My First Helicopter Ride

My girlfriend won a pair of tickets for a nighttime helicopter ride over the Las Vegas strip. I honestly don't like heights too much, but I definitely was not going to pass up an opportunity to bring my Zoom H1 recorder along.

The helicopters that Maverick Tours fly are EC-130s. Although it was a bit windy (as it tends to be regularly in Vegas), the views were excellent!

The entire duration of the flight (about 20 minutes) was recorded from an interior perspective behind the pilot. I edited the recording down and used iZotope RX to clean up and attenuate some of the high frequencies. Check it out:

Contact Mic

I remember when I was a child, I had a stethoscope that I think my family picked up at a garage sale. It was a blast to run around with it listening to stuff, especially my family's Siberian Huskies.

Lately I've been going around to every object I can think of & taping a contact mic to it to see what the vibrations sound like.

I've drawn a lot of knowledge and inspiration from Tim Prebble's Music of Sound post on recording the Hiss and Roar contact mic library.

While I haven't been using a preamp designed specifically for use with a contact mic such as the Barcus Berry 4000 (The mic is a simple piezo to XLR), I did record with the excellent Sound Devices MixPre.

Here are a few of the unprocessed recordings:

Granular Synthesis Experimentation

I've spent my fair share of time with instruments in Avid Pro Tools such as Xpand! and Structure. Now that I heavily use Steinberg software on a more frequent basis, I'm finding that there are some truly fantastic instruments right at my fingertips. HALion is amazing, but one instrument in particular that I've been getting familiar with in my free time is Padshop.

The user interface is for this granular synth is great. Padshop has two independent layers that can be individually mixed and edited with effects and filters plus other parameters you can tweak to create unique sound combinations. Also it comes with a ridiculous amount of presets and samples!

What is fun about experimentation is the creative freedom you get when you're not trying to conceptualize a particular sound or bound by deadlines. Padshop has a lot of versatility, and I could definitely see myself turn to this in a situation where I need to create an ambiance or atmospheric effect. Here is a good tutorial video and if you're interested in granular synthesis like me, definitely check out Padshop.

Neumann TLM 103

I work with the Neumann TLM 103 quite a bit, and I'm a big fan of this microphone. It's obvious that Neumann paid careful attention to the details in the mechanical and electrical design of the TLM 103.

For a recent voice-over session I engineered, voice talent was recorded in English, Spanish and French for the audio tour at Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art's Monet exhibit. The TLM 103 picks up the finest details with little to no coloration. The recordings have a nice warmth and fullness to them. What strikes me the most is the exceptional sense of clarity from the TLM 103.

I've also been plugging the TLM 103 directly into the Alesis MasterControl at my workstation and recording my voice at 192 kHz for sound design. Works fantastic and has been the foundation for a lot of stuff before processing and layering.

This is a great mic! Especially considering the cost, but I definitely recommend getting an equally good preamp as well. Here is an in-depth review from Sound On Sound.

Native Instruments Awesomeness

Yesterday I was geeking out with Dave Braxton at Dog and Pony about The Mouth, an amazing sound controlled synth. I love Native Instruments software. Kontakt is one of my favorite tools for processing sounds, and there are more than a few things within Reaktor that easily spark sound generation creativity. However, Dave opened my ears to some new Native Instruments awesomeness that I was not hip to: BATTERY.
I knew of Battery as a drum sampler, but after Dave showed me some of the ways he uses it for sound design, I was blown away by the capabilities! I'm definitely going to try to incorporate Battery into my workflow more now, especially for footsteps when Foley is not an option due to budget or time. Here is a great demo video of some of the possibilities Battery holds for creating sounds:


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Implosion Recording

The old Flamingo parking garage behind O'Sheas on Las Vegas Blvd was scheduled to be demolished at 2:30am on May 1st. I found out about it late in the evening, but of course I was staying up to not miss out on this opportunity. 
I took the Rode NT4 over the matched pair of Line CM3s because the NT4 has a higher max SPL. I knew that there was going to only be one shot at capturing such a loud sound, so I put the limiter on the Sound Devices MixPre and hoped for the best.
On a separate note, it was funny to see puzzled looks and hear drunk comments from people on the strip as I walked along with recording gear. Eventually after talking with security shutting down the area around the site, I was able to get as close as the local media across the Blvd to record the implosion.

This is my raw recording of the implosion:

The amount of dust was crazy!

Here is a cool video of the implosion from a spot above and behind the parking garage. Wish I could have set up to record from this position!