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Field Recordings from Berlin and London

Sennheiser MKH30+MKH40 M/S setup capturing early morning ambience in Berlin, Germany (2-24-16)

As this is my first blog post, I figure I should introduce myself.
Hello, I’m Michael O’Connor, owner and operator at Audio Shade, and welcome to my rambling field recording blog!
On top of handling post sound for a wide range of projects, I love to record sounds everywhere I go. I never know what sounds I might need for the next project, so like a painter, I just gather as many colors/sounds as I can so that I am better prepared for future projects.

Back in February of 2016 I went on a trip to London and Berlin and recorded a bunch of sounds. About 10 Gigabytes, to be precise… I packed a portable recorder, the Sony D50 (which has a battery lifespan that literally lasted me the entire trip) as well as a mid-side setup which included a Sennheiser MKH30+MKH40 going through a Sound Devices Mixpre into a Tascam Dr100-mkII. I also converted my Rode Blimp into a “Mini Blimp” using the very helpful guide written by Watson Wu. You can check that out at his website here.

Anyways, looking at about 5 hours of raw audio recordings in Pro Tools is a bit intimidating from an editing/cataloguing perspective, but I’m hoping to go through these fairly quickly/efficiently as I don’t intend on releasing these into a purchasable library, so I won’t be quite as neurotic about cleaning as I normally am (who am I kidding, of course I will be…).

I plan on posting samples from these recordings from time to time. I figure I would activate your palettes by sharing the first recording I made on the trip at the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) of multilingual passengers walking and chatting as they make their way to their respective flights. As a gift to everyone, I am offering these sounds royalty-free for download and use in your commercial or non-commercial projects. However, I am still the owner of these sound effects, so you are not allowed to sell these sounds for any reason whatsoever. If you do, I’ll know because I have secret agents that find anyone who does so (okay, maybe I don’t have the budget for hiring secret agents, but maybe one day…).

 

I hope that with these recordings, I have the sounds that are capable of sonically painting the scene of London and Berlin, and if I didn’t, figure out what sounds I should try to capture next time while visiting these beautiful cities.

Recording early morning ambience in Brixton, London (2-19-2016)

As with all blog posts, the sound recordings posted here are available for download and can be used as royalty free sound effects in your personal or commercial projects.

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