The Wonderful World of Nature
September 21, 2008 – 9:25 pm by leafcutter
First up i’d like to formally introduce myself, I’m John and a musician from London, England. You can find out more about me by going to the contributors page.
Now onto the sound. For my first sound here at audiocookbook.org I wanted to start quietly. The recording is of a bucket containing lots of snails. 137 of them to be precise. They were collected by my flat-mate who was trying to stop them eating all the vegetables she had just planted in our garden. Recording them was not easy because they are very quiet and also surprisingly fast escape artists as you can see from the photo. Although the recording is a little noisy (due to high gain settings) you can hear their little shells clattering together and there slimy suction action as they make a bid for freedom. Please note no snails were harmed in the making of this recording and they were set free after their 5mins of fame. Recorded with a matched pair of Oktava MK012′s and a DAV electronics BG1 preamp.
Snails in a bucket
The scene is a huge and deserted underground car park around 3am. You shut the door to your vehicle. the sound reverberates for almost a minute. What do you do? Do it again! I found myself in this position after a late evening out with my wife recently. Unfortunately all I had available to make a recording was my mobile phone. So, I set it to record and started opening and closing the door to my wife’s pickup truck, listening to the results. I knew the recording would suck, but I had to take a crack at it. As you may have heard, my wife thinks I’m crazy. As long as she doesn’t find out it’s true, I think I’m ok. 
This sound was captured accidentally in my living room as I fiddled about getting ready to record my piano. The hardwood floors created some serious low frequencies up the mic stand as I was moving around. 
This morning at approximately 7:14 am roofers started removing four layers of asphalt tiles, along with the original cedar shakes, from the roof of my 102 year old house. Not being one to squander such opportunities, I recorded some of their hammering from inside the house. There’s some really nice wooden resonance to it. I hope you like it as much as I still am enjoying it. The photo is a detail from some of the debris that is collecting around the perimeter of my house. At this stage it was about 18″ deep.
In January, 2008 I wrote about the sound design I had produced for an animated short film called 
Literally… Captured bouncing and rolling down the dense, Precambrian volcanic rock on the North Shore of Lake Superior in Minnesota last Summer. I recorded this sound with an AKG c4000b large diaphragm condenser microphone. No processing included. Just linear fades in and out.