Club Meetup at Handel House – Recording Creaks

Last week myself, Raoul Brand and Tony Gibson met up at the Handel House Museum in Mayfair, London to record floor and stair creaks for our collection.

I’d come across the building a while back when I went to an event called The New Atlantis and immediately noticed (it’s hard not to, as you can probably tell from the video above!) how creaky the floor was.  Therefore, I thought it’d be a perfect location for our latest Sound Collectors’ Club recording meetup.

I brought along a Sound Devices 744T and Schoeps mic which was used as the main recording rig but Tony and Raoul also brought along their Zoom H4N’s which were used as room mics to pick up wider recordings.

I used the Schoeps to cover 2 positions in each of the rooms we recorded in:

1. Approximately head height in order to imitate a typical boom position.  This is for when the recordings are needed to supplement foley or production sound footsteps.
2. Very close (about 10 inches) to the creaking floorboards in order to provide a potential element for sound design.  Part of the reason I recorded at 96kHz was also to support this type of usage.

Most of the rooms’ flooring provided similar kinds of creaking.  The main distinction you will notice in the recordings (if you contribute to the set) is between the actual rooms compared to the landing at the top / bottom of the stairs. The stairs themselves had been renovated relatively recently so didn’t make as much noise as, say, the landing, which Tony nearly managed to put his foot through!

We also tried to cover a mixture of different walking:

1. Not really walking; just moving our feet in a way so as to coerce the biggest creaks out of the boards.
2. Walking slowly and more naturally so as to get separation between creaks (for easier editing) and making smaller, more ‘everyday’ creaks (as opposed to the loud, ‘Haunted House’ creaks we were otherwise achieving).

By the way, apologies to other members for having to limit our number to the three of us – it’s only a small building and because of the type of sound we were recording it would have been impractical for loads of us to go along.

Many thanks to Martin Wyatt at Handel House for allowing us to record there, and also to Ella Roberts for being a very friendly and helpful guide to us on the day.  If you’re in the area, I strongly recommend visiting the museum.  They have an ever-changing programme of interesting recitals, talks and events which you’ll find listed on their website.

Finally, I’d be interested to hear what other participants in the ‘Creaks: Floor and Stairs’ Collection think of the recordings – feel free to comment here or drop me a line directly at thescclub@btinternet.com.

P.S.  Thanks to Raoul for providing the vid!

P.P.S.  Yes, I do normally keep my mic cables wound up more neatly!