Guest Contribution by Frank Bry In this article I will reveal my secrets and techniques to recording decent thunder and lightning. Many, many years and sleepless nights have gone into perfecting the art of recording the thunderstorm and I will finally share. But first, I want to share a little history and tell you how I developed these secrets and techniques. It was not so … [Read more...]
Farewell to a Fellow Mic Slinger
We are saddened to hear about the loss of Bryce Dion, a production mixer from Lawrence, Massachusetts. Bryce was killed by police gunfire while filming for the Television show "COPS." Our thoughts go out to his family and friends. The full article detailing the events can be read here. … [Read more...]
Watson Wu on Listening
Let's start out with what to listen for in a recording location. Naturally, we're always going to be looking for a space that isn't going to introduce too many environmental and human generated artifacts into the recording, but the physical layout and acoustic properties of a location can contribute as much character to your recordings as microphone selection...sometimes even … [Read more...]
Planes, Trains and Automobiles …and tanks and bikes and boats and…
Guest Contribution by Stephan Schütze Why I am not going to tell you which microphone to use The simple answer to this statement is, because we don’t have time. The exact choice of which microphone to use for each situation of recording a vehicle is a detailed exercise and would take more pages than we have space for. Even then, there is a major flaw associated with the … [Read more...]
Silence is the Sound of Listening
"One can look at seeing but one can't hear hearing" - Marcel Duchamp As you may know, silence is the topic chosen for this month here at Designing Sound. One may think silence is not existent if we value it as an absolute sonic absence, but here I'm going to examine its role and possibility towards the act of listening to sound, silencing, not as that state of complete sonic … [Read more...]
Harvesting Anomalies
Guest Contribution by Ivo Ivanov Take a moment to think about the magnitude of all the rejected material that disappears during your editing process. Material with unwanted artifacts, discarded without much further thought, as it is rendered useless due to a number of auditory issues or location-specific problems. Now imagine if those discarded bits of audio were actually what … [Read more...]
“How to Record Waves” on Quiet Planet
Gordon Hempton has a new article up on his Quiet Planet website talking about recording waves. Find a beach exposed to the open ocean (high-energy) with a large tidal change (higher latitudes) at least several miles from the nearest frequently used road (wilderness) that slopes sharply, so at low tide you encounter diverse substrates (sand, gravel, cobblestones). Head here to … [Read more...]