Water Atmosphere

drown thumbRecently I had the pleasure of producing the audio for a short animated piece called “Drown” by Aaron Dabelow. I simply recorded myself blowing bubbles in water with a straw. I captured in it Ableton Live 6 with my AKG c4000b large diaphragm condenser at a distance of about 9 inches, being careful not to splash water on the mic. The processing included down pitching an octave or so, running it through a high pass filter, and then dousing the works with some massive reverb.

Water Atmosphere
– From “Drown”

4 thoughts on “Water Atmosphere

  1. Superb idea… straw bubbling and down pitching.
    Speaking of splashing the mic: Once used a saran wrap to protect my mic from possible damages when recording water action stuff…
    Concerning water atmosphere: Recently I wanted to create a sort of mermaid song. Already had the acapella of a friend at hand – she sang a couple of la-la-la-groups which got a nice amount of reverb. A decent backing ambience was quickly found in some ocean field recordings of dolphins and whales. The only problem was the rhythm part – none of the common ambient percussion styles (be it ethno, electronica or downtempo beats) could satisfy my conception of an aquatic world, so I got the idea to create rhythm patterns myself by combining samples of dropping water.
    Well, the results were evocative of a stalactite cave, but due to the whale noises one could imagine an underwater cave (where the mermaid resides, of course).
    Here’s the final mix: http://raschedv.net/dl/NaquamHiFi.mp3

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