I forgot to take pictures of my expedition to Gylde aside from this strange church. I ran into a few problems on this particular trip. I discovered on location that the Roland Binaurals were not compatible with my TASCAM DR-40x and that I needed to book out a zoom to use those. I also was not aware of the difference between M-S Stereo and Stereo, so had issues getting the Sennheiser MKH 418 to work. I was really hoping to see how a stereo shotgun would feel in the field, as it would most probably negate a bit of the wind due to it’s narrow hypercardioid pattern. I would like to rent this equipment out and try again soon. This meant I was stuck with the inbuilt microphones on my TASCAM DR-40X, I had also messed up the settings so play back was distorting my signal. Luckily my field recorder is fine and equipment hadn’t broken in my care…. but unfortunately, when I had noticed my TASCAM wasn’t sounding correct, I had purposefully tried to find sounds that worked within that distorted sound, gravel scuffs, car noises and general layered sounds that could be effected in ways that might not make it obvious what the source is. At this point I had a bit of a realisation that these kinds of sounds of nature might be able to work with Solaris, and it made a lot of sense in the meanings in that film, that the sounds of the planet would be, like every other experience of it, a foray into ones own subconscious. This has made me decide on picking a later scene in the film with the alien planet, so I can concentrate mainly on atmos, as that seems to have become my priority with my interest in field recording taking a prominent part of this assignment.
I did a sound walk with my (seemingly broken) TASCAM and put my TASCAM to the end of a funnel drain half way down a path up a hill. This sound had a very interesting resonance, the plastic tubing picking up these running water sounds from underground.
I started playing around with this effect, thinking about whether it could be a sound from Solaris’ alien planet, or maybe from the spaceship itself.
Next I played around with pitching down the sound. The deeper sounds didn’t work so well with the effects so I removed them and just tried to heavily compress in order to bring out some bass and swell to the sound.
and finally, I tried it even lower.
I’m not sure if I will end up using these for anything but the last one feels like it could be almost meditative if I had a longer recording. In future recording sessions and I am going to make sure if there is a sound like this I like I capture it immediately for as long as I can before I am interrupted by an external source. As usually, some movement will happen, like a plane overhead, or a siren or obnoxious sports car to interrupt. Shortly after I recorded this, the drain had stopped making sound. A shotgun might have worked better for this, by the DR 40x still has a lot of directionality and I personally find that maybe these field recorders most useful skill is getting right up close to a sound source or drone, as with my other recordings I got today, there is interference from me holding it with a stick adaptor I bought online (which in no way acts as a shock mount). The Sennheiser 418 Shotgun might’ve got better recordings but I have been finding my inputs a little noisy and am thinking of bringing a proper Sound Devices one in tandem with the 418 the next time I take it out for a spin.
Birds at Glynde Station, the gain was very low on this recording as with most in built recordings. It might still be salvageable, the bird song is very nice before it was interrupted by a passing train and a siren shortly before this clip.
Here is some sound for effect I recorded, thinking about the distinct sound the scuffs could make, which with my slightly buggy field recorder at the time sounded very out of phase and sort of 70s sci-fi. I might collage with some kind of anti-phase effect and see if I can make it sound slightly unhuman but still traceable to the audience.
A ticket booth machine at Glynde which I closely mic’d as a potential room tone. Will experiment with pitch to see if it could be remotely sci-fi.
Milo was talking about Jurassic Park sounds and the use of reverse on top of the original sound. I had a very one way panned traffic recording and tried out what this sounded reversed. Traffic not having an instantaneous attack or cut off doesn’t really lend itself to reversing, but balancing out the pan is slightly interesting. Not sure its of use though. Wondering if Reversing could be used subtly as a textural tool.
Not the most profitable in terms of sound capture but have learnt a few crucial things. I need to find a way to put my TASCAM DR 40X down as to not pick up the sounds of my hands twitching whilst still being able to listen in and not produce any noise. (I found at one point the sounds of my shoes straining from me squatting ruined a take by a pond….) So valuable insights for my next session. Also just generally picking the right time of day. Early and not the weekend is the best time for avoiding activity and giving yourself longer amounts audio to edit with.