Field Recording

Last fall, the last time my Trends in Modern Sound Design class met was to go on a field recording field trip to 1000 Steps Beach in Orange County.  The beach is about 15 minutes from campus down a steep stairway (about 232 steps - not that I was counting) from the Pacific Coast Highway.  Once you're on the beach, the road is inaudible, and at 9am, there's little human activity on the beach.  So, on the Monday of Finals Week, we hauled a bunch of gear down to the beach to make some field recordings.

Earlier in the quarter, we spent some time talking about how to strategize the recording session for optimal content collection and editing speed.  We first talked about what kinds of recordings we'd like to make. We settled on these formats:

* close-miked sound effects (water, animals, etc.)
* binaural ambience
* spaced-omni pair ambience
* coincident pair (XY) ambience
* omni ambience
* 5.1 ambience
* M/S ambience
* spaced-cardioid pair ambience

When we looked at the list of formats, it became apparent that we needed three teams of students. So, I divided the class into three teams.

• Ben, Ning, and Mingna would together handle a system that included a SoundField ST-350 microphone and a pair of spaced AKG 414 microphones. The ST-350 sends four channels (ambisonic WXYZ), but can be decoded to omni, coincident pair, 5.1, and M/S. The AKG 414 microphones have an adjustable polar pattern, so the team could choose a spaced-pair omni or cardioid. Those six channels (WXYZ & two 414) fed into a Zoom F8 recorder.  They would set up on the beach and record ambience.  

• Andrea and Andrew would together handle the shotgun mic for close-miked sounds.  They mounted a Sennheiser MKH 416 on a boom pole, recording onto a Zoom H6. Andrea handled the boom.  Andrew handled the recorder and monitored on headphones.  They were tethered by cable.

• Jordan handled the binaural recording by himself.  He wore a custom-made binaural ball-cap, with the omni elements sewn into the headband at the ear positions.  Those mics fed a Zoom H4.  

We met on campus at 8:30 and caravanned to the beach.  Once we were on the beach, we found a rocky plateau sufficiently far up the beach (the tide was slowly coming in) to make an impromptu camp.  Each team was responsible for collecting all of the gear (including stands, cables, batteries, etc.) they'd need, so once we got to the beach, the teams started setting up.  Teams shotgun and binaural were first out of the gate, heading south to a rocky water cave with lots of great water-against-rock sounds.  Team multi-channel took longer to set up.

The recording session itself was lots of fun.  Team shotgun enjoyed scrambling over rocks to get some great sounds of water lapping against the rocks, but their attempts at wildlife was less than successful.

Team multichannel spent some time adjusting their microphone spacing and distance from the surf, but got some excellent recordings of surf.

Team binaural (Jordan) took had a much-needed opportunity to have some quiet communion with nature after a particularly busy quarter (and an emotionally-taxing production).

As the session wound to a close, the teams started packing up, and Ning found herself in the wrong place at the wrong time with respect to the tide.  

Ultimately, we collected some great recordings!  After the session, the students went back into the studio to edit and render the recordings.  Teams binaural and shotgun only had to create two and one-track recordings to render, but team multi-channel needed to use some specialized software in the Meyer Sound Design Studio to render their recordings into all of the requisite formats.  I created a Google Doc that automatically turned the recording information that the teams entered into the appropriate data formats for uploading, both to our private sound effects server and to FreeSound.org, where we've put our recordings for public access.  We're still working on mastering and uploading all the audio, but once it's done, I'll post a link on this blog!