Tonebenders host, Timothy Muirhead, tells tales of some of his favourite field recording (mis)adventures and invites all our listeners to send in their own stories of capturing interesting sounds in the wild. Tim shares stories of recording in unusual places, when strangers find microphones left to record on their own, his favourite sound he has ever recorded and lots more.
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The Following is a lightly edited and repaired, A.I. generated transcript of Tonebenders episode 232 – Field Recording Stories. Please excuse any typos or translation mistakes made by the algorithm .
Tim Muirhead/Host
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Tim Muirhead:
Hello and Welcome to Tonebenders where talk with the sonic artist behind our favourite films, game and series. My name is Tim Muirhead and I will be your today aa I tell you about some of my favourite field recording stories. The reason I am going to be sharing these stories is because Tonebenders is hoping to pull together a future episode made up of our listeners most inspired recordings and the stories behind them. Hopefully listening to me re-tell some of my own adventures with a microphone out in the world will trigger something in your minds while listening and you can send it in to and be part of this project.
But before I get to that I want to send out a massive thanks to everyone that came out to The Tonebenders Sound Design Meet-up in Toronto last week. We had a pretty amazing turn out, Toronto doesn’t have the same size audio industry as Los Angeles or New York, but it really punches above it weight for these types of events. I was not able to get an exact head count but I do know we quickly out grew the section of the bar that had been reserved for us. As the sound community filled the space up we started to kind of surround other tables in the pub of people that had nothing to do with our group. They all had to kind of politely move to the other side of the bar to avoid all the audio nerd talk going on. One table of ladies for some reason thought we were all pilots and asked me why we had all gathered. I was confused and told her we were not pilots and that we all worked doing sound for films and games. She got a kind of disappointed look on her face and said “you should have stuck with being a pilot”. That got a pretty good laugh out of the people in ear shot.
We had lots of previous Tonebenders guests come out, and it was great to see them in a social setting and pick their brains and share stories. There are plans a foot to make it a annual event in Toronto, so keep your ears peeled for an announcement in 2024.
We have another Tonebenders Sound Design Meet-up happening this month in New York City. It will be at The Crompton Ale house in Chelsea at 7pm on Oct 26th. After the fantastic nights we had in LA earlier this year and Toronto last week, the standard has been set high for the New York sound community. This one is happening during the week of AES, so if you are either from New York or going to be in town for the convention, please come on out and raise a glass with the sound community. The last two have been so much fun I don’t think this one will be something you will want to miss.
I recently took my family on a camping trip to a place in rural Ontario Canada called Sandbanks. It is this amazing place with a beach that rivals any Caribbean destination. Nothing else is really like it in that area. The beach on the shore of Lake Ontario goes on for miles. For every 50 or so campsite there is a public bathroom with to be shared by all. During the day I went into the men’s room and noticed that the urinals make the most bizarre gurgling sound after the flush cycle finished. I had never really heard anything like it before. My sound design brain kicked in and I immediately started to plan out how I was going to record it. The area is hopping all day, so I decided my best approach would be to come back to the bathroom in the middle of the night and record it when the facility, in theory, would not be busy. So at 2am I woke up in my tent and I headed back to the bathroom and started setting up to record. Now I am in a public bathroom, I have my headphones on, a microphone with a big furry over it pointed a few inches from the opening of the urinal, and I am flushing it a couple times. Completely in my own little world.
I had not noticed that another guy had entered and was completely confused as to what the hell I was up to. When I finally noticed him, he gave me some serious side eye, and I just said to him “Sound Design!”. Then I walked out of the bathroom and back to my campsite, chuckling to myself repeatedly.
Now this story is less about the sound I was recording and more about how it was interrupted. I found myself visiting family in a very out of the way farming community and we were on the side of a country highway. There were almost no birds around, the insects were relivitvely quite and cars and trucks were zipping by at a perfect rate. Often enough that it was not silent but dispersed enough to not just be wash of white noise. SO I got my recorded, a Sony D100, and I covered it in a furry much bigger then it, meant for a full blip, and placed it down about 15 feet from the side of the road. I hit record and walked away. We were in the middle of no where, so Thought it would go completely un-noticed. I was wrong…….
These two super nice guys had seen the furry on the side of the road and thought it was a dead animal……… so they went over to check it out. When I tracked them down to retrieve my recorder, They were so confused to find out I had left it there on purpose. They were positive it had accidentally fallen out of a window of a passing car or something. When I explained I was making recordings to use in TV shows and films, they thought it was interesting but I don’t think they really understood what I was up to. They were extra nice about it all though. When ever I cut these passes into a show, I do it with a massive smile on my face.
Here is one that is both a really cool sound and one that has a really important emotional attachment for me as well. When I first started dating the woman that would eventually become my wife, I knew really early on that she was going to be a big part of the rest of my life. Her parents on the other hand were not so sure about me though. Particularly her father. He is a hands on type of guy. When something breaks, he fixes it himself, if something is needed he builds it himself. He was not particularly fond of this guy, who works on a computer making noises all day, dating his only daughter. I don’t think he really understood what I did for a living and didn’t take me very seriously.
He had a screen printing shop, and in the shop were these large industrial drying racks, made up of metal shelves on hinges. They were meant to put objects that had just been screen printed to dry on. But they were really old and the hinges creaked like crazy when you moved them around. It was a gold mine for metal screeches and groans. The next time we visited her parents I brought along some contact miss and asked her father to help do some recording. I put the headphones on him and started moving the racks around and they were creating some amazing sounds that were very different from what you could hear by just being in the room. I saw his eyes light up as he was listening and he became really excited and started adjusting the racks himself to try and make the screeches himself. He loved. After a while he took off the headphones and said “I feel like we are in a horror film”. After that day with the contact mics in his shop he was a totally different person with me. We have got a long great ever since. He often pulls my aside when we visit to tell me about some new sound he came across and will ask me if I brought my recorder. He invented something he calls upside down fireworks by burning a plastic bag hanging up high and had me record it. It has been nearly 20 years since we first recorded his drying racks and we are still as thick as thieves.
As long time listeners will know, I am Canadian. The same way our American listeners relate to the call of an eagle (which is typically a red tailed hawk in reality) as an iconic sonic representation of their country, the same is true for the lonely yodel of the loon for Canadians. It is a sound that means the world to me. My whole life when ever my parents would take out of the city and into nature, the goal was to hear the call of the loon. My dad and I would spend long periods of time on the edge of a lake trying our best to imitate a loons call in hopes that one would yell back at us. It basically never happened. But when it did it was the greatest. Few things would make as happy as getting into a conversation with a loon. It is a tradition that I have continued with my own son. I have tried to record loons just about ever summer for the last twenty years. The problem is that loons don’t frequent the shore very often, they prefer to stay out in the middle of the lakes. So record one you need perfect conditions. The wind has to be at near zero, there has to be no waves on the lake or all you will record is the water lapping the shore. The insects have to be gone for the season, so late summer is your best bet. And even if you find a day that meets all those criteria, you are still at the mercy of if the loons are feeling vocal that day or not.
But one night it all came together for me. The lake was like a giant piece of glass with out a single ripple on it. The wind was non existent, the insects were co=operating and suddenly two loons started up a really lively argument. There was a large cliff face making really bizarre reflections of their calls and it was one of the most wonderful sounds I have ever heard.
OK so there are a few of the field recordings that I have captured over the years that really stick out to me. Some of them stick out in my memory because they were created in funny situations, some have had an emotional impact in my life, and some are just beautiful moments I was lucky enough to get a microphone pointed towards. Now I want to hear your favourite recordings and the stories behind them. Do you have something that will give us a laugh or a cry? Then dig it up and send us that sound. Feel free to record yourself telling the tale of how the sound came to be. You can either send us the story and the recording separately or you can combine them and have the sounds playing underneath your story. If you are one of those people who hates the sound of their own voice, you can always send us the text of your yarn along with the sounds and one of the Tonebenders hosts will read it out for you.
Once you the audio files all ready use a transfer service, like Wetransfer or what ever you prefer, and send it to [email protected]. We will be collecting them until Sunday Nov 19th 2023. The we will figure out how to make an episode out of everything we get. Please only send in recordings the you personally recorded. You very well may have a personally relationship with a hanna barberre
a zoink. But we can not include that type of sound for copyright reasons.
So lets hear what you have got people. I am really looking forward to the sounds our listeners come up with. You have until November 19th. Feel free to help us spread the word by telling your friends and colleagues. You can find full instruction on how to submit at Tonebenderspodcast.com
OK that is it for today, don’t forget if you are going to be in the New York city area on Oct 26th to come on out to our Sound Design meet-up at the Crompton Ale house at 159 W 26th St in Chelsea. Full details on our site.
My name is Tim Muirhead, thanks for both indulging my stories today and for listening to Tonebenders!
Great storytelling, Tim—informative and helpful. Thank you for taking the time to share this with us.