I recently purchased a TASCAM DR-40X Multi Track Field Recorder. I have been looking for something portable that I could take with me for field recording and record ideas, as I previously had a tape recorder which has unfortunately broken. I decided to record some sounds around my house. Dragging my fingers across a radiator, pushing my hands through a hairbrush and rubbing it against my acoustic guitar.
The first couple of sounds from this reel make me think of rain falling on a rain mac. Towards the end it can almost sound like contact damage in a fight, or the contact between two animals fighting.
I was thinking this particular sound could potentially be housing damage or, wiring coming loose in a building, with other overlaid could create a particular sensation of a intense scene.
This radiator sound is quite atmospheric. But unfortunately I hadn’t mic’d it particularly well, as the radiator is by a window the condenser built into the DR-40X isn’t an ideal microphone to capture this sound and I believe I would have more impact with a shotgun mic. There is quite a lot of background bleed on the recording. Which I imagine when recording and layering multiple sounds could become a problem down the line with sound design work. I also was holding the DR-40X in one hand whilst creating the sound with the other. This meant a lot of the takes had low end warble which would potentially cause problems when applying compression/EQ later down the line, however for a light feint sound within the background to create atmosphere, I wouldn’t need any low end and could get away with it.