Ten Questions

Here are ten questions inspired by my first drift experience that I will try to use to inform my second.

1)Is the sonic environment similar if you go south on the lake instead of north?

2)what is the difference if the sound is recorded during the day as opposed to night?

3)What about the brief time in between day and night?

4)Would I get more interesting recordings if I did not use a static mic setup?

5)How will it change my decisions in sound recording when the end goal is to present them within the context of a short film?

6)What if I tried a more structured way of deciding what to record? i.e. what if I said that after every 5 minutes of walking I would record wherever I was? This way I might find things other than the more obvious sounds most of us are drawn to.

7)How can I find a better balance between foreground and background sounds?

8)How can I cut down on wind sounds? Is there a particular time/place that is less prone to it?

9)What if I used the presence of people in my recording environment to get more varied recordings?

10)What kinds of sounds play against images better in a non-sync environment?

Drift Assessment

While going on my soundwalk not everything turned out as peachy as I had hoped. The biggest aggravation for me was that it was extremely windy and there were some more open places that I tried to record in that I just wasn't able to get something usable. On top of that I really didn't know the area that I was exploring and so I ended up at the end of my walk at the end of a long peninsula at midnight. The walk back was not the most enjoyable. Not all was bad though. There were a few points in my walk that were very relaxing. The two main times that I remember were both when I was recording sounds. First there was my experience at the snack stand. There was at this point wind but it was not as unbearable as it would get later and it was just really nice to just listen to the flags flapping and kind of zone out. The other sound that I found very relaxing to record was when I was in a spot near the 94 bridge where on one side of me was the sounds of crickets and such in a field and on the other side was the gentle flow of late night commuters. One surprise from my soundwalk experience was how much things really do die down at night since I did all my recording from 8 PM to midnight. Another was that while all of the places in the industrial area seemed to be up and running I never really saw any people there at all. It was quite creepy. The biggest surprise though was listening to what I had recorded once I got home. There was things I thought I got in recordings but didn't and there were also good surprises that showed up as I listened. That was very interesting. My favorite experience on my soundwalk sadly didn't quiet translate in the recording. I was standing next to a salt mountain that was a few stories high. I was there for a while just getting general ambiance when all of a sudden an avalanche of sorts happened on the salt mountain. It really surprised me and it felt really cool that I had stumbled upon something much more interesting than I had first thought.