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Post by sasha on May 13, 2023 17:06:01 GMT -5
Here's a sampling of bird calls I've recorded, as promised in "The Sounds of Silence" in the Stories/Essays forum.. It runs a little over 12 minutes. Each clip starts with me identifying the bird, followed by a few seconds of field recording - once at normal speed, and again at 1/3 speed.. It amazes me that something as ordinary as a common bird song can have so much intricate detail hidden in plain view. The recordings were all made with a Tascam DR40 digital hand-held recorder, through it's built-in mics. All captures were within 10 miles of my home in Fitzwilliam NH, most within a mile; some through my bedroom window. Most were recorded with a "dead cat" wind screen. The clips were assembled & retouched where needed with Audacity 3.2. Retouching included amplification (boosting by 5-10 db); noise reduction to suppress background ambience; removal of the occasional click, pop, or (in my vocal parts) lip smacks; and the usual fades in/out. The musical intro/outro is "A Quiet Day in Spring", from Larry Coryell's 1978 Elektra LP "Splendid" - Larry Coryell & Philip Catherine, guitars. youtu.be/HRQRRZvCQ-k
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Post by judih on May 13, 2023 20:59:52 GMT -5
this is fabulous. Thank you so much, Roy. Wow.
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Post by sasha on May 14, 2023 8:17:25 GMT -5
Thanks, judih! It's pretty amazing what slips under our radar when we're out in the garden sipping our morning coffee, isn't it? The thrushes & wrens seem to be especially voluble. The jays shriek sounds prehistoric!
Usually these video thingies come together pretty quickly, but this one dragged on for days. I never reloaded the software (Magix PhotoStory) after my computer crash over a year ago, and I hadn't used it for several months before that - so I'd forgotten many of its quirks. (It's a low-end package, and a tad buggy.) Also, I'd assembled the clips as a standalone audio file, but it was too big to upload here - so I shoehorned it into a slideshow I'd begun over a year ago but never finished. The video and audio were never meant to work together, and getting them synched up was an excruciating posterior agony. Then at one point I somehow had two instances of the program running simultaneously without realizing it, with the expected totally unpredictable results. I lost an entire morning's work digging out of that one. I expect I gave the cardiology team monitoring the device in my chest something to chatter about - I do not take kindly to gross stupidity, especially my own.
But it's passable (barely), mistakes & all, and I'm glad I could share the unexpected complexities in these everyday sounds.
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Post by luvleerenee on May 15, 2023 11:13:58 GMT -5
Wow, just WOW!!!! This is so awesome!!!! 😀😀😀
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Post by gypsy on May 25, 2023 16:26:29 GMT -5
Lovely! I love birds. Do you have more?
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Post by sasha on May 26, 2023 6:50:44 GMT -5
Thanks for giving a listen! Yes, I have a slew of recordings I didn't include - wild turkeys - mourning doves - barred owls - their calls are relatively unadorned, and "soft" - marked by a gradual attack that slowing down renders muddy & difficult to hear. And I have many archived as "Unknown bird" - nothing rare or unusual, but reflecting my limitations as a birder. Bumblebees - wood frogs - a fly buzzing at a window - it's all music to me. Water sounds - I want to marry the sounds of running water to visuals of the many shapes the surface of that water can assume - another project. Evem something as simple as a metal spring can become a musical instrument of sorts. My bucket list includes the warning horn of distant train rolling through a road crossing - the rail line's irregular schedule has made this one of my more elusive targets!
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