Field Recording, Crystal Cove State Beach

Last fall, I took the students in my Trends in Modern Sound Design class (all six MFA designers, and a few music PhD students) to Crystal Cove State Beach to do some field recording.  We divided the class into three groups: one group made b-format and spaced pair recordings, one group made co-incident pair stereo recordings, and one group made close-up mono and other recordings.  We talked about how to plan for a field recording trip, but each group of students had to plan, prep, pack, and carry their own gear.

We started out at the central section of the beach, where there are few cafes and lots of people. Some groups chose to wander far from the people to get some isolated sounds, but others chose to embrace the public and get some 'folks at the seaside' recordings.

After that, we packed up and drove the north edge of the park, which was virtually deserted except for a few seagulls.  We hoped to get some sounds of sea spray on rocks, but the surf was decidedly down that day.  Oh well.  At least we got a great sunset!

The student are now madly editing the sound effects and editing metadata.  Once that post-production process is complete, the sounds and metadata will be uploaded to our sound effects server so that the UCI Sound Design community can have access to it in perpetuity.  Once all that is done, I'll share some examples here!

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!

Field recording at Black Star Canyon

Last week, my Trends in Modern Sound Design class (which has all six MFAs and a few other students) got up early to truck out about 40 minutes into the desert-y mountains on the east side of Orange County. The class is a rotating topics course, and this year, we decided to take a field recording trip.  Black Star Canyon is fairly quiet (except for the occasional jet or bird chirp), and we wanted to take advantage of the quiet to record some larger machinery sounds.  We settled on two sets of sounds: an old quirky car and smashing machinery.

I divided the class into four groups: near-field recording, mid-field recording, far-field recording, and special projects (including contact mics). Each group had two students and was tasked with strategizing and assembling everything they'd need to make the recording. They assembled cable, microphones, recorders, batteries, tape (sticky, not magnetic), and other necessaries for their particular responsibility.

On the morning of the session, we assembled on campus and caravanned out to the Canyon. First up was an old (200,000+ miles) car with worn tires and busted shocks.  Then, an old beat-up air conditioner.  Then, a lamp.  Each time, the groups strategized and worked together to get the best recordings they could.

Right now, each group is editing their data, cleaning it up, labeling files, adding metadata. When they're all done, we're going to add the sounds to the UCI Sound Effects Library and make them public for all of you.  Until they're done, however, here's a video diary of our trip to amuse you:

Nighttime Recording of the [Haunted??] Claire Trevor Theater

Over the past month, I have had the pleasure of spending many hours in the Claire Trevor Theater, including four all-night designfests during tech for The Merchant of Venice. Amidst my near-hallucinatory exhaustion, I became very aware (or perhaps convinced myself) that the CTT comes to life at night—at least sonically. One notable “feature”, which actually plagued a couple of the dress rehearsals for Merchant, is the air pressure difference between the inside of the theater and the outdoors. When the correct combination of entrance doors are left open, the air travels very quickly through the doors and creates and eerie humming sound. It's somewhat similar to the use of wind whistling through open doors in David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo movie, but on a larger scale. 

So I got to thinking that someone ought to record Claire’s diverse sound palette and expansive reverberant space. I got my trusty Sound Devices 702 and a couple of mics and headed in at 11:30 PM on one night. I recorded everything I could get my hands on for about 3 hours: the enormous loading bay door, the incredible booming bass of the concrete stairwell to the catwalks, a chainlink fence of a gear cage, and all sorts of activity in the catwalks including footsteps and various bangs.

Ironically, I was unfortunately unable to capture the air pressure difference sound — I was pretty tired by 2:30AM and I couldn't figure out what combination of doors to open... Bucket list!

I've uploaded a COMPILATION of the recordings that I edited together quickly (I have the full set of edited effects available upon request).

Enjoy the spookies!
Matt Glenn