Test 3, Station 7
Recording (click on "download full URL" under "file properties)
I chose this test because of the feeling that you were in a cement room of some type when listening to this. The sound felt very enclosed and specific, very much unlike the Sheboyghan Marsh recordings. The sound quality of this clip created a strong sense of the small-ish physical space of the room. It’s almost as if you can feel the distance that the “gong” (when slowed) sound travels across the Pieper factory to the microphone receptor. The space feels open, yet contained, as you can generally feel the sound travel to a certain distance and its aftermath, but it doesn’t make the space feel “too” open, as if you were standing outside. The space still feels contained to a degree, almost claustrophobic. As well as that, the microphone placement on the rig seems apparent to the listener during this recording, as the gongs generally feel as if they are being recorded about 6 inches apart, much the same distance as the human ear. It would be interesting to try a longer version of this rig, with say, a 13’’ difference, but still maintaining the boundary types, and not using a dowell. I’m not 100% sure about the 3’’ inch inset, I didn’t notice too much difference between the two different insets, but the spatiality of the microphones gives it an odd, haunting feeling, especially when the recording is slowed down this far.
Test 5, Station 2
Recording
This recording stood out to me because of the odd feeling of having 360 degrees of sound hitting the microphones. It felt almost TOO omni-directional, and this was odd because I didn’t really notice the placement of the Styrofoam head that should’ve acted somewhat as a boundary. Perhaps this was a result of slowing the recording down. This recording is much different from the first one. The lack of a boundary on the head similar to test 3 gave it a more “open” feeling. As if the microphones were picking up a more “natural” sound. You can notice some sounds from the building that feel as if they are behind, or to the side of the rig, instead of having them feel as if they are coming in a certain direction. The “gongs” resonate a little differently to my ears in this recording too, perhaps it was just the different way that the microphones were made, or perhaps they were placed differently from the boundary rig in test three, but this feels as if they are making an entirely different type of “gong” sound to my ears. Also, notice the sustained and trembling sort of feel that this rig has during the last several “gongs”. It feels as if it is capturing sounds from the “gongs” that are more towards the sides? The walls? Like there are more parts of the sound that are reaching the microphone than there were in Test 3.
Test 6, Station 14
Recording
The sound feels more “channeled” during this recording. I would be interested in seeing many different tests with the insets and angles that the rig experimented with here. This rig, like test 5, feels like it sustains differently than the other one did. The space of the room seems to be well-captured here, and the slowed down nature of the recording gives an odd feeling of the sound traveling “through” the microphones. The latter parts of the “gongs” feel as if they are being held by the rig for the microphone, after the initial and loud “gong” had past by, and the remaining sounds feel like they are “vibrating” off the space of the rig in dissonance. It’s hard to describe, but it seems to be capturing the ‘wobbly’ parts of the ‘gongs’ very well. It really feels as if each “O’Clock” are coming from a certain spatiality of the area, and there seems to be less feel towards what is behind the microphones. This acts well in creating the feeling that the room is far larger than it really was. Compare this towards the observation I made about test 3. Test 3 made the room seem smaller, and this one somehow made the room seem larger, yet it was still a boundary rig. All of the sounds feel like they are in front of the microphone, and held into a certain section of the space that they’re being recorded from. They feel very frontal, almost like you can visualize the section right in front of you that these sounds are coming from, both to the right and to the left.
