Every time I go into my attic I hear outside sounds coming in through an unused vent pipe, and I'd often wonder what it would sound like from inside. So a February sleet storm seemed like the perfect opportunity to find out. Basically I stuffed my microphone (windsock attached) as far into the pipe as I possibly could, and waited for the heating unit to cycle off, as the unit was very loud and very resonant inside the pipe. I was waiting a while as the temperature never rose out of the thirties all day. Even with the unit off there's a standing wave resonance inside the pipe.

I thought this particular phonograph merited sharing because of its uniquely skewed view of everyday neighborhood sounds, and not because it seemed inherently pleasing to the ear.

download ( 2m59s 3.03MB vbr stereo mp3 )

This is the tail end of a sudden short hailstorm, the kind of thing that's likely to happen out of the blue in Central Texas during tornado season. This storm generated some hefty chunks of ice; the loudest sounds in this recording are those chunks hitting our cars.

download ( 2m16s 2.35MB 144kbps vbr stereo mp3 )

download ( 2m41s 2.78MB 145kbps vbr stereo mp3 )

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 thin branch on a very windy day (cold front coming), then fixed a contact mic to the trunk end of the spring (see photo). I was pleasantly surprised at the strange sounds that resulted: it sounds like the tree has been immersed in a giant cheap reverb tank. I recorded an entire disc of these otherworldly sounds, but a 3 minute dose, 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, icy & drainy, January 16, 2007, 1pm
4m57s 7.26MB mp3 (click to download)

Yes, it does occasionally get cold enough in Texas for water to turn solid and fall from the sky. But unless you're in the panhandle it happens only rarely. Earlier this month Austin practically shut down for a few days; it was fun if you didn't have to drive.

Since I'm fairly new to phonography, I haven't yet had the chance to record in icy weather; I had no idea how difficult it is. It's very frustrating trying to record when anything you put on the ground freezes to it in about 5 minutes. And I also kept getting a strange hum from my contact mics when they came in contact with ice. However, I did manage to get some good stuff.

It didn't quite snow, but we did get lots of freezing rain and sleet, and I made it my mission to capture the sounds of that frozen precipitation hitting the ground. My method was to place a contact mic under a frozen leaf and record the sounds of the ice/sleet hitting the leaf. I couldn't record it actually hitting the mic directly: you get nothing but clipping because the mic is so sensitive. And the leaf creates a much more organic sound anyway, I think.

Recorded with a homemade piezo contact mic (scavenged from an old telephone) into a Sony MZ-R50.

Freezing rain, january 16, 2007, 12:10pm
1m44s (click to download)

Highland Mall Grackles
1.45MB vbr mp3