So I decided to head down to Hartsholme park, just outside of Lincoln, to record ambience for the day. I was using the 664 at the time, and I opted to use a matched pair of 414’s again (as I really liked the sound of them in my earlier experiment). I employed the A – B mic setup, as i wanted more of a broad stereo image, as opposed to the focus of the mid/side configuration. I think the A – B setup is the closest to replicating the human ears as you can get – without using a binaural mic. The stereo bar I used is roughly the width of a human head too, so the recordings come out sounding good. The stereo bar was also ideal in this scenario, as I needed to pack up/down the kit quickly and efficiently when moving from location to location (and travelling to the park initially).

Unfortunately, while the park is fairly far from the road, there was some lingering drones of traffic in the background. Unfortunately this couldn’t be helped, and it’ll take some swift EQ to sort these frequencies out. Hopefully i’ll be able to leave the beautiful birdsong. The ambiences from this day of recording will go into the exteriors of taphobos, particularly one recording that I managed to capture, of an owl. This will be great for evoking the classic hollywood tension of a ‘horror’.

Sound samples below.

(LO1)

This time around we had the 664 in, and I decided to head down the brayford a way, to capture a bit of the ambience there. I was pleasantly surprised to find some lovely birdsong and other riverbank wildlife, which I set about recording.

I elected to record mid/side again, as I was impressed with the recordings i’d made before with the technique. I decided to get a little exotic with my mic choices, and went with a Neumann U87 for the figure 8 and a AKG SE300 with a cardioid capsule, which proved to be interesting choices. I had the pair on two little mic stands – and used two ‘dead kittens’ to keep out the wind.

The ambience is pretty sweet – although I think i’ll stick with two 414’s for next time.

This is a short sample of the recording:

(LO1)

I decided to experiment properly with mid/side recording in the field. I’ve done it a few times in the studio before, but never to capture ambience on location. I noticed that when linking two on the channels on the 633, there’s a M/S option. After a quick read of the manual, I figured out this was mid-side matrixing. I initially thought this meant I wouldn’t have to do anything to process the signal afterwards – but that turned out to be wrong, I still had to flip the phase and double up the figure 8.
I just set up in my garden – as I only had a tabletop mic stand and a full sized mic stand to play with, so I set them up on a table outside to experiment with the signal and see what it sounded like. My garden runs adjacent to a road, so while there was some nice nature sounds (birds etc) there was also unfortunately the drone of the cars on the road. As it was only an experiment it didn’t matter – the ambience could well be useful for a suburban soundscape at some point too.
The actual stereo sound was fantastic – a lot better by comparison than the X/Y mic i’ve used before. The center mic gives some really nice focus – while the figure 8 gives a lovely wide stereo spread. I used two 414’s in this example – but I may experiment with other microphones in the future. Possibly the Neumann – which i’m aware has a figure 8 pattern. The main issue with using these large diaphragm condensers is mostly portability, and as i don’t have a mic clip for mid-side, my option would be to cart out two mic stands with me whenever I want to record in the field. which isn’t an impossibility – it’s just a pain (as I usually walk to my locations).
A few people pointed out that they’d usually put the figure 8 mic on top of the cardioid. I didn’t see any reason to really, as that front angle is already covered – but might be something for me to remember to do in the future. The experiment was mainly just to see if the technique actually worked – which I really think it did.

(LO1)

I decided to head to the nearest grassland that I was aware of, and that was Lincoln’s own South Common.

I decided to head up to catch the sunset, and brought a recorder with me to capture some ambience. The space is big, but not huge; it is also surrounded by roads unfortunately, and it was roughly 5 when I arrived at my recording position, meaning the roads were at their busiest. Nevertheless, I settled down and began recording.

As it was a relatively long walk (and because the 633 was booked by someone else), I decided to use the Zoom H4n with the Rode NT4 stereo mic. This was no massive deal, as the H4n still records in 96k and has two XLR inputs that I could link to take a stereo file of the recording.I brought a little tabletop mic stand to put the Rode on, and just used the Zoom’s Rycote to keep out any wind. The recordings were, well, okay. I think I’m particularly critical, but I found the pre-amps very noisy – noisier than i’d expected. The 633 isn’t exactly perfect – but it is a clear step above the Zoom in terms of the signal-to-noise ratio.

I did capture a fair amount of traffic noise, but I did also get some really lovely ambience, particularly birdsong. I was sat just in front of a large woodland area, and I recorded a large amount of multiple birds singing, and the echo through the space. There were a number of different voices – and I’ll definitely use a lot of the birdsong when i’m constructing the ambience in Taphobos.
I found the mic to be particularly sensitive, which was very interesting at points. I could clearly hear peoples voices and movements from 50+ meters away, and I occasionally heard voices from people I couldn’t see around me (which was very weird).

Below is a small sample of the recording:

(LO1)

So I’ve spent the last month recording heavily, capturing a lot of original ambience for Taphobos. I’ve had the motivation of completing my 100 Hours Project to aid the extensive recording process, and up to this point, about 80% of what i’ve recorded for that project will be used in Taphobos. It’s really a common ground – the project is more demonstrating my ability to actually do field recording, while the profits of that will be unique, original recordings I’ve personally captured, that’ll make Taphobos a genuine and compelling experience.

As I said, I haven’t posted for a while, and have since ploughed through 20 odd hours of recording. I will go into detail in separate posts to follow, about what I recorded and how, and where possible, what purpose it’ll serve in the game.

(LO1)