony in the middle of a big german city. i live close to the centre along a busy thoroughfare and junction where a few main roads as well as a number of tram lines meet. furthermore, my area is lined with bars and clubs which usually makes for a rather noisy environment (if not exciting at times). however, due to the arrival of the global corona pandemic this changed significantly and i am now, for the first time, able to hear bird songs when out in the street. and surprisingly, there is quite a variety of unexpected species to be heard: peregrines, the flyover of ducks and geese, parakeets (yes, this city has a large amount of “wild” parakeets roaming the air), swifts and swallows, jackdaws and many many more…

choosing a representative section of my lengthy recording has, however been a challenge. the recording started with a beautiful dawn chorus of black birds and some other species joining in later, however, i had a pile of people drinking and chatting down on the road the whole night just until about 5:30 am which i found just a little too disruptive of the actual dawn chorus. you might wonder now: people drinking in groups out in the streets? indeed, the lock-down is significantly eased here already and this is now seemingly possible without any repercussions. traffic noticeably increased during the last two weeks as well and with it the noise levels.

so instead, i have opted to chose a snippet of the recording just after the the people loitering dispersed. the dawn chorus receded significantly by this point but you will still be able to hear the odd bird chirping on against the increasing traffic noise.
a significant portion of this recording clip does, however, pick up a person (homeless, disadvantaged or otherwise unable to sustain themselves) collecting all the leftover beer bottles to trade their deposit in for cash later in the day. i thought this is an important reminder of the people most affected by this crisis: vulnerable and, for whatever reason, disadvantaged humans had seen their means of survival disappear over night with no public social life taking place outdoors and nowhere safe and sustaining to go to. and this is something which should never be happening anyway, corona pandemic or not.

i gave the recording a light treatment with a compressor but otherwise did not apply any modifications other than fade ins and outs.
please enjoy what you hear………

4 Likes
#37

I made these recordings on the Friday evening & Saturday afternoon by walking around the town I live in (Crécy-la-Chapelle, Île-de-France) during the 1hr permitted exercise per day. The government plan to begin easing the quarantine starts on the 11th of May, tomorrow.
Compared to a month or two ago the signs of life are already very much creeping back in. It no longer feels like a ghost town when venturing outside and you can feel that people are slowly easing back towards some kind of normalcy.

I went out both times hoping to capture the sounds of a relatively-small town gradually coming back to life, but actually was a bit disappointed each time that I didn’t quite capture what I was looking for.

Some of the things you can hear

  • Lots of birds
  • A river
  • My footsteps along an old secluded cobble path
  • My feet trampling some old dead leaves
  • @Elisa-room237 talking with some neighbours at around 8pm
  • Wind (regrettably - though I filtered out everything below about 190Hz)
  • Sounds of a small local supermarket; beeps of items being scanned, children running around with waterpistols, music from the radio
  • Car engines in the main square
  • People preparing for an afternoon BBQ
  • Some kind of hammering
  • Very faintly a man operating a sewing machine

The last two points are what I had hoped to capture more of - the re-emergence of the sounds of human industry. I was walking along my street and noticed that this tailor / fabric shop had its front door open and a man working inside, which I was quite happy about, but otherwise didn’t find much more like that. Perhaps an evening / weekend is not the best time for that kind of thing.

There was a small local market happening this morning which I had hoped to capture, but it was raining… and I woke up too late :sweat_smile: So perhaps just imagine what that would sound like.

3 Likes
#38

https://soundcloud.com/ohm-research/aoao-disquiet0436

The two metal working businesses near my office are still in operation. The buildings face each other, with a narrow parking lot in between. One of the buildings is backed by a dense forest populated by birds and, I am sure, many other creatures. I’ve spotted a swan in the nearby pond now and then. This is a field recording made between these buildings while on my daily walk. There is a reverberation between the metal buildings with the sound of the bird population in mid day activity that accompanies the sounds of industry.

3 Likes
#39

Backyard, Brooklyn. The third attempt, after catching the noise of the family in the house, and the quiet of my basement office on a Sunday morning. Instead, the sound of birds, wind, rustling trees, and traffic from an expressway. Recorded using Easy Voice Recorder on a Google Pixel 3.

3 Likes
#40

Forest lot of approximately a hectare outside of Boulder Creek, California. This was recorded at about 10:00 in the morning in our back yard, about 6m from a wasp nest. You can hear my wife exercising indoors in the background, and our neighbors up the road.

We’re lucky it was this quiet today; yesterday when I went out, the neighbor was running a wood chipper.

Recorded with a Sony PCM-M10.

1 Like
#41

garden coffee (7​.​57am / bank holiday friday / notts uk)

i havent noticed the birds sounding louder. everything seems quieter and theres more of a sense generally of that. that said, birds seem braver, like they’re getting closer than before. there’s a magpie who tries to get leftover catfood, who’s been landing close to us in the garden, who was tapping on our bedroom window the other morning.

i recorded this using easy voice recorder pro on my moto g6 phone
just equalized the low and high freqs and normalized.

i ran out of space on soundcloud again, and was unable to set up another account. ive got about 20 sc accounts so not sure if i’ve somehow been blocked from setting up another one. anyone know if this is feasible?

2 Likes
#42

Disquiet0436
Global Headpiece
• Key: All BPM: 124 Time signature: 4/4 DAW: Reaper
• Instruments: n/a
• Plug-ins: n/a
• Made an outside recording from inside my SUV and from inside my hoodie pocket while running errands. Made an inside recording by sitting my handheld recorder down on a table and letting it record what ever was happening in the room.
• Cut and pasted the recordings on to several different tracks in Reaper.

2 Likes
#43

Early morning birdsong, traffic noise, the odd pedestrian and dogs. Recorded with a Sony ICD-AX412 recorder with a wind muffler, on the bonnet (hood) of the car, just outside our front door. Bonus: sound of me walking out with the recorder and retrieving it afterward with Vaderesque breathing (must oil the door hinge, too!).

1 Like
#44

Our restrictions are being slowly loosened in Western Australia, and life is starting to spring back onto the streets. Restrictions still remain though, in terms of movement and social distancing.

Here is Nira the Staffy expressing how frustrating barriers and restrictions are, despite them being necessary for the good of all - in her case, she is upset about not being able to cross the street to chase the neighbour’s cats :slight_smile:

Recorded with binaural microphones, listened best with headphones.

2 Likes
#45

Short segment of a drop-rig recording in my garden. It’s Springtime and the birds and bees are doing their thing!

2 Likes
#46

I have to say I am really enjoying listening to all these field recordings. Birds, traffic, snippets of conversation, sirens, more birds, water, footsteps… They’re the perfect background noise for my work this afternoon. Well done everyone!

3 Likes
#47

The sounds of suburbia from my back porch around dawn. The drone of traffic on the interstate, distant train horn, birds chirping. I grew up on a farm in the middle of nowhere. Still don’t feel 100% comfortable with city sounds, but here I am.

2 Likes
#48

I live at the edge of a swamp. I meant (“meant”) to record the dawn chorus, but I am extremely not a dawn person. So here’s the dusk chorus of frogs instead. It’s raining, otherwise the birds would’ve joined. RØDE NTG2 pair (HPF enabled), Tascam DR100mkIII. But mostly frogs. And rain.

2 Likes
#49

I chose some of the trails behind where I live because they are a meeting of three worlds: close enough to busy roads that we can hear the traffic, wooded enough that we have coyotes and bears lurking, and well-travelled enough that I always across come across a community member going for a walk as well.

Not much else to say - I recorded it on a Zoom H4n. Made it a mono file so that my listener will only have to use one headphone. Did a little bit of EQ’ing and compressing to bring out the birds and lower the “room” tone.

2 Likes
#50

These are the sounds right outside the new home office on a rainy day, and the soundtrack to every zoom meeting that I’m in. Birds, drizzle, light wind, and an occasional car in the distance. Recorded about 8 inches above the ground where it comes up close to roof level (it’s a built-into-hillside house) using an SM57. Minimally eq’d to emphasize the birds and vehicles a bit. The cover image is the recording location.

2 Likes
#51

recording as I grilled [beyond] burgers. despite quarantine, human sound continues to mark the soundscape.

cheap lapel mic straight into an iphone

https://vimeo.com/417439456

2 Likes