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
Signs of Spring are making themselves heard in Minneapolis. For example, I recorded the sound of snow quickly melting into a storm drain near the Mississippi river in Minneapolis last night. The temperature was approaching fifty degrees Fahrenheit (ten Centigrade) creating a steady stream of water pouring into a grate adjacent to a cobble stone street. The sound was loud enough to capture my attention as I cycled past it, and nearly drowned (no pun intended) out the ambient noise of traffic and a nearby power plant.
Snow Melting into Storm Drain
Today while tapping (no pun intended) the archives I came across this example of a recording I made of gurgling water in a glass by blowing through a straw. I posted a similar albeit higher pitched example a while ago in the entry Bubbles, and one of my first entries on ACB was pitched down and reverberated Water Atmosphere I produced for Aaron Dablow’s animated short, Drown. This thirty second recording required a long steady exhalation of the breath in my lungs as you can tell from my reaction at the end of the segment.
Deep Bubbles
I made this recording half way across the Central Avenue bridge from Northeast Minneapolis, to the downtown area. This bridge crosses the Mississippi, which was virtually frozen over except for water flowing rapidly over stages of a lock and dam system.
Huge formations of ice were hanging over the falls collecting on logs caught in the flow. The stereo image of the recording consists of the raging river below on the left hand side and sparse traffic on the right. I used the built in mics on the PCM-D50 covered up with a nice fuzzy wind screen like a winter hat.
Central Avenue Bridge Recording