>How did the weekend go out there. I'm assuming you was at the NSS weekend.
Yes, we had a good time at Whiskeytown Lake. The workshop was in a
new location and had a more technical theme than we have ever had
before; we did quite a bit of adjusting of the schedule but
everything worked out.
We had thundershowers while we were loading in Friday afternoon. I
grabbed my recording vest and ran up the creek and up a side canyon
to record. I got soaked, but I got a couple of good claps after
several overloads. I'm accustomed to recording quiet ambiences!
Friday night Rudy Trubitt gave an excellent overview of surround
sound recording from mikes to distribution. Lang Elliot talked about
recording with a modified SASS and showed a 4-channel SASS array that
he was trying out at the workshop. We prepared equipment for dawn
recording the next morning. This workshop's attendees were at a
higher level technically than we've ever had before. There was a
Nagra V, and a person seriously interested in buying a Cantar.
Saturday morning we got out about 5:15 AM. We went to a recording
spot near the camp, but there wasn't much of a dawn chorus, and we
were a bit disappointed. I recorded some crickets and creek gurgles.
Greg Weddig deployed the what we dubbed the "Gregga Tree," a
multi-channel mike rig that recorded into Rudy's multitrack
"portastudio" hard-drive recorder.
Saturday afternoon we split into three groups to rotate through three
hands-on workshops. One was the "surround cabin," where a 5-channel
recording and playback system was set up. I did another. I had five
stereo arrays set up outdoors. The arrays were a Rode NT4 xy, a Shure
MS mic, one of Lang's SASS arrays, my spaced-omni vest, and Greg's
ORTF pair of Schoeps with a Lunatec V3 preamp. I gave a short
theoretical talk about coincident and spaced arrays, then the
participants played with each of them.
After dinner Sam Easterson talked and showed his videos taken from
cameras mounted on animals. The armadillo was a favorite, viewed from
the top of its head. It would run, sniffing like a dog, then stop
dead and swivel its ears, then run again. We watched Bernie Krause's
inspirational piece about natural quiet, and a couple of other short
films. I played my 4-channel DVD demonstration of post-synched
recordings made on two MD recorders, which was well-received. The
finale of that was a surround recording of a rock wall at Mustard
Canyon in Death Valley that cracks and pops continuously. I'm not
aware that anyone has recorded it before.
Sunday morning we went out early again. I chose a place away from
water that turned out to be well-nigh silent. Nothing like the rich
environments we used to get at Yuba Pass. I did find a couple of
birds to record, and a nice creaking tree.
Our last session was a fascinating lecture by Michael Stocker about
the endangered sound environment of the oceans, the hearing abilities
of fish and "acoustic daylight" provided by snapping shrimp.
-Dan Dugan
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"Microphones are not ears,
Loudspeakers are not birds,
A listening room is not nature."
Klas Strandberg
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>From Tue Mar 8 18:27:07 2005
Message: 1
Date: Tue, 25 May 2004 07:08:06 -0500
From: Curt Olson <>
Subject: RE: J. W. Hardy and libraries
> Or when they opted to throw out the sound props from the classic
> animation films. Good thing Joe H. rescued them!
How quickly a thread can veer off course! So I'll take the wheel...
The comment above reminded me of one of my first jobs in radio --
part-time gig as a sound effects technician for a children's radio
drama series. "Live to tape" every other Saturday, operating real sound
props that were probably of the same vintage as the Disney collection.
This was in Chicago during the early 70's. Quite the days to recall.
Curt Olson
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