This typical, mundane sound has become nostalgic in many respects, but not altogether antiquated. However, this example is less typical, mainly because the sharpener was not mounted on the wall.
Derrin and Doug had to work together; one person holding the sharpener down while the other one turned the crank. This gives the sound a laborious quality that’s interesting to me.
Pencil Sharpening
The long cold Winter of 2008 and 2009 is not over yet. Anything can happen, but most of the snow in Minneapolis has melted. I imagine that my sentiments are shared by most Minnesotans when I say that I am ready to move on to the next season. Hopefully this will be the last of my winter themed field recordings for a few months anyway. I recorded these footsteps while trekking through fresh snow near Lake Superior. It was a very still night, so the crunching of the wet snow came through well with very little wind noise interfering.
Footsteps Through Fresh Snow
My first method of transportation was cycling to a meeting at my work in downtown Minneapolis. After cycling home and packing for my trip I walked to the bus stop, caught a bus to the light rail and took that to the Hubert H. Humphrey airport. I walked, took an elevator and an escalator to get to the terminal. After meeting my wife, we took at plane to Seattle and used the moving walkway to get to the bag claim area where her parents picked us up and drove us to their home in Gig Harbor, Washington. So the complete list is cycling, walking, bus, rail, elevator, escalator, plane, moving walkway, and automobile.
Here’s a compilation of excerpts from six of the methods of transportation that I managed to get the recorder out in time to capture. The sequence is bus, rail, walking, elevator, airplane (take off and landing), and automobile. I hastily transitioned them all together with cross fades in Audacity on my mother-in-law’s PC because I foolishly decided to leave my laptop at home. Thanks, Julie!
Six Forms of Transportation
I found my shiny, new PCM-D50 in a box on my doorstep when I came home on Thursday evening. Luckily it was still there. UPS ignored my note to deliver it to the neighbor if no one answered my door. I haven’t had much time to play with it yet, but I have made a few test recordings in my house. It’s been freezing outside the last few days, so the forced air heating is on constantly providing every recording with some nasty background noise. To avoid the noise I made a few recordings in my bathroom. Naturally the first thing I recorded in there was the toilet flushing. Here it is in all its gurgling glory.
Toilet Flush
A restaurant named Adelita’s near my house has one dollar ninety nine cent twenty five Ounce Bud Light taps on Thursday nights. They also have great food. Tonight I met a few mates there including Kevin, Justin, Nils and his wife Sarah for seventy five or so ounces of um… “beer” with delicious tacos and tamals (flautas shown).
Here’s a recording of us all cheersing each other. Since the glasses clinking had a serious transient I added some compression, which brought up the background sounds of Mexican music and soccer announcers.
Frosty Goodness