WRITTEN BY Kyle Stockbridge
office administrator, BOOM BOX POST
This past weekend I took a quick trip to Coachella Valley near Palm Springs, CA for some R&R. We stayed in a condo right on the golf course, but as I’m no golfer, I mostly enjoyed the serenity the course offers. Funny enough, I actually didn’t see a single golfer over the weekend. So I took advantage of the empty course by pulling out my field recording gear and searching out subjects to record. Now for a successful field recording excursion, best results are achieved with proper location scouting and planning… but as this was a low-stress weekend I lowered my expectations and went along with whatever I could find. Below you’ll find some of my field recordings from the weekend, along with two soundscapes I designed. Enjoy!
Midday Recordings
Cicadas
Why is the desert still so hot in November?? It reached the low 90s during my stay and to no surprise, the cicadas were out in a big way. When I’m trying to convey heat in a scene while cutting backgrounds, I like to reach for cicada recordings when appropriate. This was a great opportunity to add my own personal recording to the library for use in my work.
Waterfowl
The golf course at PGA West boasted many water features (or “hazards”, to golfers). With this comes no shortage of waterfowl — geese in particular… When I wasn’t dodging sprinklers or goose droppings, I tried to record their honks that echoed from the tee to beyond the green. They seemed to always shut up once I got close. With more time and patience, I may have been able to achieve some better results but here’s a snippet of a distant flyby I captured.
Midday Golf Course Soundscape
I also captured the general ambience of the golf course during the mid afternoon. This included various birds, textural winds from the palm trees, distant mowing from greenskeepers… I combined some of these recordings with sounds from our library to recreate what I heard this past weekend. Take a listen below to the soundscape!
Midnight recordings
Cricket Duet
As we all know – when designing evening scenes, the chirping of crickets and katydids are always an effective way to portray that it’s night time. I typically combine a more distant chorus of crickets with a close perspective chirp to fill the space. While I was taking a midnight stroll I came across a duet of crickets in adjacent bushes that served for a perfect close-up recording.
Midnight Owl
Owls are one of the most elusive creatures to record! It’s pretty rare that you find yourself face to face with one, especially in a quiet location. I heard this owl from across the golf course and walked about 5 minutes under the moonlight along the cart path until I pinpointed the particular tree that the hoots were emanating from. A shotgun mic would have been much more ideal, but I worked with what I had: my stereo pair of hypercardioid mics, and I’m pleased with the result! (stay tuned for a future blog post to show the cleanup process on these recordings)
Midnight Golf Course Soundscape
Below is the soundscape of the golf course I designed to capture the sounds I heard around midnight that night. Using a handful of my recordings as well as some help from the library, you’ll hear crickets, frogs, distant walla from a group of people on their patio, a distant siren and more.
Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed listening to my recordings from the weekend and feel inspired to record new sounds for your own editorial work.
Do you have any field recording stories to share? Let us know in the comments!
If you liked this blog post, check these out!
Capturing The Eeriness (and Tranquility) of The Salton Sea
Everyday Sounds!
Field Recording DIY: How To Make A Custom Blimp Windcover