Posts tagged “Echo Space”

Club Meetups, Old and New

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It’s been an intention of mine, ever since I started The Sound Collectors’ Club, to organize a club meetup in London; to create a chance for members to get to know each other better than just virtually over the internet.
 
I finally got round to making this happen for the first time a few weeks ago back in April when the current theme was Echo Space.  As I explained in a post at the time, I ended up choosing the Rotherhithe Tunnel as our glamorous destination and when the agreed upon day arrived I was happy to be joined by @eesn and foster.fog.

I tweeted the above pics throughout the evening; en route to the pub where we met up, I stopped riverside hoping to get some good London skylines.  Unfortunately this proved tricky thanks to the endless flow of pleasureboats blaring music which carried surprisingly far up the river after they had passed by.  No matter, after a swift pint at The Grapes, we headed off to the tunnel.  The results are now uploaded into the Club’s ‘Echo Space’ set if you want to check them out – all 15 minutes of it before we succumbed to the fumes and retreated back to the cleaner confines of The Narrow pub nearby for beer to wash the grit from our mouths!

Many thanks to Georgi and Tom for making the effort to come along; I look forward to hopefully catching up with you both again at future meetups.

Speaking of which, my plan for the next meetup is based around the club’s ‘Wind’ theme which was started a couple of months ago.  This stems from a recent trip to Kew Gardens with the family, where I was struck by the wide variety of trees that were there and, because it was a windy day, how different they all sounded blowing in the breeze.  Kew Gardens is a very big place, so I was thinking that if a few of us met there and each took a separate section of the grounds then there could be the potential to create the mother of all ‘wind in trees’ collections when we pool our results in the club’s ‘Wind’ set!

Kew Gardens

Any feedback on this idea would be much appreciated; as far as I can see, potential problems are as follows:

  1. Choosing a windy day.
  2. 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.
  3. 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).


If you’re interested, let me know your thoughts in the comments below, like last time, and we’ll take it from there.

May 26, 2011 | Categories: Events, Field Recording, Meetups | Tags: , , , , , | 2 Comments

London Echo Space Meetup Anyone?

I’ve been mentioning my intentions for a recording meetup to a few people for quite a while now but haven’t had a chance to really give it much thought……until now!

I was having a quick scan of the internet the other day looking for interesting ideas for Echo Space, this month’s sound collecting theme.  My first thought was to find out about the Woolwich and Greenwich foot tunnels under the Thames but as far as I can tell from online comments these tunnels are closed for refurbs at the moment.

If they are, it’s a shame because I know the tunnels sound great.  A Chris Watson workshop I signed up to a few years back went around this part of London.  I didn’t make it in the end due to my first son turning up but I did hear some of the results (Uncannily, I also missed Chris’ subsequent workshop last year in Kew Gardens because of my second son arriving on the scene!  The lengths my wife will go to to stop me going out recording…..!):

thames_footpath_tunnel (copyright of Tom Lawrence)

(Apologies to Juan Gil and Tom Lawrence if i’ve misunderstood the licensing terms of the audio and image.  I’ve taken it as a typical creative commons agreement: i.e. usage is ok if non-commercial and author-attribution is given, but obviously I’ll remove them immediately if there’s any issues with that).

Anyway, if I’m wrong and these are open then it’d be great to go and get our own recordings if anyone’s interested.  However, if they are closed then there’s always that glamorous London destination, The Rotherhithe Tunnel, which I’ve seen described online by a non-soundie as ‘an acoustic hall of mirrors’.  Bingo!

Image of Rotherhithe Tunnel from diamond geezer's Flickrstream under the Creative Commons Attribution License

The tunnel’s right near to some nice pubs on the river so perhaps we could meet up at one of them and then have a quick recording sortie into the tunnel (don’t  personally fancy walking right the way through it!) before returning to one of the pubs for a couple more jars.  Let me know if you’re interested; leave a comment here or DM me.  I finish my current film project next week so from then until early May is best for me.  One thing’s for sure – if no-one comes I ain’t going down that tunnel by myself!

 

April 11, 2011 | Categories: Events, Field Recording, Meetups | Tags: , , , , | 8 Comments