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