To kick off my blog, I’m going to go back to the beginning with some of my earliest field recordings, to talk about what I did and how my approach to the subject has developed.

I’ve always been fascinated by trains and since the security around railroads (relative to, say, airports) is extremely lax, it’s easy to get close enough to passing trains to get very good recordings.

My first few attempts were at recording the MBTA commuter rail, which is pretty easy as far as logistics are concerned: the trains come by frequently (~1/hr in each direction) and at scheduled times, there’s easy access to a parking lot, and there’s a large platform on which to set up. If you pick the right station and the right time of day, there are almost no people or vehicle traffic to make noise. Because the trains stop at each station, you can get some interesting braking, idling, and accelerating sounds. Here are two passes from attempt #1:

These were recorded with a pair of Microtech Gefell M-300 cardioid condenser microphones in an ORTF configuration, into an Edirol R-4 Pro, recording at 24-bit/48kHz. The mics were within 4-6′ of the tracks. My overall impression is that the sound quality is good and the stereo imaging quite nice, though potentially too wide for use in some contexts (e.g. integration into a game). Also obvious is the inadequate wind protection.

Here’s a shot of the station from another time I tried recording there: