To start with, I went on recording field trip up north at the start of the month. Just me, a couple of microphones, my laptop and my car.
The highlight of the adventure was definitely the colony of flying foxes. While I already have a small collection of relatively good recordings of a single flying fox (the result of a combination of far-too-late-nights and a dash of good luck), how often do you have need of a single bat in sound design? It's almost always a flock of them going someplace. I hit the jackpot.
They kind of look like seed-pods from a distance!
I turned up around an hour before sundown, and they were already in full swing, chattering and fussing and generally making quite the din. Unfortunately, remote though it was there was a somewhat noisy bridge a few hundred metres away, a rather excited stormbird, and a stack of ducks having a grand old time, but I wasn't in any rush and neither were the bats, so out of a solid two hours of recording (two SD cards and two sets of batteries...) I managed to get a fair chunk of usable sounds.
Here's a short sample of the spoils:
FlyingFoxes by ReeAudio
Chattery little things, they don't shut up. I'd hoped to get some decent wing-flapping mixed in when they all took off at dusk, but of course, bats are terribly silent fliers.
I used two microphones, the two native condensers on my Zoom H4n, as well as my Rode NTG2 for narrower pickups. Not the most high-end setup but certainly got the job done. While for the most part that particular recording session went well (I remembered plenty of batteries and extra storage space), it was quite windy, and in a moment of poor oversight, only had the standard foam wind shield for the NTG2, which rendered a lot its recordings non-salvageable. Mental note to pick up a dead cat for that one at the first opportunity - the dead kitten for the Zoom stood up the task admirably. Quality wind shields are important for field recording. It's a lesson I apparently have to relearn for each microphone.
Also a mental note - next time I'm recording near a river, or at dusk - bring mosquito repellent. In the end, I walked away with 32 bug bites.
Totally worth it.
As for the rest of the field trip, I caught a stack of birds and natural ambiances as well, and even hit up the local 'zoo', which had a cockatoo that was microphone-shy (quite happy to screech and talk and me whenever the microphone wasn't pointing at it), as well as some pigs and goats and chickens.
There were also a few very vocal emus, which for the record have one of the oddest bird calls of all time. They sound almost like a drum.
Emu by ReeAudio
Other highlights included the beach for some ocean ambience, because you can always use the soothing sound of waves, which I won't bother putting here as everybody has heard the ocean a hundred thousand times before. The surf was unfortunately fairly mild the day I went though. Here's a lovely picture all the same:
All in all, a great success! Over the years I have not had the opportunity to do nearly as much field recording as I would have liked, so the chance to spend a couple of days doing nothing but that was a good experience and resulted in some great contributions to my personal library.
Next on the agenda is the Lone Pine Sanctuary I think. It's not very well known, but koalas make the most hideous sounds that would be perfect for a monster.
