Siren Dogs
Thursday, August 4th, 2022 10:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snoozefestaudioThe second dusk recording wasn't great. It was kinda windy, and a little overcast, which seems to have dulled the cidacas' enthusasm at sundown. There were other track killers on the tape, like an incessant dog a block away that just would not shut up for the second half of the hour.
However, I did accidentally capture two interesting moments, which I feathered together to create this one-minute twenty-second Dial...
A22-0804 SIREN DOGS (with whistle plane), opens with the dobermans, and a couple other little dogs nearby all howling to the siren of a passing firetruck. I've heard them do this before, so it was nice to capture them doing it on tape.
The second clip, feathered in after them, is a plane in whistling decent toward O'Hare Airport, some 40 miles from me. I've captured this before, but it's always fun to hear.
------------{=0=}------------
I had the S8 on the fully extended monopod, resting in the fully extended tripod legs, which put it about nine feet off the ground.
I checked and don't have the right diameter of PVC for the job. I do have a lawn table, that would add an extra three feet, if I put the tripod on it. But twelve feet isn't really high enough!
However!... I DO have a whole spool of stainless steel wire rope! And I DO have a long, telescoping branch trimmer pole. So I could use the pole, to get the wire up and over a high limb of the Mulberry tree... with a weight on it, so it descends back to the ground.
I could then feed the line over to the SCOP, and mount the spool there, with some kind of crude hand crank that would allow me to raise and lower the line. Then I simply attach the basket, with the S8 inside it, and hoist it on up into the canopy!
It's so crazy it just might work!
------------{=0=}------------
I'm starting to realize I need to be recording a lot longer per night, and a lot more often than I've done in previous years... partly to get these different takes from high up and down low, but also to leave room for editing out the barking jags of neighborhood dogs.
The dobermans were one thing, last year, but now there's two or three more on the soundscape, new this summer, any of whom could go ballistic at the slightest disturbance at any time of night.
So, I just need to record longer, because I'm gonna be editing out a lot more barking jags.
Since I'm so desperately unemployed this summer, I have the free time for this, and the freedom to drift into a very noctournal schedule. But the other thing required is hard drive space, for all these huge WAV files.
--<>--
I have two functional PCs at the moment (knock wood!) so today I went through the drive of the older desktop, where I'm currently storing my Snoozefest WAVs and FLACs, and cleaned it up... deleted some huge folders of ancient junk that are already backed up in other places, and took a huge folder full of old MP4s (family gatherings and stuff) and moved that off to a 30G thumb drive.
After a nice defrag, and a reboot, my C drive has over 900 Gig of free space... which should be plenty!
The Snoozefest folder is currently sitting at 85G. So, even if I quadrupled that, yer talking 340... 350 Gig? That still leaves the C drive with 550 Gig free.
And then, at the end of the season, I can delete most of the original WAV files and shift any I want to keep onto a thumb drive.
Cuz... I was lucky enough to buy six 30G thumb drives in late 2000, when I still had money, and I've only used two of them so far.
------------{=0=}------------
I'm now determined to make this the best season of Snoozefest ever...
No more low effort recordings on random nights, leaving it all up to chance, and then blaming the weather or the brood, or the dogs, or Amtrack, or my job... for them not being better.
This year it's gonna be long recordings, every night, up high, down low, over here, over there... and then I'm gonna cut out what I don't like, identify the great parts, and edit together eight mind blowing hours, goddammit!
It's gonna start with dusk. It's gonna move through a perfect night. And it's gonna end with dawn! So help me God!
°¦}
https://soundcloud.com/snoozefestaudio
However, I did accidentally capture two interesting moments, which I feathered together to create this one-minute twenty-second Dial...
A22-0804 SIREN DOGS (with whistle plane), opens with the dobermans, and a couple other little dogs nearby all howling to the siren of a passing firetruck. I've heard them do this before, so it was nice to capture them doing it on tape.
The second clip, feathered in after them, is a plane in whistling decent toward O'Hare Airport, some 40 miles from me. I've captured this before, but it's always fun to hear.
I had the S8 on the fully extended monopod, resting in the fully extended tripod legs, which put it about nine feet off the ground.
I checked and don't have the right diameter of PVC for the job. I do have a lawn table, that would add an extra three feet, if I put the tripod on it. But twelve feet isn't really high enough!
However!... I DO have a whole spool of stainless steel wire rope! And I DO have a long, telescoping branch trimmer pole. So I could use the pole, to get the wire up and over a high limb of the Mulberry tree... with a weight on it, so it descends back to the ground.
I could then feed the line over to the SCOP, and mount the spool there, with some kind of crude hand crank that would allow me to raise and lower the line. Then I simply attach the basket, with the S8 inside it, and hoist it on up into the canopy!
It's so crazy it just might work!
I'm starting to realize I need to be recording a lot longer per night, and a lot more often than I've done in previous years... partly to get these different takes from high up and down low, but also to leave room for editing out the barking jags of neighborhood dogs.
The dobermans were one thing, last year, but now there's two or three more on the soundscape, new this summer, any of whom could go ballistic at the slightest disturbance at any time of night.
So, I just need to record longer, because I'm gonna be editing out a lot more barking jags.
Since I'm so desperately unemployed this summer, I have the free time for this, and the freedom to drift into a very noctournal schedule. But the other thing required is hard drive space, for all these huge WAV files.
I have two functional PCs at the moment (knock wood!) so today I went through the drive of the older desktop, where I'm currently storing my Snoozefest WAVs and FLACs, and cleaned it up... deleted some huge folders of ancient junk that are already backed up in other places, and took a huge folder full of old MP4s (family gatherings and stuff) and moved that off to a 30G thumb drive.
After a nice defrag, and a reboot, my C drive has over 900 Gig of free space... which should be plenty!
The Snoozefest folder is currently sitting at 85G. So, even if I quadrupled that, yer talking 340... 350 Gig? That still leaves the C drive with 550 Gig free.
And then, at the end of the season, I can delete most of the original WAV files and shift any I want to keep onto a thumb drive.
Cuz... I was lucky enough to buy six 30G thumb drives in late 2000, when I still had money, and I've only used two of them so far.
I'm now determined to make this the best season of Snoozefest ever...
No more low effort recordings on random nights, leaving it all up to chance, and then blaming the weather or the brood, or the dogs, or Amtrack, or my job... for them not being better.
This year it's gonna be long recordings, every night, up high, down low, over here, over there... and then I'm gonna cut out what I don't like, identify the great parts, and edit together eight mind blowing hours, goddammit!
It's gonna start with dusk. It's gonna move through a perfect night. And it's gonna end with dawn! So help me God!
°¦}
