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:
- 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.
- 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:
- Not really walking; just moving our feet in a way so as to coerce the biggest creaks out of the boards.
- 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!
New Theme – Dog Barks: BGs
The Club’s latest theme comes courtesy of one of the club’s top contributors and ‘word spreaders’ (I was going to say ‘ambassadors’ but it felt a little transparently Jobsian!), Rene Coronado. He fired a load of great suggestions at me on Twitter last month which I’m more than happy to add to the Club’s collection of themes over the coming months – especially as I’ve been hogging choosing the theme recently.
So, seeing as it’s Rene’s choice, here’s his own description of what he’s looking for:
My primary motivation for recording the dogs in the first place was to have a nice bgfx element that can be layered in with other stuff. As such, light traffic noise and other suchwhat are fine in the recordings.Generally its best if the recordings are made in stereo and at least 3 meters from the dog so that we really get a sense of what they sound like in the environment. I’ve gotten some great stuff from about half a block away.Often the dogs don’t need to be agitated in any way. Just standing there with a recorder tends to be enough to get them barking.Single dogs are more useful than groups of dogs – more editable.I tended to get my recordings just by walking the neighborhood with my D50, and stopping to lean on a tree or pole when one of the dogs started barking. Best time for recording is after dinner, since the dogs are often out in the yard.
Let’s Top Up Floor and Stair Creaks for the Rest of June. Oh, & Potential Creaky Meetup, Anyone?
So, as you’ll have noticed, no new theme this month. I was away on holiday for the start of the month and so, sitting down to prep the new theme launch last night, I thought better of it in the end and decided that the remainder of the month would be better spent having another bash at an older theme that hasn’t as yet had much love: Floor & Stair Creaks.
I’m going to merge these two sets into one folder in Sugarsync so, even if you are only able to provide, say, floor creaks, you’ll still get access to any contributed stair creaks too. This is simply because the two types of creaks are so interlinked that it’s pointless treating them as separate collections.
Have a think if there’s any older buildings you can access to get some good creaks but don’t discount your own homes; creaks from all periods of housing are useful and very welcome.
I’m going to collect some sounds from my house but I’ve also managed to organise an opportunity to get into an 18th Century building in Central London in a couple of weeks time to get some good floor and staircase sounds. In this way, we can kill two birds with one stone and have our first club meet up in quite a long while too. We may not risk getting carbon monoxide poisoning this time as well, which is a bonus.
We’ve only got half an hour in there but it’s only a small building anyway so we should be ok for time. The bad news is that, because it’s a small building, it’s impractical to have loads of us traipsing around in there so I’ll have to limit it to two members coming along with me. However, if I try and schedule the record towards the end of the afternoon then, if you’re in town, we could maybe join you for a drink somewhere nearby after we’re done creaking. Remember, as long as you contribute to the club’s creaks collection then you’ll get a copy of our results anyway.
Best bet is, if you’re likely to be in the vicinity and fancy meeting up in a couple of weeks, drop me a line at thescclub@btinternet.com, I’ll give you more info and we’ll take it from there!
Cheers,
Michael
Upload Instructions & Legal Page Updated Soon
Just a quick post to try and minimise confusion for those currently referring to the upload instructions or legal page via the headers at the top of the website. As some of you may have noticed, these are out of date at the moment because they still relate to the old Soundcloud method of uploading that we used to use.
I’m going to try my best to get this updated over the next few days but in the meantime please bear in mind that, with regards to uploading, all you need to know is that when you’re a member you will receive an e-mail invite to your own personal folder which will then appear in a special folder within your ‘Documents’ folder on your desktop (NB. all Sugarsync shared folders MUST stay in this folder otherwise they get deleted). Whenever you want to share a track with the club, simply drag it into your personal folder (which only you and I have access to) then I will check it and move it to the appropriate theme folder, e.g. Cafe, Car Doors, etc. and then e-mail you an invite to that particular theme folder. In this way, your personal folder should always be empty unless there is an upload pending for me to check. As you contribute to more and more themes, you will end up with a collection of different theme folders within your ‘Documents’ folder which you can COPY (not move) to your FX drive, or perhaps create an alias of on your FX drive if that’s easier.
As for the ‘Legal’ page, this is exactly the same in principal, I just need to adjust it to relate to Sugarsync rather than Soundcloud.
Thank you all for your patience,
Best,
Michael
New Theme – Reactions: Small Crowd
A wide variety of different crowd reactions are always useful. I think it’s great to be able to shape your FX tracklay for a crowd scene so that the sound doesn’t solely depend on the crowd ADR for energy, dynamics and narrative. Sure, you do often need to lay a more generic ‘bed’ for the crowd presence but when you add any necessary ‘ooh’s!’, ‘aah’s!’ and cheers, etc. on top of that the scene can really come to life – and also helps any crowd ADR that you do shoot to sit into the mix more naturally.
Bearing in mind that I may run a theme for large crowd reactions in the future, I’ll describe how I’m going to distinguish between the two sizes of crowd. For now (I can always adapt the collections in the future if necessary), consider this small crowd collection to be for groups of, say, 5 people (e.g. watching sport in a bar) to 200 people (e.g. cheering at a concert in a small church hall). Less than 5 people may be getting a bit to close to the realms of crowd ADR and start requiring the use of release forms, so we’ll steer clear. I may need to eventually cater for a ‘medium’ category but, for now, I’m imagining the other ‘large crowd’ collection to cover small concert halls to stadiums. Despite all my examples being interior, the crowd reactions that you share can be interior or exterior recordings.
I must emphasise that this theme is for crowd REACTIONS! General chat tracks won’t be accepted unless they contain the reactions within, in which case it’s obviously counter-productive to remove the ‘vibe’ that surrounds the important boos, cheers, gasps, etc.
That’s it! I really can’t think of any other conditions that need to be spelled out. Oh, apart from please state your location / language in your track name or metadata. This is always important for recordings shared with the Club but especially so when voices are involved.
Lastly, the more the better. If possible, it’s great to have a few reactions in a recording in case the scene calls for it. Otherwise, you end up searching for other recordings that match in terms of crowd size and acoustics, which is a bit dull.
Happy sound collecting!
New Easier Upload Method
Members will have noticed an invitation e-mail turn up in their inbox this week, asking them to join a new folder in the Club’s Sugarsync account called ‘NEW SOUNDS HERE PLEASE!’
Suddenly dawned on me this week that this is clearly the most convenient way for members to submit new tracks. Drag your submission(s) into this new folder on your computer and I’ll get e-mailed a notification. I can then check the track and approve it before moving it to the relevant folder and giving access to that contributor.
You don’t have to contribute via this route (yet!) – you can still upload via Soundcloud (or any other means) if you prefer but I do recommend this as the most straightforward option.
Updated ‘How to Upload Your Sounds’ page and new ‘FAQ’ page to follow very soon…..gradually getting there with all the housekeeping! A lot of adjustments I’m making for this 2012-13 season are intended to streamline my whole admin process so that even when I get really busy at work I can still keep the Club efficient and up to date. Thank you all for your patience in the meantime!
Best,
Michael
2012-13 Season Starts Here!
Here we go with the 2012-13 Season! Before I talk about the latest theme I’d just like to chat a bit about the new membership year.
The Club’s top contributors have already been given free membership for another year. For everyone else, and as a kind of rally call to get as many people on board as possible from the start of the season, I’m offering membership at half price until the end of May. After that, the membership fee will go back to the usual £20 for the rest of the 2012-13 season.
If you’ve contributed to the Club over the past year then you’ll need to renew your membership if you want to continue to have access to those themes. I’ll be making these adjustments over the next week or so, so please act now whether you want to renew your membership (and don’t want the hassle of downloading everything again) or whether you don’t (and want to download everything before you’re excluded).
If you’re new to the Club then now’s the perfect time to get involved. For the next couple of months, a tenner and a few of your own recordings can currently get you access to over 20 gigs of sound fx recordings made by sound professionals from all over the world.
Please bear with me over the next couple of weeks as the new membership year has coincided with me being in the depths of simultaneous temp, pre- and final mixing (don’t ask!) so chances to focus on the Club are few and far between for the next couple of weeks. Once that’s done, I’ll complete the transition from Soundcloud to Sugarsync which has dragged on over the last few months, focus on a bit more Club promotion and also I’d like to use the start of this new season to talk a bit about what the Club’s achieved over the past year and what goals I have for the 2012-13 season. Coming soon.
Right, back to the latest theme: Car Doors.
In any scene, film or tv, a car door open or close is one sound that is nearly always worth checking the production rushes for. Whenever possible, I use these real sounds from the location recordings as they sound more natural than using recordings from another time and place (ditto with any doors that aren’t part of a set). If necessary, I might beef them up or tighten them by means of parallel compression.
However, although this method offers authenticity and naturalism, sometimes it is necessary to add one more layer to infer more meaning in the sound than is inherent in it’s original state. Perhaps the car door needs to sound like more of a solid ‘thunk’ to suggest quality (and therefore wealth) or more of a hollow ‘clang’ and rattle to declare the vehicle as a complete and utter rust bucket.
So, in other words, what I’m after for this collection is car door sounds with character and meaning. Don’t share your bog standard clunks and slams; I’ll get those from the rushes and they’ll fit the picture better. Instead, please share interesting car door sounds that are descriptive of the vehicle and, by association, it’s owner.
Truck, lorry, van, etc doors are all allowed too. As I often mention, please try and get the door from different angles and intensities – namely harder and gentler opens and closes shot from exterior close, exterior wide and interior. Also, getting the boot / trunk sound is useful to complete the set. Please let me know what vehicle the door belongs to and provide a photo if possible.
Here’s to the next 20 gig! Speak again soon,
Michael
A Double Bill of Creaks To End The 2011-12 Season
I thought it might be a good idea to double up this month as it seemed silly to stretch out two such similar themes over two months. This theme brings us the closest we have been so far to the world of foley recording.
Good floor and stair creaks, recorded from head height in order to mirror location recording, can be useful for sweetening foley or production footsteps. However, if you think a particular floor creak has potential for manipulation or as an element in a layered design then it may well be worth recording much closer – you be the judge.
If you do record some floor creaks with the intention of them being sweeteners then please record a decent amount of them. Bear in mind that, with longer scenes in particular, it’s handy to have a generous length of track available from which you can cherry-pick the creaks that suit each particular moment. Try and get a variety of intensities of creak out of your chosen surface; the shorter, subtler creaks are sometimes more useful than the big ol’ horror movie ones. Record yourself or a volunteer making the floor or stairs creak; don’t record an ambient track of the general public passing by because this will also carry extraneous noise (movement, voices, etc.) with it, which we don’t want. Perhaps remove your shoes so that your creaks aren’t spoiled by being tied to actual footfalls.
Be careful with the room acoustic: Decide whether this is useful to have in your recording or not. Remember that it is a lot easier to add reverb than remove it. Having said that, if a room has a nice acoustic, perhaps consider recording two-track mono – one closer boom and one more distant room mic. Don’t contribute stereo files; it’s just a waste of drive space. Include photos and thorough meta descriptions with your recordings whenever possible too.
Although, the images above would suggest otherwise – the surfaces do not have to be wood, they just have to creak in some way. If your floor and stair recording are from the same location and ‘match’ then please reflect this with appropriate naming but make them separate files (because they will go in separate folders – you still need to contribute to both in order to get access to both sets).
Well, that’s about as thorough a set of instructions as I can muster at 12:30 am! If I think of anything else worth mentioning I’ll add it (or tweet it) but I think that’s everything. If anyone else wants to add anything useful to this guide then please feel free to comment below.
First New Theme of 2012: Church Bells
Happy New Year all sound collectors! The first theme of 2012 is inspired by a question posed by Rene Coronado on the Social Sound Design forum just before Christmas, and very well answered by Paul Virostek.
Church Bells has been a popular suggestion on the poll I set up a while back too so I thought I’d finally select it as a new theme. All different kinds of church bell sounds are welcome: Close recordings from within bell towers to ambient distant tolls (with the usual proviso that the subject must not be swamped by other ambient noise such as traffic).
A couple of stipulations though: No handbells. All bells must be operated by some kind of mechanism rather than being handheld. Secondly, although I’ve specified church bells as the theme title, recordings of bells attached to any religious building are acceptable.
Oh, and one last thing; whether you record one toll or a dozen, you must get the entire series, i.e. don’t miss the first bell toll or cut off the decay of the last, otherwise the recording can be impractical to use.
Good luck!
Last New Theme of 2011!
I thought it might be good to do our first proper ‘background chat’ theme this month. I know we have Echo Space but that is more about the space than the human activity within it; in fact, that doesn’t even need to be the sound of people at all.
I like doing vocal themes because they tend to best exploit the international nature of The Sound Collectors’ Club. However, this theme doesn’t necessarily have to be all about the chat. You can also contribute ambient cutlery / glass / crockery tracks recorded in cafes too which are often actually preferable to have separate from chatting customers if possible. If plates and cutlery are clinking away too predominantly on a chat track, the recording can become a pain to edit for film or TV when you need to avoid such noises clashing with a character’s dialogue.
Coffee machine and hot water blasts are ok to contribute too, for now – as the set grows over time, I may end up dividing it into separate collections but, for the time being, it’s quite useful to keep these elements together. Especially if, say, a chat, cutlery and coffee machine recording all derive from the same cafe and therefore have matching acoustics.
Also, bear in mind that in the future I may well introduce ‘pub’ or ‘restaurant’ (etc.) themes as well so please pick your locations carefully so that recordings from these separate themes don’t all just blur into one. I’m thinking of focussing on getting some nice gentle murmur tracks from various greasy spoons in London but there is obviously a wide variety of types (more continental style or street cafes, for example) that you could choose from – simply make sure your choice is distinct from a restaurant or bar / pub.
Lastly, background music or TV / radio in the cafe is a definite no-no! Sure, sometimes you can barely hear it so could get away with using a recording anyway but, for this occasion, let’s not go there.
Good luck! No tea slurping once you hit record!
‘Night and Day’ Reopens – Right On Your Desktop!
The Night and Day collection is back in action, which means that all Club themes are now back online for members to start contributing to again – but this time with a bit of a difference.
As 2011 has passed by and the collection has grown, I’ve already begun to think that The Sound Collectors’ Club needs to find a more suitable location to store it’s collections in than Soundcloud. Soundcloud is great aesthetically and perfect for linking to other social networks and blogs, and I’ll definitely continue to use it for the mp3 samples that can be auditioned in the Browse The Collection page. However, as a means of cloud storage for an ever-growing sound fx library, it isn’t ideal – the more themes we amass, the larger the amount of ‘secret links’ we’ll have to keep hold of and keep handy for whenever we want to access the collections. Downloading and then re-loading file metadata is also cumbersome via Soundcloud. What I feel we need is a form of cloud storage which more closely mirrors the way we store our own sound fx libraries on our work computers.
In my opinion, the application that currently fulfills this brief the best is Sugarsync. There are many other similar applications but they all seem to fall down on one or more particular function that is essential for the Club to work well by this method. For example, Dropbox is great, but it requires everyone sharing a folder to have the capacity for the full size of the shared folder in their personal account, which is impractical. You can get around this by signing up for one of their Team accounts but that costs about £700 which is obviously far too expensive.
With Sugarsync, only I need to buy the amount of storage needed to hold the Club’s collections. I can then share it with all contributors, who only need sign up for the free account. You will receive an e-mail from me saying that I’ve shared a folder with you; if you’ve already signed up to Sugarsync you can access it straight away. If not, you can click on the ‘Sign Up’ link on the e-mail and then let their website lead you through the registering process before returning to the e-mail to access the shared folder.
As soon as you access the shared folder, it will be synced to your desktop – if you’re on a Mac, it will sync to a new folder in your ‘Documents’ folder. It isn’t ideal but this folder has to stay in this location in which it is created AND MUST NOT BE EDITED OR ADDED TO!!! This is because in order for you to be able to sync the folder to your desktop I have to enable you to access AND modify it. I’m pretty sure better permission controls will come along before long so that I’ll be able to let you access but not modify folders but, for now, please don’t change, move, delete or add to this folder, as it will change the folder for everyone else as well and will get very confusing. For this reason, please install Sugarsync on your personal computer rather than any shared work one that you might use, in order to minimize this risk (you can still access Club sounds via the internet on shared computers). However, having said that, I do have backups should any accidents happen and Sugarsync has quite a good ‘undo delete’ system, so it’s not quite as precarious as it sounds.
As is often the way, there are workarounds to these slight flaws: If it’s a bit of a pain having to go into your ‘Documents’ folder to access the sounds then you can, of course, create an alias of the folder in a more easily accessible location. However, for now, it’s probably a good thing that the sync folder is tucked out of the way because you’re then perhaps less likely to accidentally edit it. In my opinion, it’s maybe best to create a new ‘The Sound Collectors’ Club’ folder in your sound fx library then create new folders within that for all the sets that you have access to. Once you’ve done that you can just use the sync folder in ‘Documents’ to copy new audio to your sound fx library from whenever I tweet that new sounds have been added to the collection. Please let me know of any other non-destructive workflows you devise to incorporate the Club’s collection into your sound fx library.
So that’s the downloading taken care of! As for the uploading, we’ll stick with the existing system via Soundcloud for now – I don’t want to throw too many new systems at you all at once so I’ll probably hold fire with any new uploading instructions until the New Year. I’ll gradually start adding step-by-step instructions or even a tutorial vid to the website to explain the new process (as well as gradually sharing all the other collections) but hopefully, for now, this post will suffice in pointing you in the right direction towards setting up your Sugarsync account then syncing collections to your desktop. Obviously give me a shout if you have any problems.
However this system ends up being adapted to suit our needs, I really feel this type of cloud sharing is the future for the Club so do please give it a go. I think the ideal scenario would be for all Club members to have a dedicated folder (which they can’t erase) somewhere useful on their computer (such as in their fx library or in their menu bar like Dropbox) which auto-syncs whenever new sounds are added to the collection so that you only need to drag and drop them into Soundminer / Audiofinder / etc. from time to time. Sugarsync may just be the first but vital stepping stone towards that goal – please let me know how you get on with it.
New Theme: Protest!
After the last few crazy months, this theme has become a necessity. Demos, riots, revolutions and protests are going on all over the world but good quality, and commercially usable, sound recordings of these events are currently thin on the ground.
‘Protest’ sounds needn’t be solely vocal. Sounds of destruction, crowd movement, police activity and general ambiances of areas of unrest are as equally valid as the usual chants and megaphone shouts that we tend to associate with the idea of protests.
@rene_coronado kicks off this collection with a very generous donation of an excerpt of his recording of the Occupy Dallas protest which I’m sure you’ve all read about and listened to over at his excellent blog, the sound my head makes.
Last bit of humble advice – stay safe, and keep what we do in perspective. Most demos are perfectly safe to go out and record but some, such as the recent London riots, for instance, are way too unpredictable and simply not worth risking your neck for for one lousy sound recording. I, for one, never had the slightest inclination to go out recording during the riots.
This set’s bound to be quite a slow grower as it can be hard to get good recordings of these events but, over time, I’m hopeful this could become a really unique collection of sounds which are useful for all sorts of different projects.
‘Trains: BGs’ Theme Deadline Extended to End of October
Well, I did say I wasn’t going to extend deadlines anymore but this is a bit different.
Ever since collections started staying online and remaining active, new themes have been accumulating tracks more slowly. With hindsight, this outcome is perhaps obvious – members’ new contributions are getting spread amongst an ever increasing number of themes. Also, new themes inevitably inspire less urgency to participate before the end of the month when people know that they can join in and grab the collections at a later date when they specifically need them or when they simply have more spare time.
That’s all fine but I think a change is in order to address this ‘imbalance’. If old themes are still attracting significant interest then perhaps a more steady influx of new themes is necessary. I’m proposing making themes bimonthly for the time being.
I must admit that, when I’m busy, I do find that the month’s fly by and before I know it (and before I’ve barely had a chance to add a recording) it’s time to come up with a new theme again. With an extra month for each current theme, I’m hoping it’ll give me more of a chance to explore each subject; posting about my own and other members’ recordings, as well as hopefully making club meetups a more regular occurence (one for every new theme) as well.
Generally, I’m quite a strong believer in the idea of not trying to please everyone otherwise you end up pleasing nobody. However, on this occasion in particular, I’d be really interested to hear members’ thoughts on this matter so please feel free to leave any comments below.
New Solution for Keeping Track of Sounds
[memolane lane=”thescclub” width=”550″ height=”550″]
As the club’s collection expands, it’s inevitable that I’m going to need to come up with different solutions to how we can keep all this audio well organized and easily accessible. I’ve been thinking for a while now about how best to keep members aware of any new contributions that are uploaded – hence the decision to start tweeting all new uploads.
However, another solution fell into my lap last week via a Soundcloud newsletter which mentioned a new app called Memolane. I really like Memolane’s design and the way it displays Soundcloud updates so I’ve decided to use it in the BROWSE THE COLLECTION page (in the menu at the top of this page) to showcase all the MP3 samples of contributions as and when they are uploaded (you can still browse by themes as well if you’d rather).
In this way, if members choose to download en masse intermittently, they can now keep track of what’s been added to the collection since their last visit. Together with the twitter alerts, hopefully members will find it easier than ever to keep up to date with their copies of the club’s collection. However, besides being a good inventory tool for existing members, I think it’s also an interesting alternative way for new visitors to the site to investigate and audition the collection too.
Hope you like it !
‘Rain’ Theme Reopens!
The Club’s very first theme (from back in November) is now back online for members to start contributing to again.
I’ve re-uploaded any tracks from the old collection that qualify under the current requirements – in other words all those that have some form of vocal ident on. The contributors of these qualifying tracks have been e-mailed new secret links to the reactivated set and so can gain access immediately.
Unfortunately, if you originally contributed a track but it hasn’t been re-uploaded then you will need to contribute a new track which meets the current requirements in order to regain access to the set. If your old track does qualify but you aren’t currently a member of the Club then I’ve got your track on standby ready to add to the set should you join the Club in future.
For those who don’t remember the original brief regarding what sort of rain recordings we’re after, here’s what I originally wrote:
Rather than just ‘rain’, I should perhaps say rain on surfaces, i.e. rain on windows, roofs, pavements, etc. – whatever sounds interesting. Rain on surfaces such as corrugated iron or greenhouses can sound great but in some ways I think it’s a bigger achievement to simply get a great recording of the sound of rain on a window which doesn’t just sound like white noise.
Next up is the old Night and Day set which I’ll try and get re-uploaded as soon as possible too. Watch this space….
Some Stats…
As many of you will know, one of the good things about Soundcloud (and particularly with the Pro account) is the stats it provides you with regarding your uploaded tracks.
These stats are particularly interesting with regards to the Club due to it’s international nature. I haven’t posted any geographical info on club activity for a while so I thought I’d upload the above snapshot for those who may be interested. UK running tings!
September’s Theme
The companion collection to June’s theme!
I must give credit for the inspiration to @EnosDesjardins and @rene_coronado who were discussing on Twitter the other day how train sounds were amongst their favourite background atmos FX. I wholeheartedly agree so have decided to make it this month’s theme.
This time around, instead of the close, clean detail that was required for June’s ‘Trains: Design’ collection, we need more distant train sounds that are suitable for use in background atmospheres. Similarly to the requirements I described for the Street Voices’ collection in July, these train sounds need to exhibit more of the acoustic characteristics of their surroundings but cannot be so distant that they are swallowed up by, for example, urban roar.
The litmus test with these type of FX is whether they still sound good played at low level (as they will be when used in atmospheres). If there’s a surge of skyline noise when you fade the train sounds in and out then your chosen location is too noisy or the train is too distant.
Also, does it still sound like a train when played at low level? I guess you could call this the ‘What the f*%k is that?’ test! Imagine people who haven’t heard your train recording before, such as a director or producer, hearing it mixed in with the dialogues, music and atmospheres at a dub. If it is perceived as an indistinguishable clatter or hum rather than as a distant, evocative train pass, it is very likely to get dropped immediately – and quite possibly with the aforementioned expletive question given an airing too! In short, try to be objective about what your recording can really add to an atmospheres tracklay.
Personally, I intend to visit various overground London transport locations where I’ve noticed interesting acoustics while travelling around over the last year or so. For example, the train tracks in Acton station lie at the bottom of a deep embankment; a railway bridge I walked under in Chiswick made a great boomy sound as a train passed over and, just today in Richmond, I noticed a train crossing one of the rail bridges over the river that made a really interesting sound too.
These are just a few London-based ideas I happen to have had. However, trains are one of the most sonically diverse forms of transport that exist and rail tracks slice through virtually every different form of landscape in the world so the possibilities should be endless. Good luck with your collecting!
August’s Theme
Quite a simple theme this month after quite a tricky one in July. So simple in fact, I don’t think it’ll really need much explanation.
I think it suffices to suggest that you provide some individual rings or buzzes and then a variety of multiple patterns too. It is really important that you let the reverb tails of your bells or buzzers subside completely before triggering the next ring or buzz (unless you’re doing a multiple ring of course) otherwise their usage becomes very limited. The only other advice I’ll offer is that for your contribution to be as useful as possible, I would ask that you submit recordings of your chosen bell or buzzer from 3 different recording positions (but submitted as one track):
- Exterior, from the POV of the bell ringer
- Interior, close / direct (i.e. standing quite near or below it in order to get a clean recording of the bell itself)
- Interior, a bit more ambient / indirect (perhaps in the next room along from the bell – not too distant but just far enough away to pick some of your house or flat’s acoustics)
Last of all, please don’t forget to put a vocal ident or slate (including your name) on your recordings otherwise I won’t be able to accept it. And that’s about it – let’s get collecting ding dongs and bzzzzzzs!
New Contributions Will Now Be Tweeted
Just a quick note to let you all know that from now on all new contributions to the Club will be tweeted from the @TheSCClub once I’ve uploaded the audio.
If you follow @TheSCClub then consequently you’ll get to know when there’s new audio that you can download rather then having to randomly check from time to time. The other benefit is that hopefully it’ll give some non-members a better sense of the activity going on at the Club too.
So, member or non-member, if you’re not yet following @TheSCClub, please do consider doing so because it’ll save you a lot of speculative visits to the Browse The Collection page or any private sets that you have access to.
July’s Theme
The human voice can evoke so much meaning and emotion. Therefore, it is an invaluable vehicle for expressing the mood of a location. As a result, this month’s theme is one of my favourite types of sound effect for creating interesting and evocative soundscapes.
This theme lies somewhere between ‘exterior crowd’ fx and crowd ADR. It is not general chat or crowd sounds. It is more specific than that, and should only consist of one or a few people. It is not crowd ADR, it is more distant and worldized than that. The voices need to be raised, if not shouting, in order to carry over this distance.
These type of recordings are perfect for poking through between dialogue to give a scene character. Using distant voices in this way is a really effective way of controlling the vibe of an environment – making it seem anything from intimidating or welcoming to posh or slummy.
A couple arguing in a courtyard; a drunk shouting in an alleyway; noisy scaffolders: a baby’s cries heard from an open window; or a few people talking loudly and laughing in the park – these are the sort of sounds I’m after.
Two important points:
- As usual, it is vital that these recordings contain minimal background noise. They are not atmospheres, they are fx which need to be able to fade in and out without a surge of traffic noise or other general crowd sounds.
- Distance is crucial. Too close and you are basically recording those people’s conversation. Consequently, a can of worms is opened with regards to model release forms and privacy infringement, etc. Instead, you need to be distant enough so that you are indirectly recording the voices. If you stick a mic out of your window and someone is shouting down the end of the street then I would say that no privacy is infringed and you are ok to use that recording howsoever you please. In contrast, if you make a stealth recording of a couple having a private, heated conversation in, say, a cafe, then I would argue that you have perhaps invaded their privacy and it could be unwise to start using that recording in commercial projects. Common sense will hopefully dictate what is suitable, but a good guide is to consider whether you are recording someone actively or passively / directly or indirectly and whether they are imposing their voice on your environment or you are invading their privacy. On the flip side, it will not be possible to use the recording as spot fx if the voices are too distant because the accompanying noise of the surrounding environment will surge in and out too much.
One last point: Please specify where your recordings were made. It is vital that the title or metadata of these FX reveal what country they are from (and also mention if the location is somewhere where the language may be other than the native tongue, eg. Chinatown!)
Other than that, good luck with your shout-hunting and I look forward to hearing the results!
June’s Theme
Very excited about this one. I have two young boys so inevitably I watch quite a lot of kids’ TV at the moment. There’s a lot of great kids’ shows around these days but one of my boys’ favourites is called Chuggington which I’ve always thought had particularly good sound FX in it. So, I’m very pleased to announce that this month’s theme has been requested by the show’s sound designer, Richard Spooner:
“So this is another slightly selfish audio topic as I am starting sound design on a new series of “Chuggington” next week, which is a pre-school show about .. eergh .. trains.
Club Meetups, Old and New
Kew Gardens
- Choosing a windy day.
- Planes. The day I was there the plane noise was pretty minor. However flight paths change all the time so there’s no guarantee that this won’t be a problem.
- Kew Gardens is pricey to get into (£13.90).
One alternative I’ve found to Kew, if these problems make it an unsuitable location, is Winkworth Arboretum in (or near) Guildford. This could solve the problem with plane noise (it can’t be worse than West London, surely?!) and is cheaper (£6.20, though you’ll pay more for travel).
Additional Note on ‘Car Passes’
One thing I’d like to add regarding submissions to this month’s theme is please don’t break down your recordings into lots of separate car passes unless the vehicle is a particularly distinctive or unusual model that justifies being kept separately in a recording of it’s own. If every car pass gets its own dedicated track we’ll have loads of tracks relative to actually not that much material.
What’s more, when it comes to editing traffic scenes, it is actually more useful to have a series of passes (which share similar characteristics such as speed and acoustics) all in one track rather than having to audition lots of different tracks containing only one pass which may not match up as consistently.
Also, don’t forget that vocal idents are now compulsory. I’m being flexible about what the ident consists of but ideally you should say at least your name and the theme (a quick description of what your recording is always a bonus). I tend to do this anyway on my recordings in order to remember the details just in case I don’t get round to editing and cataloguing them straightway.
Best,
Michael
thesoundcollectorsclub.com 