Field recordings, foley edits, mid-side mixing, low-cost soundpack creation...

[909 County Fair]

Of course sample packs are nice, but is anybody happy with their own "found sounds" these days?
With costs of portable recording devices being so low lately, there might be a lot of really impressive outdoor (and indoor) potential.
I'm hopefully about to buy a field recorder later today. I've got brilliant ideas of going to the local junkyard after hours to bang and scrape on some junk for special sounds. I'm not even caring if the recorder is so cheap that it's WMA, mono at 8 kHz sampling rate. I'm seeking to make weird drums and percussion sounds. I'll assemble them into stereo later.

One idea I also have is to shove 2 completely separate and distinctly different sounds into the same Mid-Side maxtrix to transmogrify them into a nice kind of stereo on the MS-stereo output side. For that matter, I might start doing all of my recordings in mono to save RAM and drive space/capacity and CPU/overhead too.

If it's all just stereo at the output, and not so much at the input, it'll still work out if I do it right. It's kinda like a different way to do doubling, but the two "takes" can be of completely different contents smushed together into the Mid-Side algorithm. I've been planning this for a long time. I think it'll work out.

Also, using Mid-Side techniques might make mixing for stereophonic easier, because there's inherently adjustable balance for the center OR the sides... per sonic element. It's a good way to save track/channel space too--very efficient patchbay kind of economy. For example:

1) If the DAW can only support 8 channels, instead of ending up with only 4 stereo paths before bounce time, there can be 8 paths done in multiple stages of mid-side computation and recovery. So like, if you really need to record all 8 instruments, but that collapses everything to mono, just preplan to "stereoize" whatever you need later on, using Mid-Side mixing techniques.

2) So the main file can still store the crucial data and use up the track capacity without losing the main musical idea. It might sound odd, but a lot of odd sounds sound great!

I think my drums are going to end up astounding, synths too.
But I don't have anything to share yet.
When I get some stuff done properly, I'll be back to post some examples for y'all.

I'm deeply nested in several layers of pre-planning.
It'll be good to get the portable recorder to get me out of this computer more often.

What's in you folders?

 

[rhythmgj]

I haven't done anything with field recordings in several years. But I can say that I have found the Zoom H1 to be extremely useful, versatile, and I have taken it around the world (and brought back sound effects and samples from Ghana and Kenya, for example).

I like your ideas. It would be interesting to hear what you come up with.


GJ

 

[909 County Fair]

THX. (thanks)

Probably for the next several weeks I'm going to be editing a bunch of digs, saving them, making some pitched or filtered varieties, and then dumping the results to portable storage as I go along.

It's kind of funny that I'm likely to sell this computer, though it's been a really nice pretty system.

I've been computing how much time and sanity has been wasted with computer stuff and eve though some of the best synth sound come from software, it's about bloody time that I ditch all this and that and retain only the parts which matter (which is only the standard WAV audio primed for playback on hardware).

Here's some other stuff burning up my time and sanity...

I was supposed to be able to purchase some items this week, but I'm getting bank-escrow related hassles up the wazoo lately. I'm really angry about it. Just last night I was trying to talk to a cop about other stuff and realized accidentally, that at least one of the cops that I've talked to in the past might not even be a real cop, might be scammer in uniform.

I noticed that his dispatcher was lying to him, and he repeatedly showed zero(0) interest in what I was telling him despite him getting in my face and claiming that he was there to help me. But I never asked for any help; I was there to help the police department with some tips about perpetraitors I had remembered spontaneously. I never asked for any help. But his dispatcher lied to him and told him that I needed help. And then he came up to me, following me, stopping me, wasting my time, trying to dig into why I was on their line.

Then I realised, he's in danger, because if his dispatcher is lying to him, EVEN IF HE's NOT EVEN A REAL COP, then he could get killed by local nearby thugs. If he shows up anywhere in uniform or in a squad car, as if he's legit, and the dispatcher gives him bogus info, like she did last night, he'll be there in the wrong way, for the wrong reasons, and at the wrong time, with the wrong expectations, with the wrong attitude, and either with his guard up too high or too low, or both.

As much as I might not like him, or maybe I do, or maybe it doesn't matter, I tried to warn him about that, but just like everything else, he didn't seem to be listening to hear about that.

And the dispatcher was rude too. I hung up on her when she started asking the kind of questions that are bogus for anybody to be asking anybody anywhere at anytime. I've been through this before. Is this my life these days???? Gosh.

Interestingly, and slightly reassuringly, the daytime dispatchers are A-OKAY, and some of the cops who know me and who I know too are quite reasonable to me and even they seem to let the night dispatchers stay misled and out of the loop. I guess the real-life cops, who are genuine, have previous experience with bogus night dispatch working against them, so they let them stay ignorant about what's really happening or not in person.

It kinda makes me smile a bit, because people like that are keeping themselvses safer that way, and that's a lot like the rest of us non-cops who similarly dodge the bogus ones trying to lead us into or keep us in danger.

I might be getting monitored from time to time. I tried to specifically let law enforcement know that its' a good sign about me if I'm working on music, and maybe a bad sign if I'm not. Some of em might be wondering (or not wondering) what's been taking me so long to get back to making tunes.

I've had SO MANY disruptions to my safety, health, wellness, business plans, income, from so many varieties of angles. When it comes down to it, I'm not even likely supposed to be living in this local area, but I can't leave yet, because my income to purchase travel is several months late, and even my newer separate income is recently a month delayed.

I'm trying not to become EXPLOSIVELY ANGRY about it.

But on the bright side, yesterday evening, I deleted all my porn again. ...to have more mental CPU to be thinking about my near future audio career plans and to have more actual computer storage area for the musical instrumentation without me devolving into, well, being a wanker LOL.

 

[rhythmgj]

Ummmmmm... yeah.

GJ