Category: Sounds

I don’t get as much time to do field recording these days, but I do love sounds and I’m fascinated by them.

Sounds of our Shores: Sounds of our Shores

Posted by on in Places, SoundsLeave a comment

This is a great idea in my opinion. It is a collaboration between the British Library, the National Trust, the National Trust for Scotland and audioBoom Ltd to create an archive of recordings of the seaside. It’s a wonderful idea and I’m hoping to get to submit some stuff for it at some point this year.

Survivors Sound Design

Posted by on in Books and Audiobooks, Listening, SoundsLeave a comment

I’ve been listening to Big Finish’s Survivors series one again and this time in a very quiet environment. One of the things that’s struck me is that the sound design on this audiobook is actually amazing. The attention to detail in it was something that I found amazing when I listened to it closely and without distraction, interruption or noise. From the reworking of the original soundtrack to the atmospheric incidental audio and music, to the sound effects and stereo field. It’s very impressive indeed.

Of course it does make me realise just how poor my normal listening environment is. It makes me realise just how much I’m missing from a lot of the audio I listen to, or rather, consume, as I think that it’s more like that than real listening, or deep listening.

New Ototo sensors and some thoughts on the board itself

Posted by on in Making things, Sounds, TechLeave a comment

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I really like the Ototo board from Dentaku. It’s fun for trying things out and experimenting with ideas. I’ve just bought three new sensors for it, an additional light sensor, a pressure / force sensor, and a ribbon sensor. They’re all very nicely made and to the same high standard as the ones I already have, and, they’ve already been very useful.

But using the board has made me start to think about other aspects of the board. In the Dentaku faq about Ototo it mentions that they’re looking into a way of changing the sounds on the board itself. I think that this would be very useful indeed, as would being able to map the different sensor inputs on any given sound as well. I think it could be done with a simple app either for the desktop of mobile, but it would make the board a lot more useful.