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Make-A-Thon - Sounds Around Town PAGE 1 |
OK, it may be a little strange to drive around town
on cold, drippy days and nights with one's car windows
rolled down listening for sounds to record in surround.
Well, that is what this project is all about.
A few weeks ago I drove to the top of a new 4 1/2-story parking garage in downtown Austin overlooking the heart of the live music capital of the world! As I was booting my laptop and audio interface, police, ambulance, and fire vehicles arrived at a street corner just a block away. I never knew it took my Mac laptop and Logic so long to boot up. Of course, all of action, including a rather angry confrontation from the scene, was over by the time I was ready to record. There was no music emanating from any of the dozens of music venues on that Tuesday night. I sat there for over an hour waiting for something, anything, to happen: a few sirens in the distance, a voice or two, a car horn, and, finally, an airplane taking off from the local airport flew directly over. The roar of Interstate 35 provided lots of ambient noise pollution. Nothing else exciting until I was rolling up the microphone cables, and half of the central fire station rolled out only a couple of blocks away. |
Sounds from the Parking Garage and the roar of traffic on I35 (stereo 1:18) |
The next Saturday afternoon I returned to the same parking grarge,
and heard the sounds of the Starflight helicopter warming up at
Brackenridge Hospital several blocks away. What could have been a
classic recording of a helicopter flyover did not happen. I could
not get booted up and setup in time. Just like photography, such are
the breaks with live recording -- and life.
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