Richard Broom Photography

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Posts from the ‘Banff, Scotland’ category

The Other Sodding Tractor

Please see my previous post and then join me as I try to record the tranquil sounds of the River Deveron, near to Banff, Aberdeenshire, Scotland. It clearly isn’t my day for field recording! Today is a public holiday and I would expect any self-respecting farmers to take a day off. Not in Banff. So please enjoy the tranquil sounds of the River Deveron passing you by and the delightful sound of a f**king tractor pull a rake around a nearby field. Using my directional parabolic mic (DM), I can hear the sounds of tractors and other industrial noises several kilometres away.

The Other Sodding Tractor

The Other Sodding Tractor - Richard Broom Photography
The Other Sodding Tractor – Richard Broom Photography

The Sodding Tractor!!!

Join me as I try to record the sound of birds today. It is public holiday here today in Scotland. There is no wind. It would have been a perfect day to record bird sounds in the woods near to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duff_HouseDuff House in Banff, Aberdeenshire. Wonderful bird sounds but oh my, the noise of a f**king tractor on Banff Golf Course provided unwanted background noise to the recording of the birds who were really going for it in the woods today. Pah!

The Sodding Tractor!!! - Richard Broom Photography
The Sodding Tractor!!! – Richard Broom Photography

The Crow and the Tractor

Join me as as I tried to record the sounds of a crow but then a tractor came along and ploughed the nearby field. The field was close to the woods at Duff House, Banff, Aberdeenshire. You can hear the tractor driver lift the plough, rotate it and lower it again before turning round in order to plough in the opposite direction.

The Crow and the Tractor
The Crow and the Tractor - Richard Broom Photography
The Crow and the Tractor – Richard Broom Photography

The Walk in the Woods…

Join me and enjoy the sounds from our dog walk in the woods near to Duff House in Banff, Aberdeenshire, this morning. You’ll hear the sounds of woodland birds, including a fine woodpecker, streams and all the other sounds (including, if you listen very carefully, golf ball hits from the nearby Dufff House Royal Golf Club.)

All sounds recorded on my parabolic (directional) microphone using a ZoomH6 recorder (My Zoom F6 still hasn’t arrived!). The sound was mixed (using adaptive noise reduction) using Adobe Audition.

The Walk in the Woods…

The Walk in the Woods - Richard Broom Photography
The Walk in the Woods – Richard Broom Photography

The Big Birds and the Little Birds

Join us in our back garden where, because we live on the coast, we have seagulls swirling about over our heads all day. After a while, you stop noticing their shrieking (about a minute into the recording, the seagulls really shout out loud!). You can hear the tiny birds tweeting away. They sit in a tree in the garden waiting to be fed…always hungry.

The Seagull - Richard Broom Photography
The Seagull – Richard Broom Photography

The Parabolic Microphone

A new microphone system!

I have purchased a parabolic microphone from the Parabolic Microphone Company.

Today was the first day I ventured out into the woods with the ‘para-mic’ to test it out – results below.

Briefly, the parabolic microphone is a directional mic. Basically, point it at a sound source and press the record button (listen to the babbling brook recording above).

On this first try out down in the woods close to Duff House, I forgot to put the ‘wind condom’ on the dish (second image below) and so I picked up quite a bit of wind noise. Moreover, there was a gentle but steady wind through the trees in the wood and that gave me a small amount of background noise which I’ve managed to reduce in post-processing using Adobe Audition.

I used my Zoom H6 to record the sound. I’m still waiting for my Zoom F6 to arrive.

The first recordings will be coming up shortly. Please stay tuned.

The Parabolic Microphone
The Parabolic mic (without wind sock) – Richard Broom Photography
The parabolic mic with the wind ‘condom’ attached – Richard Broom Photography
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