Steve Pelikan wrote:
>I've posted an mp3 at
>
>http://homepages.uc.edu/~pelikas/Warblers1.mp3
>
>Sorry, it is something like 6 min and 9.3 MB (I could lean on it a bit
>more or send it to you some other way. If you're willing to listen to
>it and if size is a problem, let me know.)
>
>This is an experiment to make a recording from which people can learn
>bird songs. There's a background recording that was made in stereo,
>and then I've mixed in recordings of 7 species of (new world)
>warblers, each shifted slightly away from equal volume in the tracks
>and usually with the quieter track having an approx 1 ms delay to
>simulate coming from different directions.
>
>The recordings of the individuals birds were mono from a single
>microphone in a parabola. The mono recordings of the species were made
>within about 500 meters of the location of the background stereo
>recording, and all were made within 10 days of May 1st (though in
>different years).
>
>I used a compressor like function to slightly reduce the loudest parts
>of the warbler's songs and allow me to increase the background (and
>noises in) the background stereo recording.
>
>Overall there's about 15 or 20 species of birds that can be heard in
>the recording, but the 7 main warblers, in order of appearance, are
>Yellow Warbler, Pine Warbler, Nashville Warbler, Cerulean Warbler,
>Ovenbird, Louisiana Waterthrush, Kentucky Warbler. (All but Nashville
>breed near where I live.)
>
>When I have something I like, I'll make another version in which a
>voice if added in identifying the birds as they sing for the first
>time; then ship out the pair of recording to folks as a "quiz" and
>"answers".
>
>I'd REALLY APPRECIATE any suggestions you can offer about how to
>improve this mix --- about the basic idea of this sort of thing, how I
>might improve the overall idea or my execution of it, and how badly
>you feel I've damaged the "stereo" effect by mixing in mono
>recordings. What would make it better?
I wasn't able to keep track of what was what having only your species
list. But I hate voice announcements. It started me thinking in a new
way about making identification recordings.
My idea is to make the IDs as floating print titles over a video or
still photo of the scene. The bird name would appear in the visual
panorama in the position where it's heard. The little-used ability of
DVDs to have alternative video streams could be used to view either
titled or untitled versions of the clip and switch between them
instantly.
I believe such a video could be made in Flash, which would be a small
file compared to conventional video. That would work for the net.
I looked at the iPod specs; it looks like they play
reduced+compressed conventional video, but not Flash files, so I
guess the production path could be either:
1) Produce as video in movie-making software, make reduced print file
for internet and iPod, or
2) Produce as flash presentation, print to conventional video,
process as above.
I'm not bothered by the mixed-over birds. Sounds like they're close
by. One could get into simulating the actual reverberation of the
space with a convolution program...
>How important do you think
>seasonal and geographic coherence are for this sort of thing?
I think the closer the better, and you've done the right thing.
>In deference to comments people made here a while ago about how
>unrealistic it is to provide recordings without anthropogenic sounds,
>I've included / left in (towards the end) a passing airplane and a
>backing dump truck.
I no longer stop recording for anthropogenic interruptions; I think
it's important to have a record of the whole scene for scientific and
political purposes. That said, I'd edit out interruptions from a
recording like this, unless you're doing urban birds, of course.
-Dan Dugan
"While a picture is worth a thousand words, a
sound is worth a thousand pictures." R. Murray Schafer via Bernie Krause
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