Here’s a set of crunchy footsteps recorded in a wooded area. There’s a bit of wind noise, but it otherwise represents the sound of trailblazing through a thick, young forest.
Foot Falls in Woods
As the sound of the freight train faded off into the distance and the railroad crossing bells came into view, I continued recording while deliberately walking on top of the large gravel that surrounded the train tracks. I particularly like the course crunching sound my footsteps made on the large gravel in contrast to the the softer sound of the finer gravel path leading away from the tracks. The wind screen helped but you can still hear some of it on the diaphragm giving the recording some lackluster, non-technical characteristics.
Post Train Gravel Foot Stomp
This recording was made with a Shure VP88 stereo condenser mic on a Fostex FR-2LE field recorder as I was leaving work this evening. I usually exit out of a back stairwell with cement steps and brick walls. In other words, loads of natural sound reverberation.
The audio starts as I open the door to the stairwell. First I ascended two flights, turned around and descended four. I then opened the door to the outside alley and parking lot, where I was greeted with post-rainfall, nighttime, city ambiance. I crossed the street to my bike where two workers packed up their tools in their van. Then I pressed stop, packed up my gear and rode home.
While recording I enabled the bass roll-off on the mic. Then I ran the 48kHz 24bit digital recording through a compressor at 4:1 to reduce some of the transient peaks and bring out some of the background noises. I also normalized it during the render to maximize the volume.
Up the Apples and Pears