La Chorranca waterfalls – Valsaín Valley, Spain The recordings shown in the next video took place in the Valsaín valley, Segovia in January 2015. While the video’s sound is down-mixed to stereo, during the actual recording I went for a very convenient Double MS setup consisting of a couple of phase coincident Sennheiser MKH8040 for the M front and the M rear along with a Sennheiser MKH30 as the bidireccional, side microphone. All three of them fitting within a Rycote stereo windshield and signals were feeding 3 channels from two Sound Devices 702. For Double MS resources out there, I would recommend you having a read over the MS Recording article by Tim Nielsen at designingsound.org. Also, the fantastic posts on Quad Miking techniques (quad miking techniques and listening test and quad miking dual MS update) by Rene Coronado in his blog “The sound my head makes” provide a very good overview on the setup and its results. In order to decode the recordings into either quad or stereo I used the DMS plugin by Schoeps. Routing is pretty straightforward, signals are sent to the track were the DMS plugin is inserted. Then depending on the decoding option, I routed the output to quad or stereo channels for a simpler monitoring and rendering.
- Double MS routing in Reaper
Aim was capturing the movement, low frequency swell and distinctive calm yet powerful crashing of the Pacific Ocean waves against the sea wall. Recordings were carried out with a DPA4061 pair feeding a Sound Devices 702.
Frozen Stream – Wąwóz Kraków, Poland
Here I captured a small stream flowing below a layer of frozen snow. The recordings took place at noon, in a sunny but still cold day in Wąwóz Kraków, Poland – January/February 2014.Wąwóz Kraków, in the Tatra mountains is one of the most beautiful gorges in Poland. Recordings were carried out with a Sony PCM-M10 in the initial part of the gorge, trying to capture a very close and clean perspective of what was going on below the ice.
Stream – Abel Tasman, New Zealand These are part of the first recordings I carried out while travelling the world. They were captured while hiking the Abel Tasman National Park in New Zealand by December 2008 with a Roland R09 handheld recorder. Abel Tasman National Park is the smallest national park in New Zealand, located at the north end of the South Island.
Stream – Ushuaia, Argentina Recordings were carried out while hiking Tierra del Fuego National Park close to Ushuaia, Argentina in February 2010. I grabbed a Sony PCM-M10 with me at all times. Thanks to the harsh environment I had the opportunity to record some good ambiences along with rivers and quite a few footsteps on mud.
Bearing in mind that in most of these cases, there are little chances to scout beforehand, what techniques do you find useful when recording flows and bodies of water in non-planned environments?