I made this recording of an old Smith-Corona mechanical typewriter recently at the my good friends interactive company Grandpa-George. Douglas Brull sat and typed while I held the recorder.
There’s loads of examples of typewriter recordings around, but I could not pass up the opportunity to make one of my own. Here’s thirty-eight seconds of what I captured.
Smith-Corona Mechanical Typewriter
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
If you’ve never ridden in one, you might have wondered what it sounds like inside a gondola as it carries people up a snowy mountain. Well, now your curiosity can be culled with the sound that’s included in this entry.
The gondolas at Lutsen Mountain are pretty loud. Most of the sound is a consistent low frequency vibration from the cable, but along with it are some squeaks, creaks and groans from the hinge and structure of the gondola itself.
If you think about it too much it can be a bit unnerving. It’s probably best to enjoy the view while humming Beatles songs. Here’s a recording made inside the gondola as it makes it’s way to the top of Eagle Mountain.
Gondola Ambiance
The shores and waters of Lake Superior can change dramatically from day to day. After two days of calm, the lake revolted with waves of ice crashing against the rocky shoreline. I have never heard such a sound and eagerly made a recording. These waves were literally made up of water and densely packed plates of ice. When each wave would crest, shards of ice clattered down the trough of the wave, and when they reached the shore the plates of ice would shatter against the rocks.
Waves of Ice
This is one of my favorite PCM-D50 recordings so far. Once again, there was a very still evening after the snow had fallen. At the shore small rivulets of snow melt dribbled into the lake.
I put the recorder on a rock pointing toward the ensemble of water droplets and captured about six minutes of this musical sound. Here’s one minute and thirty three seconds of what I acquired.
Snow Melting