Sound 5: Sirens

Usually when you're walking down the street and there's an emergency, the firetruck or cop car drives right by you, both blinding you with their lights and making you go deaf with their sirens. Fortunately, as I walked around the city, I picked up cop sirens in the distance and was able to hear them in a more musical state of mind, opposed to the typical panic that they create. It gave me a new opportunity to evaluate the different tones and notes produced by the automated siren, while at the same time I didn't have to deal with a roaring engine driving by. Despite being quiet, the sirens did produce a good sound that really caught my attention.

Listen up.

Sound 4: Garage Door and Birds

I was walking around on my drift walk and noticed this man walking out towards his garage. I figured, aside from feeling weird watching this guy, that I'd be able to get some good sounds of maybe his car firing up awkwardly or a garage door opening. I got one of the two sounds as I heard him lift the manual garage door open. Although I couldn't see directly into the garage, I figured he must be doing something since it took him awhile to fire up his car. However, in the mean time, the birds, reacting to the door opening, began chirping. It was this sort of sweet melodic tone amidst the crashing of metal on metal. Soon enough, the guy pulled out of the garage and went around the corner.

Listen up.

Sound 3: Sewer Water

I got a pretty cool sound of some water running down an alley into a sewer. I'd probably regard this as being my best sound. Unfortunately, a car interrupted my recording part way through, but I did get plenty of audio. It almost sounds as if I'm in a cave that's blocked off by a running waterfall. The sound quality is really clear and you can really hear the water crashing down. You really get a good mental image of the water flowing through the grates down into the sewers.

Listen up.

Sound 2: Howling Cars

When I was walking down the river path, mixed in with the trees was the bridge on Locust. There wasn't anything exciting going on underneath the bridge except for this cool sound. Its tough to describe, but I'll do my best. It was partially like howling winds that you hear if you were in the middle of the countryside and the fields were being pushed around. The other part was the sound you hear as NASCAR drivers go around that track. That sort of cyclical whirring of engines. Depending on the speed of the car both the duration and pitch changed from where I was standing.

Listen up.

Sound 1: Running Man

I'm still amazed at how much sound this microphone picks up. I saw this guy running down the trail along the river from about 300 feet away. I really noticed how much the angle you take with the microphones affects the sound. You hear him coming more than going. Needless to say, I felt awkward recording the sounds of this guy running, but it was a good sound to say the least. A human sound created in nature. If you close you're eyes and imagine this man running down the path you can really here the soles of his shoes grinding on the pavement.

Listen up.

Revised Drift Strategy and Start Point

Original Strategy:
Looking into my draft strategy, I'm interested in capturing modern culture mixed with nature. I kind of want to find ideal spots where the two styles harmonize. Although it won't be in one area I'd like to find sound clips on different walks. I'm planning on starting to record along the east side of the river to hopefully get nature sounds and just walk up and down the road.

New Strategy:
So, I rethought my process of how I wanted to walk around. I didn't really have a structured strategy at the time and then one sort of came to me by dumb luck. I was cooking with a soup ladle not too long ago, so I decided to take the shape of that and apply it to a map. The handle of the ladle follows along the path by the river and bowl of it is back in the city. I also decide to cover all the area within the bowl as if it were filled in with soup. My starting point was at Newport and Cambridge. I decided to start on a street just to create a marker within my audio for where I was and would be. The strategy worked great. Being on the path, I was able to pick up audio from both the street and trail. Overall the strategy was a success.

After some toying with the microphones, I deemed it best that I just hold them in my hands. If I tried draping them over my shoulder I'd get too much rubbing from it brushing against my jacket. Also, by using my hands, I was able to spread the mics further apart and really try to get a surround sound effect on the audio I was recording.


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KEY:
green mark=starting point
man icon=sound 1
truck icon=sound 2
wave icon=sound 3
house icon=sound 4
cross icon=sound 5
red mark=stopping point