Author Archives: Zoe Jackson

El Barrio Park- soundscape

 

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I recorded the sounds and sonic atmosphere of something we all know and love: the playground. The recording encompasses not only hints of children’s laughter and kids running around a large oak tree stepping on crunchy branches, but also the new touch of spring with slight gusts of wind and birds chirping about. Within the recording I would definitely say that the prevailing keynote is the chirping of the birds. Though not necessarily constant, the chirps are the loudest, most common, and most prevalent sounds in the recording. The breaking branches acted as signals, for each time one was heard you knew something or someone had passed by or was nearby the recorder. A recurring sonic archetype in the recording was gusts of wind. Though the breeze was always present, the wind picked up a variety of times within the recording.

An Acoustic Space at El Barrio Park

 

 

A very reverberant single-stall women’s bathroom within the property of El Barrio Park, located right along side CMC. The bathroom is built from concrete and hard stone.

Recording setup: I held the recorder as a friend of mine aided me in popping the balloon.

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Reverberation times and such:

89.0 dB (maximum intensity)

47.3 dB (minimum intensity)

1.423444 seconds (drop by 50db)

0.132778 seconds (to maximum db)

1.551444 seconds (to return to around 36.190841 background)

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Acoustic description

The spectrogram and wave analysis in both Pratt and Audacity aided me in understanding the sounds shape and form on a more physical level. The balloon recording is short, so there isn’t many second nor even milliseconds before the actual pop ensues. The build and the drop both seem fast. Though I had expected a lengthy reverb when I decided on location, that is not what was displayed in the recording. The pop was fast and the initial reverb was strong, but it dropped quite quickly. In the spectrogram analysis, you can see how short the time span between pre-and post pop level similarities are.