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

Back to basics this month as I choose the theme for the first time since Rain back in November.  ‘Car passes’ may not be the most exotic theme we’ve ever had but it’ll be a very useful one if it provides us all with a greater variety of this type of recording to reach for.

As the club’s sound collection develops, I’d really like it to become useful to people for specific jobs they work on.  In other words, if any members have a project approaching in the coming months for which they could really do with a fresh bunch of specific sounds (which are not location-specific) then give me a shout and I’ll try my best to make it a theme in time to deliver the goods for you.  

With this in mind, I’ve chosen this theme for myself because it may be useful to me over the coming months.  I’ve got a couple of relatively quick turnaround FX jobs coming up soon which are highly likely to contain many scenes which need background traffic passes covered.  When you don’t have much time to pick out these individual passes, it’s really handy to have a good selection of recordings of  a series of vehicles passing by, otherwise you have to compile the passes from an amalgamation of different recordings which is much more time-consuming and sounds less consistent.  

Two particularly important attributes that a useful car passes recording must have are:

1. Enough spacing between passes to give you full depiction of each vehicle’s approach and drive away.  Two cars passing by together while another car passes by on the other side of the carriageway is of no use for this purpose (if at all).
2. As with most types of recording, low background noise is important to avoid hearing a surge of noise as you fade the car pass in and out.  What’s more, it muddies the definition of the sound of the vehicle itself.

Apart from that, though, there are very few conditions to adhere to.  The vehicles must predominantly be cars but your recording may also contain bus / truck / motorbike, etc. passes too.  The car passes can be as close or as wide as you like – although don’t go so wide that the individual car passes lose their definition and become a more general traffic atmos.  

Think about definition:  If you monitor at a low level but can still hear interesting detail from the engines, the road or simply from the acoustics of the street then the track is likely to work nicely when ducked down low in a mix around dialogue.  If not, you’ll end up adding little more than surges of white noise to the mix.

A good selection of orthodox street / main road recordings at different speeds would be great, but I’m also hoping to hear some more unusual contributions too:  eg.  Cobbled streets, flyovers, speed bumps and manhole covers to name but a few variants.

Other than that, and as usual, I don’t want to tell you all too precisely what to record, but please feel free to comment below if you have any questions or if you think I’ve been unclear in any way; if so, I’ll provide more detail where necessary.

Finally a new theme!  Feels like ages since the start of the ‘Wind’ theme back in February – thanks for bearing with me these last couple of months while I’ve set up the new membership system for The Sound Collectors’ Club.  As a result, we can now keep our collections of sounds online permanently  so that they can continue to grow indefinitely, so I hope you’ll agree with me that it was well worth the wait.

Please have a thorough read through of the amended How to Upload your Sounds to the Club and Legal pages in the menu at the top of the page.  Also, the summary in my last post may help bring you up to speed on the changes too.  Essentially, everything’s the same except for a couple of important things:

1. You will need to make a small payment to get membership to the Club for the year so that you can get access to the sounds.
2. Vocal idents within all submitted recordings are now compulsory.

If, having read my uploading guide and legal page, there’s anything that still seems unclear then please feel free to e-mail me and I’ll try to help you out.

Right, now for the much more fun bit;  April’s theme.  Our latest winner who gets to choose a theme is Angel Perez Grandi, who has contributed some stunning Argentinian field recordings over the past few months.  In his words:

My suggestion for a set would be “natural echo spaces”, that is, spaces or sounds with inherent (natural) reverb. Diffused, decay, blurry background activity are words that pop to my mind. From canyons to temples to claustrophobic spaces as long as we get a strong sense of space. The resonance can be forced but not created through processing – a loud bang inside a tank would qualify too for example.

So; echoey sounds in a variety of interesting acoustic spaces – exterior or interior.  This could include anything from footsteps in a stairwell to voices in a cathedral to gunshots in a valley to door slams in an industrial lift.  As is often the way with my briefs, the main requirement is ‘character’.  Can’t really add much to that – sounds like a great theme to kick off the new club setup.  Enjoy!