Field recordings by Oorlab

Springs review by Tim Prebble

2011-12-16T00:14:00.000-08:00

Tim Prebble is a film sound designer and composer from New Zealand.
On this soundcloud recording you can hear a.o. a classic slinky, thunder drums and trampoline springs, recorded in different ways. Contact microphones were used also.

At http://hissandaroar.com/ you can see and hear more recordings from Tim Prebble.

Thunderstorm Zeist 28 June 2011

2011-07-09T13:17:00.000-07:00

One big thunder clap.
Available for the time being on
http://soundcloud.com/oorlab/thunderstorm-zeist-june-28th

and on Archive.org with some other recordings of thunder under the identifier
"ThunderstormsMayAndJune2011TheNetherlands"

Here in Dutch an article about the storm of June 28th 2011

http://www.vwkweb.nl/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4607&Itemid=26

New fieldrecordings on Soundcloud

2011-04-05T13:02:00.000-07:00

I enjoyed listening to "Waking" by Bulldozia

http://soundcloud.com/bulldozia/waking

on Soundcloud. Bulldozia is the nom de plume of Alasdair Pettinger from Glasgow. He is a music librarian and has more field recordings at freesound (http://bit.ly/azabfa). Also at audioboo.fm/bulldozia.
He uses a Minidisc Walkman MZ-R700 with either a Sony ECM-MS907 stereo condenser microphone or Soundman OKM Klassik binaural in-ear microphones.

RotterdamHarbourFieldrecording

2011-03-18T15:34:00.000-07:00

http://www.archive.org/details/RotterdamHarbourFieldrecording

Here you can listen and freely download a 17 Mb Wav file of 2 small recordings I made with the trusted Edirol in teh Rotterdam Harbour, The Netherlands on wednesday March 9th 2011, on a walk with good friend Mark Hoogslag.

wind

2011-02-06T14:19:00.000-08:00

Windy weather last few days, can't say an all out storm, but still heavy gales, gusts and blowing winds.
I did some recording. Here
http://www.archive.org/details/WindStormyWeatherNetherlandsFebruary5th2011

you can listen & download the original WAV files.

On

http://soundcloud.com/oorlab/wind-february-5th-2011

you can here a 2 minute collage.

Frequencies of the Vuvuzela

2010-06-14T07:01:00.001-07:00

At http://www.archive.org/details/SampleOfVuvuzela-MatchUs-Uk you can listen to a small snippet (sample of ca 3 sec looped 10 times) of the much discussed Vuvuzela sound as recorded during the match United Kingdom - United States june 12th 2010.
I ran it through the freeware frequency analyzer MAnalyzer from Melda productions (VST plugin which works fine for me in Cubase SL 2). As you can see there are peaks, two of them seem pretty typical for the Vuvuzela - at 452 and 698 hZ.

Biskupin frogs fieldrecordings Poland May 10th

2010-05-13T13:50:00.001-07:00

Category: Music

At http://soundcloud.com/oorlab/frogs-biskupin-fieldrecording-poland-2010-may-2nd-1
and http://www.archive.org/details/FrogsBiskupinPolandMay2nd2010

you can listen to and download recordings from frogs in a pool next to the Biskupin prehistoric village (life-size model of an Iron Age fortified settlement in north-central Poland (Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship).

Some more pictures of the frogs and Biskupin are up at Flickr.

Birds recorded in forest Den Treek - Netherlands

2010-04-05T08:57:00.000-07:00

Here is a link to Internet Archive
http://www.archive.org/details/FiledrecordingBirdsVogelsDenTreek

where I put up two files in WAV (downloadable with CC Licence SA) of the same recording.

It is a collage of several recordings I made on march 21, 2010 in Den Treek - a forest area south of Amersfoort in the Netherlands. During the recording traffic was heard, as well as some aeroplanes and a bit of wind. The latter I mind the least. But the reason for recording were the birds off course. I checked at which frequencies the birds were singing - with the freeware plugins from Meldaproduction (kindly recommended http://www.meldaproduction.com/freevstplugins/mequalizer.php. I tried to filter out the low rumbling of traffic and aeroplanes - so around 200Hz I put the filter at - 10 DB.

Natuurgeluid club CNR

2010-04-05T07:48:00.000-07:00

This website contains information in Dutch on recording nature sounds, and quite a lot of MP3's o f birds, amfibians and insects.
http://www.natuurgeluid.nl/

Storm & birds february 2010

2010-02-28T11:18:00.000-08:00

Recorded with my new Edirol R-09HR birds (yesterday) and the storm Xynthia (today). The birds file is uploaded in two versions - one unfiltered and one with all lower frequencies cut off to get rid of the never absent aeroplane hum.

http://www.archive.org/details/FieldRecordings2728Feb2010DoornAmersfoortTheNetherlands.

Picture by Dmytrok - from Flickr - http://www.flickr.com/photos/klimenko/
Xynthia storm above Heilbrunn

field recordings from Nepal

2010-01-24T13:12:00.000-08:00

Under the title Bus concerto - you can listen to several field recordings made by Iqbit from Spain, in Nepal. Excellent quality. Hear busses, traffic, birds, streetnoises.
The link above gives the blog, and here

http://soundcloud.com/iqbit

you can go directly to the soundfiles on soundcloud.

Field recordings mentioned on Twitter

2009-06-07T02:18:00.000-07:00

Last night I used http://search.twitter.com to find out about field recordings. One promising site I found was http://www.soundwalk.com/blog/category/art/.

There you find interesting audio-clips with just one or two pictures. I listened to the natural surrounding sound of the south of France, and the cutting of trees in Germany.
Not sure if Soundwalk.com is a one persons-project or a group of people.

Found Freesound

2009-04-30T13:57:00.000-07:00

Looking fo freeware sounds of rowing I was, and found http://www.freesound.org/rss.php. I made an account and presto - got a nice WAV file from a Canadian student called Hazure.

Freesound.org offers no music but loads of sound samples under Creative Commons licence.

New sounds from Birds + Wind

2009-03-13T16:24:00.000-07:00

This morning we went out for a ride on the bike and took the minidisc recorder - we caught a woodpecker and some other birds:

Nature recordings (Wav files for download + streaming - birds etc. 2008 + 2009

Minidisc MZ-N710 and Sony One-Point Stereo Microphone ECM-719
3 recordings outside in Den Treek- a forest area south of Amersfoort. Around noon, Woodpeckers, birds, a dog barking in the distance are heard. Als a bit background noise from the highway A28 (5 km away), and some aeroplanes can be
heard.

+ 1 recording, leftover from last years expedition to Maslenica on the Adriatic coast. Wind + birds.

This audio is part of the collection: Open Source Audio

Keywords: Woodpecker; birds

Creative Commons license: Naamsvermelding-Gelijk delen 3.0 Nederland

Winter sounds - and mating sounds from mosquitos

2009-01-09T15:27:00.000-08:00

The BBC reports about new research into the sounds that mosquitos apparantly maken while mating:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7814404.stm
You can also take a listen...

Today I uploaded two tracks to internetarchive: a plain field recording of skating in Doorn, The Netherlands, last weekend. And an audio collage of news clips about the winter cold and the Ukrain-Russia gas conflict, blended with some homegrown music, made for the collage.
http://www.archive.org/details/WinterSounds

Feel free to listen / download etc (cc license)

Found sounds

2008-11-18T13:37:00.000-08:00

This month, featured on Dlib Magazine is the Western Soundscape Collection

http://dlib.ukoln.ac.uk/dlib/november08/11featured-collection.html

And
This is apparently a second hand shop that has put up some of the found tapes with odd home recordings. Check out e.g. the Texas Psychic.
http://www.sweetthunder.org/tapes/weekninety.html

BBC: Recording of the sound of stars

2008-10-30T02:33:00.000-07:00

With the Corot space telescope (France) "stellar seismology" has yielded soundrecordings of pulsating stars.
BBC October 23d 2008

Natural sounds in Music theatre - Frysk festival

2008-08-17T14:15:00.000-07:00

During the Frysk Festival - in the north of the Netherlands, from August 22 until 31st, composer and birdwatcher Sytze Pruiksma combined film, natural sound and music in a composition called Lân.

Recording of thunderstorms over the Netherlands

2008-06-06T15:36:00.000-07:00

Last week some heavy thunder passed over Belgium and The Netherlands. Rain and lightning kept us awake at night. I enjoyed it a lot and made some recordings- to be found here on the Internet Archive.

Birds recorded

2008-05-21T14:13:00.000-07:00

At http://www.archive.org/details/EarlyMorningMayBirdsSinging
you can listen to three recently recorded MP3's - two recorded 5 o' clock in the morning, birds singing - no cars yet - and one of birds in the evening.

More on bioacoustics you can find via Scirus.

34 different types of whale sounds discovered

2007-11-10T01:10:00.000-08:00

Rebecca Dunlop analyzed three years of whale recording. She and her colleagues from the University of Queensland, Humpback Whale Acoustic Research Collaboration (HARC) project, had audio transmitters to buoys in the sea.

More information about this fascinating prospect at
http://www.acousticecology.org/newsarchive/newsarchivescience.html
and
http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/425827/1438100

Chickens in a barnhouse

2007-10-27T15:49:00.000-07:00

Soundrecording of some 5.000 small chickens in a barnhouse - recorded near Diepenheim, in the east of the Netherlands, spring 2006.
MP3 2,6 Mb
or Wav and other formats on the Internet Archive.

Thank you Joe Zawinul

2007-09-11T14:28:00.000-07:00

Today- far too young - at 75, passed away the great musician and sound forger Joe Zawinul. One of the true open minds in music and culture of our times, he crossed many borders. Listen to anything made by him, with Weather Report, Miles Davis, The Zawinul Syndicate - and you will be mesmerized.
My fondest memory is listening for the first time and after that over and over again to The Stories of the Danube (1996). Haunting at times, joyfull, mysterious music, it's all there, as in real life the river flows. Specially the fourth movement is unforgettable with the singing of Amit Chatterjee.

Thunderstorm & Birds

2007-07-13T15:39:00.000-07:00

Recorded last month, some WAV files with thunder and rain, and an occasional car.
Also Birdsounds with quite a lot of backgroundnoise of traffic.
You may listen to it, download it and reuse it under CC license via archive.org
enjoy

Radio documentary about Croatia

2007-04-11T12:38:00.000-07:00

On the dutch radio station VPRO this week was a show about Croatia. Although the show is in dutch, it is also interesting for people from othe linguistic backgrounds, because of the backgroundnoises (sea, church, birds, agricultural sounds etc.)

Enjoy it streaming

Sounds from glaciers

2007-03-29T15:24:00.000-07:00

On Antarctica2000.net you can download some interesting MP3 files with sounds from glaciers. You can hear ice refreezing, or sounds from the inside with a hydrophone. The author of the recordings, Douglas Quin, holds a Ph.D. in Acoustic Ecology.

melodic similarity

2007-02-15T10:57:00.000-08:00

Rainer Typke is due to defend his doctor's thesis at the University of Utrecht. His subject is search methods in databases with music encoded in MIDI. Melodies are coded in the Musical Instrument Digital Interface format. This standard was developed in 1983. Typke has now come up with a method by which melodies can be compared and a measure of similarity can be determined.
More information and a prtotype of a searchengine can be found on
http://rainer.typke.org/
another searchengine where you can look for MIDI files is
http://midomi.com

Music Retrieval based on Melodic Similarity
* Information retrieval
* indexing
* Multimedia
* melodic similarity
* music search engine
* Music retrieval

Woudagemaal

2007-01-11T04:28:00.000-08:00

Today a storm is passing the Low countries. In Friesland the oldest "gemaal" (Pumping engine) is reactivated. A soundclip was recorded by the radio 1 Journaal - you can hear some engine sounds.

Recordings of fireworks

2007-01-03T14:22:00.000-08:00

Happy new year. This year the Dutch sent up around 70 million euro to the stormy skies (in 2005 ca. € 55 million). This year they were allowed 500 grams of powder instead of the old 200 grams per item - so the sound and smoke was even more impressive.
The police and insurance companies report a sharp increase of vandalism and incidents with violence. Political parties are considering forbidding fireworks altogether next year and replacing the old custom with dancing about with laserbeams... less noisy and low on environmental damage.
Here are two audiofiles, recorded after midnight - from our window on the second floor. You hear some talking of my son Arthur and me. The second file is recorded at the bottom of a ventilator pipe that runs from our roof down to the bathroom. An odd effect is created in the long pipe.

Fireworks MP3 3,6 Mb

Fireworks through ventilator pipe 2,1 Mb

Sounds from outer space

2006-12-20T14:56:00.000-08:00

With digital techniques, signals form outer space can be made audible. The webpage
http://www-pw.physics.uiowa.edu/space-audio/ from the University of Iowa has some examples, like a solar wind termination shock, or heliospheric radio-emissions. You can also click further to "sampling of Don Gurnett's favorite sounds of space" and find Earth Multi-Hop whistlers (what you get thunder generates waves that travel through the magnetosphere).

Discussing homerecording

2006-12-05T11:58:00.000-08:00

Because I am reinstalling my analog Tascam 4track - I was looking for information about the tapes I should use: Maxell or TDK. I found a good discussion of the subject on
http://homerecording.com/

For the dutch speaking recording people - neem eens een kijkje op
http://www.homerecording.be/

Damien Jurado - heard in concert

2006-11-27T12:11:00.000-08:00

Last saturday together with comrades Marc and Pascal I heard Damien Jurado + band play in Ekko, Utrecht. A good concert it was, although the musicians seemed a bit tired. The support act, J. Tillman even got irritated by barely audible talking in the audience, but later recuperated himself by playing excellent drums on some of Jurado's songs.

Damien Jurado has an audioblog while on tour.
The music reminded me of some of the more introspective Neil Young songs. Most critics compare Jurado with Nick Drake, but I couldn't vouch for that for I have still to discover Drake's work.
I bought a CD, "Where shall you take me?" of 2003. Interesting productional efffects in nr. 4, "Texas to Ohio".

Excellent playing and beautifully adding to the sobre atmosphere were cello-player Jenna Conrad and drummer/guitarist Eric Fischer (was that an e-bow he was using?)

Audiofragments of composers Altena and Cameron

2006-11-19T02:39:00.000-08:00

On the website of Donemus you can listen to audiofragments in MP3 - about 60 seconds of different musical snippets. Composers Maarten Altena (NL) and the Canadian Allison Cameron who studied with Per Nørgård.

Search for sounds

2006-10-27T13:39:00.000-07:00

Search engine watch describes a search engine, dedicated specially to sounds: www.findsounds.com. The nice thing is that in the search result you can see the waveform, and colours in it show information on frequency.
For example, in the picture above you 'see' the sound of a horse galloping towards the microphone and then whinnying. The gallop has a bit darker colours then the whinny.

Dave Nolan, Audio Archivist - November 1st

2006-10-22T14:58:00.000-07:00

Mr. Nolan will speak at a meeting in New York as an "Introduction to Digital Audio for Libraries & Archives". More information on the site of the Metropolitan New York library council.

Spectrum of birds

2006-10-20T15:12:00.000-07:00

Here you see a frequency analysis of a recording of bird sounds in a dutch forest called Kaapse Bossen.
The birds are apparently around 4 and 5 kHz.
Some more birds, from California, can be heard at the "A sound effects recording blog".

Grendizer trio plays Théâtre Monnot - Beyrouth

2006-10-09T12:24:00.000-07:00

Wednesday October 18th, 2006
Théâtre Monnot - Beyrouth (01 202422)
GRENDIZER TRIO plays with JULY'S WAR

Mazen Kerbaj : trumpet, amplifications, objects, recorded sounds
Raed Yassin : double-bass, radio, tapes, laptop

and in Amsterdam
Thursday October 26th, 2006
STEIM - Achtergracht 19, 1017 WL Amsterdam THE NETHERLANDS
MAZEN KERBAJ plus GUESTS

Mazen Kerbaj : trumpet
Sharif Sehnaoui : acoustic guitar
Michel Waisvisz : crackle box
Takuro Mizuta Lippit (dj sniff) : turntables
Clare Cooper : guhzeng
Tarek Atoui : laptop

Soundtransit

2006-09-26T16:01:00.000-07:00

Started by Derek Holzer, Sara Kolster and Marc Boon (Netherlands & Germany), SoundTransit offers room for field recordings of different places, like trains, the royal palace in Denmark, or 'a distant piledriver' from Utrecht (recorded by Wouter van Veldhoven). An interesting sound is that of creaking trees - recorded by Julien Quentel.

Bioacoustics underwater

2006-09-21T15:29:00.000-07:00

The university of Pavia has a section dedicated to recording underwater sounds. Although not easy to find at first, they have some interesting soundfiles (WAV and MP3) of mediterranean whales recorded with a sonobuoy.

Music research and Quantum measurement problem

2006-09-13T12:10:00.000-07:00

With the methods that will be used in new brain research around music perception, the problem will be the same as the quantum-dilemma: with your measurement you will/might influence what you want to measure. If you make electroencephalograms and magnetoencephalograms of people, and then try to determine the neural determinants of music appreciation or music emotion emerging in the human brain - then the appreciation and emotion will be influenced by the laboratory setting.
Still, this research will be very interesting to follow. It is conducted by groups from Italy, Finland, Germany, Sweden and Canada. It could be interesting to include for instance people from South-Africa, the Rhodes university music dept. or some other place on the wider globe. I'm looking forward to it.

Song learning by sparrows

2006-09-08T15:30:00.000-07:00

This summer I recorded some sparrows. They were a bit distant, so I amplified the recording in Audacity.
The linked title above leads to an article about the effect of diet in song learning by sparrows.
The sparrow recording recorded in maslenica, Croatia.
Here is a link to another sparrow recording: http://www.archive.org/details/GodwitDaysExcerpt2005
recorded at the Arcata Marsh.

2006-09-07T02:46:00.000-07:00

Music tracking service Nielsen Soundscan has determined that Bob Dylan's new album "Modern Times" has gone straight to number one. More on the Nielsen Soundscan can be found via Exalead.
Today n the Netherlands we have Jannes - Laat me vrij on nummber 1, and Bob's Modern Times on number 3:
http://www.planet.nl/planet/show/id=82349

2006-08-30T02:01:00.000-07:00

Tierstimmen from Germany

An article (in english) on the Deutsche Welle website caught my attention, it is about the archive "Tierstimmenarchiv des Museums für Naturkunde der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin ". From the Tierstimme-site you "can listen to 110.000 recordings" and read about its history that started in 1951. It is said that it is "one of the oldest and largest collections of animal sounds in the world."
In an article about The relationship between acoustic structure and semantic information in Diana monkey alarm, mention is made of the kind of microphones used in these kind of recordings.

2006-08-27T15:14:00.000-07:00

Singing Iceberg

November last year German scientists from the Alfred-Wegener-Instituts für Polar- und Meeresforschung recorded a singing Iceberg, under water tremors with overtones. I took a sample and changed the speed a bit.

2006-08-27T14:57:00.000-07:00

Trumpet vs bombs

Tonight I listened to a radioprogramme called Radioatelier, by Vincent Bijlo. There was a piece for trumpets and bombs, recorded from the balcony of the amazing Libanese drawing blogger Mazen Kerbaj on the night of the 16th of july in Beirut.
You can listen to it here
This week Mazen Kerbaj is touring in Sweden.
Bon voyage!

2006-08-23T07:01:00.000-07:00

Cows have accents

BBC News reports today about different cows accents. Farmers in Somerset "noticed the phenomenon".
As soon as I can find the time I will record some Dutch cows, in fond memory of my grandfather who could do excellent cowsounds.

2006-08-22T14:47:00.000-07:00

Recordings of thunder and the Zadar Sea organ

Two days ago there was a nice thunderstorm here in Amersfoort from which I recorded some fragments. You can hear rain in several intensities and rolling thunders in the MP3 file. The microphones were placed underneath a slightly opened sloping window.

Tonight I MP3-ed a detail of a larger recording I made this summer in Zadar, the beautiful Dalmatian town in Croatia. In 2005 a Sea Organ was built in the quays - the waves of the sea produce the sounds. When you are there, you only see small round holes in the stone, but the sound is quite deep and varied. The design of this Morske Orgulje is by Nikola Bašić.

the sound files

2006-08-18T14:23:00.000-07:00

Earlier this year I recorded some birds from my balcony. The birds were a few meters away in the trees, in the distance some cars are heard.
The soundfiles can be downloaded from the Internet Archive

2006-08-17T12:15:00.000-07:00

MP3 recordings of thunder, cicadas and birds

Recording equipment - Sony Minidisc and two AKG C 1000 S microphones. Set to MP3 with audacity

Thunder recorded at a distance of about 4 km, from the thunderstorm - near Velebit Mountains in Croatia.
Birds were some 30 metres away... - two kinds can be discerned.
The cicadas were quite near.