Cricket Firsts, and the OG Crickets of 1994 Online
Saturday, July 23rd, 2022 01:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snoozefestaudioOkay, so I wrote an entry for July 22nd that has since been deleted. If you read it, you might be confused, and if you didn't, you don't care. But this entry corrects that one, and gives you some fresh news to boot! :D
Basically, on Thursday, July 21st, I got my old plastic crate full of cassette tapes out of the cellar, brought them upstairs, dug out the original cricket recording from August 1994, digitized it, uploaded it to Soundcloud, and then wrote a whole blog about it.
Problem was, I haven't digitized a tape in a long time, and... as is so often the case with me... I didn't know what I was doing!
The audio I recovered from the tape was full of buzzes, zaps, pops, and clicks... that it took me hours to edit out of the wave form, one at a time. But the resulting FLAC still had lots of little tics in it, and it was absurdly loud.
In the deleted journal entry, I surmised that the buzzes, zaps, etc, were caused by cosmic rays that had bombarded the magnetic tape over the past 28 years it's been in storage.
BUT!..
Turns out I was an idiot, and it was actually just coming from my PHONE, sitting three inches away from the USB tape player... and introducing radio interference to the signal in real time as it was being digitized!
Because my PHONE... is an ASSHOLE... that's always trying to transmit and recieve powerful RADIO signals... to the local CELL TOWER... and, yeah!
I figured that out today... by actually plugging earbuds into the USB cassette drive, to hear what it was doing. And I also figured out that the volume dial on the USB cassette drive directly affects the volume of the signal it feeds to Audacity.
So today (Friday, July 22nd) I re-captured that audio, at a sane volume, without all the interference from the cosmic rays of my phone, and I replaced the FLAC on SoundCloud with this better take, that will be embedded further below, with full commentary.
------------{=0=}------------
HOWEVER, Friday, July 22nd was the night I had predicted... back on Tuesday the 12th... would be the night I first heard field crickets in real numbers out there.
And that prediction was FALSE!
BUT, I still heard some absolute FIRSTS on Friday night!
That Embed is coming right now, and we'll talk about it, immediately below the embed.
Okay, so there are three clips in this one track...
The first clip is the absolute FIRST bush cricket of summer 2022. I've been out there every night, and this guy in my yard was the first. Haven't even heard one in the distance before tonight!
The second clip captures the first mole cricket... who is some distance away. But again, he is definitely the FIRST one I've heard!
And embeded in this second clip, along with our first mole cricket, is the FIRST chick bug, who chicks three times!
Now... I did THINK that I heard a chick bug the night before, on July 21st... but I listened for five more minutes and didn't hear it again. Tonight, the next night... here he is on tape!
The third clip in this track is just more of the first mole cricket.
------------{=0=}------------
I'm gonna embed the track again from July 20th, of the first field crickets right here...
And, we're gonna talk about how all of them sound like BABIES!
This is no longer speculation, folks! I have audio proof, ripped straight from the headlines of my front and back yard over the past 36 hours, right here in this blog!
Not only are the first field crickets babies, but so is the first bush cricket, the first mole cricket, and the first chick bug!
ALL of them are higher pitched than adults! All of them are SMALLER than they will be in a couple weeks... which is ADORABLE!
------------{=0=}------------
As a quick refresher, insects do not slowly grow bigger like frogs, birds, and mammals do... they have exo-skeletons, and thus, can only make discreet jumps from one size to the next larger size through the process of molting.
So, to have proof that field crickets, bush crickets, mole crickets, and even chick bugs (I have no idea what bugs are making the chick sound) ALL start out making adorably high pitched calls in late July...
Says they ALL get the equipment to do so in adolescence, and start practicing with it before that final molt into adulthood and sexual maturity!
--<>--
Now, maybe I'm gonna find out that entomologists already learn this, first year at bug school!.. And would laugh at a rube like me, who thought crickets couldn't chirp as teenagers, but... all the bullshit I've ever seen on YouTube or read online says differently.
So, either they're doing a terrible job informing the public... or I'm on to something!
------------{=0=}------------
To sum up my findings thus far...
I initially supposed that cicadas and crickets all wait until August 1st, whereupon they all begin calling at once for the rest of the season.
I found that Cicadas get established in early July.
I then surmised that the crickets would all show up in very late July, not gradually, but over a short few days... and fully adult. But I wasn't sure about the leaf tappers or the chick bugs.
What I've instead found, is that the field crickets, as nymphs, got a couple days head start in late July. And now the bush and mole crickets, along with the chick bugs... also as nymphs, are starting to join them on the soundscape... all as little rascals!
It's also worth mentioning here, that if you listen closely to the first clip above of the first bush cricket, you can hear what sounds like a leaf tapper in the background.
I couldn't be positive. I waited for twenty minutes to hear it again, and did not. But the first leaf tapper could be on that same track. And if so... he too... sounded like a little shrimp!
I think every single night, from here on out, is going to be very interesting, and bring new discoveries, as we head into August!
--<>--
But now we need to talk about the OG Crickets of 1994!
So let's get that track embed, and I'll tell you about it below!..
Okay, so these are the much storied OG crickets of August 1994. And what you're hearing here is hands-down, the best recordng I've ever heard or made of a mole cricket!
The mole cricket dominates the foreground, but the field crickets behind him are also sounding pretty damn robust!
There are some bush crickets in the background, and some distant barking dogs too... and the sound quality of this track is... old school, to put it kindly, but you can still get an idea for the insanely hypnotic and intoxicating soundscape I blundered into that night.
--<>--
This is August of 1994, and after a long spring and summer of being an unemployed bum at my parent's house, I finally got a job at the Public Library as a page. I'm skinny, with long hair... I'm a musician and and artist... and I'm getting stoned all the time.
With my first library paycheck, I'd gone to Radio Shack and bought myself a stereo walkman cassette player/recorder. Not super expensive, but a fun device!
Walkmen had been around for ten years by then. Originally they could only play tapes. Versions that could also record came a lot later, and weren't in high demand.
At the time, micro-cassette recorders were the hot thing. But they only recorded in mono, and were marketed as devices to help you take mental notes, or get the gist of a class lecture.
Meanwhile, stereo recording was seen as, only for serious music production. Nobody would be using a cassette tape for that! DAT's... digital audio tapes, were the big thing. And you could only use them in big budget, non portable tape decks.
So, my stereo Walkman cassette recorder was not seen as a big deal. But for me, it was great, because it allowed me to do amateaur field recording as a hobby.
--<>--
It was working at the Public Library that re-awoke that childhood dream of mine, to be a field recorder. Because the Public Library was where me and my friends used to check out sound effects records to use with our crazy little tape-recorded skits, in grade school.
As a bored school kid, I would listen to whole sound effects records, back to front, while staring at the boring liner notes... and I would dream of one day recording them myself!
--<>--
That stereo walkman recorder was the first chance I'd ever had to try and do it for real, and at 24 going on 25, my skinny, long-haired ass was ready to try it!
So what you're hearing in this August 1994 track, above, is me, about a week into the project, deciding one Friday night after work, while stoned... that I should get outside and get a quick five minutes of the crickets!
The track doesn't sound very stereo, but it is, and you can tell, because that mole cricket dominating the foreground, slowly drifts from left to right.
Mole crickets sing from inside burrows, so he's not moving, but I am. I'm standing there, holding the walkman... absentmindedly turning my body this way and that way.
I'm not using any external microphones yet, which I will later do with this device, and you can tell that, not only by the, not-quite stereo separation of the inbuilt mikes, but also by the underlying gear and drive noise in this track.
------------{=0=}------------
I'm just popping out to the back yard in the middle of the night to get these crickets on tape for my sound effects library.
I wasn't prepared for how hypnotic that mole cricket would be. I didn't even know it was a mole cricket at the time. I was not prepared for how intoxicating the field crickets would be.
I also didn't know... they don't always sound like this!
I was bowled over, but I also thought... this is just how all crickets sound all the time everywhere, and I've just never really heard them before.
I figured five minutes was good enough, for the tape.
But the rest of that August, September, and October, every chance I got, I went back out into that yard after midnight, stoned, and soaked in that cricket symphony, lying on my back in the grass, looking up at the stars, through a gap in the tree canopy.
It was a religious experience. It changed me forever!
After they were gone, that fall and winter, I read up on them. I became a huge cricket advocate. I named my tape-recorded compilation of sound effects, "Old Man Cricket's Treasury of Basic Sounds" and I vowed to get back out there and record those crickets the following summer.
But in 1995 they weren't as good! And I was busier. In 1996 I tried again, but a had a girlfrined, who didn't get what I was trying to do, and my stereo walkman had broken down, so all I could get were mono recordings... it was not going well.
I moved out with that girlfriend in March of 1997 and after that... I was never back home long enough to try it again until 2018... twenty four years later!
And in the June 15th entry I talked about how overgrown the yard had gotten in those twenty four years, and how it's taken four more years to try and get it back to what it was in 1994.
------------{=0=}------------
So... those are the OG Crickets of 1994! I'm glad I still had the tape and could get it digitized and uploaded to give you an idea of how this all began.
I do have another cassette from October of 1994 in the back yard, that's a full hour of stereo crickets... but I haven't listened to it yet. If it's good, I'll digitize that and upload it too, as another Dial.
I'm just wondering how good they could have been by October, but maybe I'll be surprised.
--<>--
At any rate... that is the news of July 23rd, 2022... The OG crickets of 94 have been recovered. And in real time, waiting for the soundscape to populate for this year's snoozefest... I'm getting shapshots of baby insects!
Life is a very long, strange ride!
But at every moment, it always pays... to practice? That's what the babies are doing. that's what I've done before and am doing now.
Okay!... talk to you tomorrow!
°¦}
https://soundcloud.com/snoozefestaudio
Basically, on Thursday, July 21st, I got my old plastic crate full of cassette tapes out of the cellar, brought them upstairs, dug out the original cricket recording from August 1994, digitized it, uploaded it to Soundcloud, and then wrote a whole blog about it.
Problem was, I haven't digitized a tape in a long time, and... as is so often the case with me... I didn't know what I was doing!
The audio I recovered from the tape was full of buzzes, zaps, pops, and clicks... that it took me hours to edit out of the wave form, one at a time. But the resulting FLAC still had lots of little tics in it, and it was absurdly loud.
In the deleted journal entry, I surmised that the buzzes, zaps, etc, were caused by cosmic rays that had bombarded the magnetic tape over the past 28 years it's been in storage.
BUT!..
Turns out I was an idiot, and it was actually just coming from my PHONE, sitting three inches away from the USB tape player... and introducing radio interference to the signal in real time as it was being digitized!
Because my PHONE... is an ASSHOLE... that's always trying to transmit and recieve powerful RADIO signals... to the local CELL TOWER... and, yeah!
I figured that out today... by actually plugging earbuds into the USB cassette drive, to hear what it was doing. And I also figured out that the volume dial on the USB cassette drive directly affects the volume of the signal it feeds to Audacity.
So today (Friday, July 22nd) I re-captured that audio, at a sane volume, without all the interference from the cosmic rays of my phone, and I replaced the FLAC on SoundCloud with this better take, that will be embedded further below, with full commentary.
HOWEVER, Friday, July 22nd was the night I had predicted... back on Tuesday the 12th... would be the night I first heard field crickets in real numbers out there.
And that prediction was FALSE!
BUT, I still heard some absolute FIRSTS on Friday night!
That Embed is coming right now, and we'll talk about it, immediately below the embed.
Okay, so there are three clips in this one track...
The first clip is the absolute FIRST bush cricket of summer 2022. I've been out there every night, and this guy in my yard was the first. Haven't even heard one in the distance before tonight!
The second clip captures the first mole cricket... who is some distance away. But again, he is definitely the FIRST one I've heard!
And embeded in this second clip, along with our first mole cricket, is the FIRST chick bug, who chicks three times!
Now... I did THINK that I heard a chick bug the night before, on July 21st... but I listened for five more minutes and didn't hear it again. Tonight, the next night... here he is on tape!
The third clip in this track is just more of the first mole cricket.
I'm gonna embed the track again from July 20th, of the first field crickets right here...
And, we're gonna talk about how all of them sound like BABIES!
This is no longer speculation, folks! I have audio proof, ripped straight from the headlines of my front and back yard over the past 36 hours, right here in this blog!
Not only are the first field crickets babies, but so is the first bush cricket, the first mole cricket, and the first chick bug!
ALL of them are higher pitched than adults! All of them are SMALLER than they will be in a couple weeks... which is ADORABLE!
As a quick refresher, insects do not slowly grow bigger like frogs, birds, and mammals do... they have exo-skeletons, and thus, can only make discreet jumps from one size to the next larger size through the process of molting.
So, to have proof that field crickets, bush crickets, mole crickets, and even chick bugs (I have no idea what bugs are making the chick sound) ALL start out making adorably high pitched calls in late July...
Says they ALL get the equipment to do so in adolescence, and start practicing with it before that final molt into adulthood and sexual maturity!
Now, maybe I'm gonna find out that entomologists already learn this, first year at bug school!.. And would laugh at a rube like me, who thought crickets couldn't chirp as teenagers, but... all the bullshit I've ever seen on YouTube or read online says differently.
So, either they're doing a terrible job informing the public... or I'm on to something!
To sum up my findings thus far...
I initially supposed that cicadas and crickets all wait until August 1st, whereupon they all begin calling at once for the rest of the season.
I found that Cicadas get established in early July.
I then surmised that the crickets would all show up in very late July, not gradually, but over a short few days... and fully adult. But I wasn't sure about the leaf tappers or the chick bugs.
What I've instead found, is that the field crickets, as nymphs, got a couple days head start in late July. And now the bush and mole crickets, along with the chick bugs... also as nymphs, are starting to join them on the soundscape... all as little rascals!
It's also worth mentioning here, that if you listen closely to the first clip above of the first bush cricket, you can hear what sounds like a leaf tapper in the background.
I couldn't be positive. I waited for twenty minutes to hear it again, and did not. But the first leaf tapper could be on that same track. And if so... he too... sounded like a little shrimp!
I think every single night, from here on out, is going to be very interesting, and bring new discoveries, as we head into August!
But now we need to talk about the OG Crickets of 1994!
So let's get that track embed, and I'll tell you about it below!..
Okay, so these are the much storied OG crickets of August 1994. And what you're hearing here is hands-down, the best recordng I've ever heard or made of a mole cricket!
The mole cricket dominates the foreground, but the field crickets behind him are also sounding pretty damn robust!
There are some bush crickets in the background, and some distant barking dogs too... and the sound quality of this track is... old school, to put it kindly, but you can still get an idea for the insanely hypnotic and intoxicating soundscape I blundered into that night.
This is August of 1994, and after a long spring and summer of being an unemployed bum at my parent's house, I finally got a job at the Public Library as a page. I'm skinny, with long hair... I'm a musician and and artist... and I'm getting stoned all the time.
With my first library paycheck, I'd gone to Radio Shack and bought myself a stereo walkman cassette player/recorder. Not super expensive, but a fun device!
Walkmen had been around for ten years by then. Originally they could only play tapes. Versions that could also record came a lot later, and weren't in high demand.
At the time, micro-cassette recorders were the hot thing. But they only recorded in mono, and were marketed as devices to help you take mental notes, or get the gist of a class lecture.
Meanwhile, stereo recording was seen as, only for serious music production. Nobody would be using a cassette tape for that! DAT's... digital audio tapes, were the big thing. And you could only use them in big budget, non portable tape decks.
So, my stereo Walkman cassette recorder was not seen as a big deal. But for me, it was great, because it allowed me to do amateaur field recording as a hobby.
It was working at the Public Library that re-awoke that childhood dream of mine, to be a field recorder. Because the Public Library was where me and my friends used to check out sound effects records to use with our crazy little tape-recorded skits, in grade school.
As a bored school kid, I would listen to whole sound effects records, back to front, while staring at the boring liner notes... and I would dream of one day recording them myself!
That stereo walkman recorder was the first chance I'd ever had to try and do it for real, and at 24 going on 25, my skinny, long-haired ass was ready to try it!
So what you're hearing in this August 1994 track, above, is me, about a week into the project, deciding one Friday night after work, while stoned... that I should get outside and get a quick five minutes of the crickets!
The track doesn't sound very stereo, but it is, and you can tell, because that mole cricket dominating the foreground, slowly drifts from left to right.
Mole crickets sing from inside burrows, so he's not moving, but I am. I'm standing there, holding the walkman... absentmindedly turning my body this way and that way.
I'm not using any external microphones yet, which I will later do with this device, and you can tell that, not only by the, not-quite stereo separation of the inbuilt mikes, but also by the underlying gear and drive noise in this track.
I'm just popping out to the back yard in the middle of the night to get these crickets on tape for my sound effects library.
I wasn't prepared for how hypnotic that mole cricket would be. I didn't even know it was a mole cricket at the time. I was not prepared for how intoxicating the field crickets would be.
I also didn't know... they don't always sound like this!
I was bowled over, but I also thought... this is just how all crickets sound all the time everywhere, and I've just never really heard them before.
I figured five minutes was good enough, for the tape.
But the rest of that August, September, and October, every chance I got, I went back out into that yard after midnight, stoned, and soaked in that cricket symphony, lying on my back in the grass, looking up at the stars, through a gap in the tree canopy.
It was a religious experience. It changed me forever!
After they were gone, that fall and winter, I read up on them. I became a huge cricket advocate. I named my tape-recorded compilation of sound effects, "Old Man Cricket's Treasury of Basic Sounds" and I vowed to get back out there and record those crickets the following summer.
But in 1995 they weren't as good! And I was busier. In 1996 I tried again, but a had a girlfrined, who didn't get what I was trying to do, and my stereo walkman had broken down, so all I could get were mono recordings... it was not going well.
I moved out with that girlfriend in March of 1997 and after that... I was never back home long enough to try it again until 2018... twenty four years later!
And in the June 15th entry I talked about how overgrown the yard had gotten in those twenty four years, and how it's taken four more years to try and get it back to what it was in 1994.
So... those are the OG Crickets of 1994! I'm glad I still had the tape and could get it digitized and uploaded to give you an idea of how this all began.
I do have another cassette from October of 1994 in the back yard, that's a full hour of stereo crickets... but I haven't listened to it yet. If it's good, I'll digitize that and upload it too, as another Dial.
I'm just wondering how good they could have been by October, but maybe I'll be surprised.
At any rate... that is the news of July 23rd, 2022... The OG crickets of 94 have been recovered. And in real time, waiting for the soundscape to populate for this year's snoozefest... I'm getting shapshots of baby insects!
Life is a very long, strange ride!
But at every moment, it always pays... to practice? That's what the babies are doing. that's what I've done before and am doing now.
Okay!... talk to you tomorrow!
°¦}
