welcome. i'm kevin sample. i live in the northfield neighborhood of austin, texas, and i'm an amateur phonographer. you're probably wondering what phonography is. it's an endeavor not many people are familiar with, and a relatively new term, encompassing the arts of location recording, "nature recording," and composition. most of what i do could be called field recording; my particular focus is the collecting of sound with the intent of capturing some unique aspect of a place or event that may escape our ordinary attentions. these sounds may or may not be manipulated for other (compositional) ends.
my aim here, in particular, is to present my own unique and perhaps peculiar view of my sonic neighborhood, and perhaps bring to the foreground some of the sounds we edit out of our everyday perceptual world. i hope it will be an enlightening experience--it certainly was (and continues to be) for me.
if you have trouble listening to the streamed mp3 files, try the download links.
wind & rain - i love the sound of wind, especially through trees, but it's very hard to capture, especially if you can't afford those ridiculously expensive zeppelins & fur covers for your mic. i managed to find a cheap "fur" cover and it works fairly well. but without some context, wind can just sound like white noise, which, while soothing, isn't very interesting. it's much more interesting i think to capture the effects of wind on objects like trees and wind chimes.
i don't like rain (i.e. getting wet and muddy), but i thoroughly enjoy the many subtle, hypnotic rhythms of falling rain--and the white noise of passing cars is strangely soothing.
1. rain, march 28 2006, 9am - this is a very short excerpt from an entire disc of rain that was recorded on my front porch, where the sound of the falling raindrops is transformed by my broad-leafed plants. birds, thunder, and passing cars also.
download ( 5m10s 6.88MB 186kbps vbr stereo mp3 )
2. rain, march 27 2006, 5pm - this is the very end of a storm, same location; the rain is sparse and very spattery and there's more bird presence.
download ( 3m 4.09MB 191kbps vbr stereo mp3 )
3. wind, august 5 2006, 7pm - wind in the trees and leaves blowing across the street in front of my house.
download ( 5m39s 8.32MB 206kbps vbr stereo mp3 )
4. wind chimes, september 24 2006, 1am - this was made using my homemade "stereo" contact mics attached to a very old bamboo wind chime. it was very a blustery night, which was perfect as it takes a lot of wind to make the chimes loud enough to record. if you turn it up a bit you can hear the harmonics created by the wind blowing over the tops of the chimes. if you turn it up even more you can actually hear my neighbor's party.
download ( 1m55s 1.98MB 144kbps vbr stereo mp3 )
5. steel wire, september 28, 2006, 1:30pm - made using my new homemade contact mic attached to an insulated steel cable strung between two trees in my back yard. what you hear (i think) is mostly the vibrations caused by the movement of the trunks and branches in the wind travelling through the wire. i was amazed at how sensitive the mic was to any vibration in the tree it was attached to.
download ( 2m50s 3.27MB 161kbps vbr dual mono mp3 )
6. rain, september 23, 2006, 5pm - this is my all-time favorite rain recording in its entirety--a very short thunderstorm recorded from my front porch, which is my favorite rain-recording location. it's quite long because i wanted to preserve the built-in "story" of the recording. it begins as a driving rain and evolves into sporadic spattering. when i first listened to this (right after recording) i thought it sounded terrible, but after a little editing to remove some of the worst wind noise i can listen to it over & over again and never get tired of it.
download ( 14m16s 21.2MB 208kbps vbr stereo mp3 )
7. tree spring, february 24, 2007, 12:50pm - this was my attempt to somehow capture the motions and sounds of trees in the wind in a more obvious way. i anchored a screen door spring to the trunk of a tree in my back yard and connected it to a fairly thin, mobile branch during a period of high winds, then fixed a contact mic to the trunk end of the spring (see photo). i must say i was pleasantly surprised at the strange sounds that resulted. it almost sounds like the tree has been immersed in a giant cheap reverb tank. i recorded an entire disc of these otherworldly sounds, however 3 minutes at a time, i think, is probably sufficient.
i think this recording would make great source material for a "composed" field recording piece someday.
download ( 3m1s 2.46MB 160kbps vbr dual mono mp3 )
waller creek - the creek just down the road from my place is a great source of water sounds, from trickles to rushes (depending on the weather).
1. bridge at chesterfield & nelray, april 12, 2006, 8pm - this was recorded using an old Sony ECM-929LT mic on a short tripod set up right in the middle of the water, at one end of the short tunnel under the bridge pointing toward the other end. the area under the bridge has some very interesting acoustic properties, making everyday, ordinary things sound rather eerie.
download ( 3m 3.6MB 168kbps vbr stereo mp3 )
2. bridge at chesterfield & franklin, april 20, 2006, 4:55pm - a very short excerpt of a recording i made using homemade binaural mics attached to my glasses. binaural mics give a more realistic stereo image due to their placement near the ears, so i highly recommend listening to this with headphones to better reproduce the image. i'm basically on the bridge looking down at the rushing water--the creek was swollen due to a thunderstorm the day before.
download ( 29s 677KB 188kbps vbr stereo binaural mp3 )
3. contact mics in stream, april 18, 2006 - this was recorded by submerging my homemade "stereo" contact mics in a very shallow part of the creek.
download ( 2m38s 3.74MB 198kbps vbr stereo mp3 )
the city - a lot of people look at me funny when i start talking about listening to the city. but when you step outside your house onto the street it's there; something completely distinct from the "natural" sounds of rain, birds, and flowing water. it's the drone & hum of millions of artifacts doing their things all around you, some under immediate human control, some completely automated. some are emotive, others are completely impersonal. some draw your attention because they're right in front of you and just plain loud. everything else melds into the background and we tend to ignore it, but it's there nonetheless....
1. charcoal, october 16, 2004, 8pm - i love grilling year-round in austin, as do a lot of my neighbors; sometimes i'll even do it when it's raining. but i'm pretty picky about how i grill & what i use; i don't soak charcoal briquets in lighter fluid. i use a flue to start oak chunks then transfer the hot coals to the grill. makes everything taste better. plus the real oak makes neat sounds while it's heating up. i recorded this with my old Sony ECM-929LT as close to the flue as i thought i could get without cooking the mic.
download ( 1m8s 1.53MB 189kbps vbr stereo mp3 )
2. band practice, december 7, 2004, 10pm - recorded with my Sony ECM-929LT hung from the pecan tree in my front yard. i really have no idea where the bagpipes are coming from, and to tell you the truth i'd rather not--i prefer the mystery. you can hear how much the neighboorhood dogs really enjoyed the pipes, as well as the neverending drone of traffic in the background.
download ( 2m19s 2.79MB 168kbps vbr stereo mp3 )
3. garbage day, may 26, 2006, 9am - binaural recording of the garbage truck going down my street, recorded from my front porch. what better signifier of city life is there? again--headphones highly recommended.
download ( 2m2s 2.92MB 200kbps vbr stereo binaural mp3 )
4. air conditioner, june 11, 2006, 3pm - the drone of AC condenser fans is about as loud as anything in summertime austin--we just tend to tune them out. no tweaking of any kind was done to this recording.
download ( 53s 1.29MB 202kbps vbr stereo mp3 )
5. police helicopter, december 14, 2006, 1:30am - i was in the middle of watching ST:TOS in bed when i heard this helicopter repeatedly circling over the neighborhood. ever since Holland Hopson mentioned to me he was working on a compilation of flyover sounds i've been keen to capture more of them, rather than see them as annoyances that destroy the "purity" of my phonographs. apparently something serious was going on--in addition to the police chopper with its spotlight on there were numerous APD cruisers in the neighborhood, including one that drove down my street with its spotlight aimed right at the houses. in this clip the helicopter makes about 5 circuits around the neighborhood at what seemed like about a hundred feet up.
download ( 6m19s 9.32MB 206kbps vbr stereo mp3 )
so i thought i'd take advantage of the situation and set up my gear right behind the hydrant. not long after that the fire department showed up, thinking i'd openend the hydrant so i could record it. so i got some good-natured hassling from the AFD guys and after explaining what i knew of the situation they told me to keep on recording and took off. about 10 minutes after that an APD cruiser arrived and the officer told me he'd gotten a report of a guy opening a hydrant to record the sound of the water. it was like a game of "telephone." i told my story again and referred the officer to my neighbor who provided independent confirmation.
this recording is a 2-minute excerpt from the whole minidisc i recorded; you can hear the fire engine pulling up in front of my house, but the rushing water is so loud that's about all you can hear. even loud conversations 3 feet from my mic can't be heard in the recording.
download ( 2m01s 3.46MB vbr stereo mp3 )
creatures - there are plenty of animal and insect sounds to be found around here. it's very easy to miss some of them, however, because the sounds of human activity can be so loud in comparison.
1. grackles & red-winged blackbirds, february 17, 2006, 5pm - no shortage of grackles in the neighborhood at any time of year, but the red-wings aren't around until late fall/winter.
download ( 41s 926KB 182kbps vbr stereo mp3 )
2. cicadas, june 12, 2006, 11am - you know it's summer in texas when the cicadas start buzzing. the only processing is some EQing to bring the cicadas more to the foreground. the house sparrows are also pretty prominent.
download ( 2m28s 3.37MB 190kbps vbr stereo mp3 )
3. toads, june 17, 2006, 11pm - gulf coast toads (Bufo valliceps). i like this recording, because i think it highlights quite well the competition between "natural" and "technological" sounds in our environment. the frogs were so faint compared to the sounds of traffic that it took me about half an hour riding my bike around the neighbhoorhood to figure out their exact location. recorded on the 51st street bridge over waller creek.
download ( 4m14s 5.59MB 185kbps vbr stereo mp3 )
4. cicadas, september 8, 2006, 5:50pm - actually, i'm not really sure where to put this one. it began as an attempt to record the last of the summer cicadas, but became something very different. at the beginning of the recording 2 F/A-18s flew over quite low (plenty low for me anyway) and pretty much left me with my jaw hanging open. i couldn't wait to hear the recording when done. i was utterly nonplussed at how loud the planes were--they certainly didn't seem that loud while i was watching them fly over (although they seemed plenty loud). you can hear some obvious clipping, so i did some limiting on the highest levels, but it still wouldn't hurt to start turning your speakers down at about 50s.
download ( 5m23s 7.74MB 201kbps vbr stereo mp3 )