A long freight train recorded in Columbia Hills State Park, Washington, right on the Columbia Gorge. The trains here are frequent, long, running at full speed, and easily accessible to recording. In other, designed for sound recordists!

Also: dangerous!

This train was recorded at with a tight mid-side pattern, hoping to get come good clatter.

mid: MKH8060

side: MKH30

recorder: SD702

Seattle has an airport in the heart of the city: a water-port for the seaplanes of Kenmore Air. Their fleet consists primarily of DHC-2 Beavers and DHC-3 Turbo-Otters. Turbo-Otters, such as this one, have turbine engines and sound more like jets than the quintessential old-clanky-propeller-plane sound of the Beavers.d

SD702

Mid: MKH8060

Side: MKH30

Seattle has an airport in the heart of the city: a water-port for the seaplanes of Kenmore Air. Their fleet consists primarily of DHC-2 Beavers and DHC-3 Turbo-Otters. Beavers, such as this one, have piston-drive engines, and really sell that great old-clanky-propeller-plane sound that is matched only by a fleet of Harley Davidsons.

SD702

Mid: MKH8060

Side: MKH30

These are monster planes, used for carrying around 787 Dreamliner parts. This one landed and taxied by at an airport where I watching my daughter take single-prop flight lessons. Fortunately I had my gear handy.

SD702

Mid: MKH8060

Side: MKH30

I've been playing around with alternate stereo recordings methods lately. This excerpt is from my first using an omni center Mid-Side setup. No high-pass filtering in record and no post-processing has been done (a rarity for me)except for a gain-boost and trimming down to 2 minutes.

Mid: Sennhesier MKH 8020

Side: Sennhesier MKH 30

I spent the day going through some of my old crow recordings. The have just such a wonderfully expressive range, more than just the simple "caw-caw" that everyone thinks they do. Every time I see a movie with a crow or raven that says, "caw-caw, caw-caw-caw" at the same pitch over and over and over, I think it's a wasted opportunity.

image credit:

"American crow, October 2017--Warren Bielenberg" by Great Smoky Mountains National Park is marked with Public Domain Mark 1.0. To view the terms, visit https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/?ref=openverse.

Lately I've been trying to record some straight-out natural ambiences from the same location at multiple times-of-day, mostly dawn & dusk choruses. Seattle's a noisy town, full of background roar and cars, so it's nice to find a place within the city that actually sounds like it's got a natural presence.

Many years ago we had finches as pets. I could listen to finch songs all day. It's like sunshine in a little feathered body.

Two geese fly overhead, followed at a distance by a small, eager to catch up flock.

I always imagine crows to be making fun of us somehow.

Or just laughing and pointing.

image credit:

"American crow, October 2017--Warren Bielenberg" by Great Smoky Mountains National Park is marked with Public Domain Mark 1.0. To view the terms, visit https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/?ref=openverse.