I have two primary purposes for recording sound effects:
- Creating a sound effects library to sell
- Adding to my personal sound effects library for work
I think most of the time I’m recording… it’s that first option. I either have an idea for a library or one in progress, and I‘m recording with a very clear and specific idea of what I want to capture. “I need to record all of the performance variations of this prop.”, or “I need distant highway sounds, and only that.”
I wrote a whole blog post about How I Record Sound in Urban Environments, where I delve into the techniques I use to avoid unwanted noise while recording. While those techniques are very effective in capturing the specific things you want to record, they’re also (quite necessarily) limiting. Great for things like recording bridge lifts, implosions, and diffuse urban environments… less ideal for traditional city ambience, where “noise” is an essential part of the recording.
So, when I was hired to record a whole bunch of iconic Chicago ambience for Atlas Sound, I had to a bit of re-learning on how to embrace what most of the time I see as “unwanted noise”. The people and traffic I typically avoid became THE recording. It was surprising how foreign that felt to me at first. One of my early recordings was at Buckingham Fountain. It’s an iconic fountain in Chicago, where you can usually find large crowds of tourists (and some locals) relaxing and wandering around. Upon arriving, I had this sort of automatic instinct to get close to the fountain to record. There were a lot of people around, and it’s right near two very busy roads, so anything I could do to minimize those sounds is what my gut told me to do. Then, shortly after that thought, I had the obvious realization that those cars and people ARE the sounds I’m looking for. The goal for the project was iconic Chicago ambience, and while the sounds specifically from the fountain are a part of that, the cars and people are just as, if not more important!
It was such a refreshing feeling to approach recording the city in this way. It was freeing. A loud group of teens could walk by, and rather than scrapping the take or notating a section to edit out, it would only enhance the recording! I had a blast re-framing my mindset while recording ambience all over the city. Since I was brought on the project largely for my knowledge of and lived experience in Chicago, my only worry was to capture sounds that were authentic and representative of the Chicago I know. I could let go of so many worries and just focus on capturing rich and active city environments; embracing the noise in just about any way it presented itself.
After wrapping up recording for that library, I found myself doing more recording “just to record”. No particular goal in mind. No related in progress library. Just keeping a handheld recorder in my bag, being observant, and capturing useful sounds. Not only do I have a ton of new content for my personal library, but it’s also sparked ideas for some future Collected Transients Sound Effects Libraries!
It feels great to be recording more again just for the love of it. Every now and then I need a reminder that before all of the libraries, jobs, and projects, I was just recording stuff because it sounded cool… and that alone is more than enough of a reason to record. Thanks to Paul Virostek for bringing me on for such a cool and rewarding project.
