Selection of some of the recordings I made in Zimbabwe, March - April 2015

Zimbabwe wildlife recordings

A small selection of recordings made in Botswana, May 2015.

More info & context:
http://daanhendriks.co.uk/wildlife-nature-sound-recording/camping-and-recording-in-botswana/ 

Botswana wildlife recordings

A small collection of dawn recordings made in South Africa during Sonic Mmabolela, November 2016.

Sonic Mmabolela is a workshop/residency for sound artists & composers carried out once a year in the savannah environment of Mmabolela Reserve, Limpopo, South Africa.

Read here for my personal report: daanhendriks.co.uk/wildlife-nature…onic_mmabolela/

Recorded with 2x Sennheiser MKH8020 in a custom SASS enclosure onto a Zoom F8 recorder.

Southern African dawn recordings

Snippets of ambient recordings made in the savannas and rainforests of Uganda.

More info here
http://daanhendriks.co.uk/wildlife-nature-sound-recording/sound-recording-roadtrip-through-uganda/

Uganda Nature and Wildlife Recordings

Nature recordings made around the Black River area in Sweden, April 2018

Sweden Nature Recordings

The almost creature-like high pitched whine that can be heard in the left channel from the start of this recording is a plant letting off gas.

You can hear some type(s) of water beetle vocalising as well throughout the recording.

Recorded May 2014 with a pair of JrF hydrophones at 96khz/24bit into a Tascam DR680.

Farting plants & screeching beetles

Scorched dry corn plants rustling in mild to medium-strong gusts of wind on a hot summer day near Chichester

Recorded with a pair of Schoeps CCM4s at 96khz, Sound Devices USBPre2 preamp into Tascam DR680

Wind - corn field rustling

Close up recording of fairly strong wind blowing through a tree

2x DPA 4060s hung from a tree branch using a coat hanger, into a Tascam DR680 at 96khz/24bit

Wind - tree leaves rustling

Recording of calm lapses of sea waves reaching a pebbled shore with clearly defined details, retractions and a wide, enveloping sound. 

Recorded handheld whilst standing in the water, microphones pointed downwards at the water.

Pair of Schoeps CCM4 cardioid microphones into a Sound Devices USBPre2 preamp in front of a Tascam DR680 recorder, at 96khz/24bit.

Waves - Fully enveloped sounding calm pebbled beach

Male tawny owl calling to a distant female (which can also very faintly be heard at some point in the recording)

Sennheiser MKH8040+30 in MS, Tascam DR680, 96khz / 24bir, Norfolk May 2014

Tawny Owl melancholically hooting from a perch

A troop of baboons roosting in one of their favourite ana trees gets disturbed by a lone hyena calling nearby. 

Later that same night they got disturbed again, this time by a large tree crashing down spontaneously right next to where they were roosting. https://soundcloud.com/daan-hendriks/baboons-disturbed-by-a-crashing-tree-at-night

The continuous roar in the background is the thundering of the Victoria Falls, from about 10-15 km away.

More here
http://daanhendriks.co.uk/wildlife-nature-sound-recording/baboons-the-gangsters-of-the-bush/

Roughly 10:30am, Stanley & Livingstone private game reserve near Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe.

Tech data for geeks: Sennheiser MKH8040 pair, ORTF, Sound Devices USBPre2 into Sony D100

Roosting baboons disturbed by lonely hyena

A compilation of hippo vocalisations recorded mostly at night and dusk at Stanley & Livingstone Private Game Reserve, Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe.

http://daanhendriks.co.uk/wildlife-nature-sound-recording/hippo-guffawing-and-chomping-grass/

Sennheiser MKH8040 ORTF stereo -> Sound Devices USBPre2 -> Sony D100, 96/24

Hippo Vocalisation Compilation

An impala sounds its harsh alarm bark around midnight. The sound of running hooves can be heard in between the various calls.

Recorded in Zimbabwe, April 2015.
Sennheiser MKH8040 ORTF stereo -> Sound Devices USBPre2 -> Sony D100, 96/24

Impala alarm call

A lone hyena whooping not too far from the perimeter of our camp. A distant jackal can also be heard.

Recorded in Zimbabwe, April 2015.
Sennheiser MKH8040 ORTF stereo -> Sound Devices USBPre2 -> Sony D100, 96/24



Hyena whooping near camp

A barn owl, hyena, hippo, jackal and egyptian goose all call in tandem, forming an all-star quintet of African wildlife sounds.

Recorded in Zimbabwe, April 2015.
Sennheiser MKH8040 ORTF stereo -> Sound Devices USBPre2 -> Sony D100, 96/24

Jackal Hyena Hippo Barn Owl and Egyptian Goose Quintet

A young baboon having the hiccups. I'm not sure what the cause of this is. Perhaps it ate the seeds of a red bushwillow, a popular plant for lots of animals apart from the seeds, which are avoided for this very reason. Maybe it was ill. Or who knows, it could've gotten its hands on a bottle of gin whilst on its regular morning raid of the nearby lodge.

More here
http://daanhendriks.co.uk/wildlife-nature-sound-recording/baboons-the-gangsters-of-the-bush/

Recorded in Zimbabwe, April 2015.
Sennheiser MKH8040 ORTF stereo -> Sound Devices USBPre2 -> Sony D100, 96/24

Sick or drunken young baboon having the hiccups

A recording of a pride of lions making contact calls, recorded in May 2015 at 4am from the rooftop of my car in Kumaga, Makgadikgadi National Park, Botswana. They had been (presumably unsuccessfully) chasing a large herd of zebra prior to making these calls.

MKH8040 ORTF -> Sound Devices USBPre2 -> Sony D100, 96khz/24bit.

Lions dramatically roaring

The characteristic growls and grunts of an impala male in rutting season, easily mistaken by the untrained ear as belonging to a dangerous, flesh-tearing animal. In May each year, the bush in southern Africa resonates with these typical sounds.

Recorded in Kumaga, Makgadikgadi national park, Botswana, May 2015, at about 3am

MKH8040 ORTF into Tascam DR680

http://www.daanhendriks.co.uk/blog for more info & context

Impala rutting

Hyena's calling each other into the night, set to a background of frogs and crickets, recorded right next to a small river littered with hippos, and frequented by elephants and buffalo throughout the night.

Recorded in May 2015, Dijara, close to Moremi/Okavango Delta, Botswana, roughly around midnight.

MKH8040 ORTF into Tascam DR680.

http://www.daanhendriks.co.uk/blog for more info & context

Hyena chorus

This elephant was feeding around the perimeter of our camp, and as I saw it slowly moving in a certain direction, I figured it most likely would take a few bites from a young mopane shrub that was on its path. I setup my Sony D100 handheld recording on the ground underneath the branches and waited for it to approach...

Recorded in May 2015, Dijara near Moremi/Okavango Delta, Botswana, at about 16:00 in the afternoon. 

Sony D100. 

http://www.daanhendriks.co.uk/blog for more info & context

Elephant feeding right next to the mic

Those most melancholic of calls, these are various Black Backed Jackals informing each other of their relative locations at about 3am, Nxai Pan national park, Botswana, May 2015.

MKH8040 ORTF into Tascam DR680.

http://www.daanhendriks.co.uk/blog for more info & context

Black-Backed Jackal chorus

Western Barn Owl doing its distinct and characteristic contact call. As it is the most widely distributed species of owl it is abundant not just in Africa but pretty much everywhere else in the world, apart from Canada, the Sahara, Antarctica and Central/Northern Asia...

Nevertheless, in southern African savanna's you hear its screech near enough every single night and as such it certainly is a part of what makes the night soundscape of Botswana's wilderness into what it is.

This one here happened to land right next to the microphones and spent overall more than 10 minutes doing various contact calls.

Recorded in May, 2015, Kumaga, Makgadikgadi National Park, Botswana, at about 4am

MKH8040 ORTF into Tascam DR680

http://www.daanhendriks.co.uk/blog for more info & context

Barn Owl screeching

African Wildlife - sound effects library

daanhendriks.co.uk/library/african-wildlife/

African Wildlife is an utterly unique collection of pristine wildlife and nature sounds, recorded in the wilderness of Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia over a period of 4 months, 2015. It comes in four categories, featuring Mammals, Birds, Ambience and Insects recordings.

The diversity of African wildlife sounds is widely reflected in this sound effects library, with the material including but not limited to screaming, barking, growling, roaring, breathing, grunting, feeding, hooting, warbling, screeching, farting, guffawing, whooping, gurgling, rutting, yapping, snorting, tweeting, trumpeting, chattering and squeaking.

Extensive metadata including detailed information on location, species, habitat, behaviour and usage is included, formatted for Soundminer. An .xls metadata sheet is also provided.

Mammals included (11 species) - 162 files, 1hr 1minute
African Bush Elephant, Bat, Black-Backed Jackal, Black Rhino, Cape Buffalo, Chacma Baboon, Common Hippopotamus, Impala, Lion, Plains Zebra, Spotted Hyena.

Birds (45 species) - 165 files, 39 minutes
African Barred Owlet, African Fish Eagle, African Grey Hornbill, African Swamphen, Arrow Marked Babbler, Blacksmith Lapwing, Cape Turtle Dove, Collared Palm Thrush, Dark Capped Bulbul, Double Banded Sandgrouse, Egyptian Goose, Emerald Spotted Wood Dove, Fiery Necked Nightjar, Fork Tailed Drongo, Giant Kingfisher, Great Egret, Green Woodhoopoe, Grey Go Away Bird, Hadeda Ibis, Helmeted Guineafowl, Lesser Striped Swallow, Lilac Breasted Roller, Little Grebe, Meyers’s Parrot, Natal Spurfowl, Northern Black Korhaan, Pearl Spotted Owlet, Pied Crow, Red Billed Spurfowl, Red Eyed Dove, Senegal Coucal, Sociable Weaver, Southern Ground Hornbill, Southern Masked Weaver, Southern Red Billed Hornbill, Swainson’s Spurfowl, Three Banded Courser, Tropical Boubou, Verreaux’s Eagle Owl, Water Thick Knee, Western Barn Owl, White Fronted Bee Eater, White Browed Robin-Chat, White Browed Sparrow-Weaver, Yellow Bellied Greenbul

Ambience (5 locations) - 24 files, 50 minutes 
Bush, Lake, Muddy Clearing, Open Field, River

Insects - 12 files, 5 minutes
Bees, crickets, grasshoppers and wasps

Buy Library

African Wildlife - SFX Library - Mammals Demo

African Wildlife - SFX Library - Birds Demo

African Wildlife - SFX Library - Ambience Demo

Southern African dawn - morning chorus after a brief downpour

Southern African dawn - diffuse birdsong with hornbills

Southern African dawn - a Southern Boubou, cicadas and bushbuck

Southern African dawn - spacious birdsong

Southern African dawn - Verreaux's Eagle-Owl within active dawn chorus

Dark Seals is a unique sound effects library of close up, expressive seal vocalisations. It includes everything from aggressive growls, funny gargles, snapping snarls, howling wails & disgusting snorts and slobbers.

Recorded on location in Namibia and the United Kingdom, the library consists of many incredibly up-n-close recordings of individual seals, both adults and pups. The close proximity and large variety in vocal ranges between adults and pups makes this material highly malleable and perfect source for creature sound design.

The files are organised per individual seal and often carry on for minutes with continuous vocalisations, resulting in many variations of a similar type of call. The content is therefore very suitable for game audio design.

Besides individual seals, there are also various recordings of a huge colony of Cape Fur Seals. These will come in useful when designing sounds of creature hordes.

http://daanhendriks.co.uk/library/dark_seals/

Dark Seals - SFX Library Pitchshift Demo

Dark Seals - SFX Library Demo

Snippets of ambient recordings made in rainforests of Uganda.
Recording locations were Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, Mabira Forest and Kibale Forest.

More info here
http://daanhendriks.co.uk/wildlife-nature-sound-recording/sound-recording-roadtrip-through-uganda/

Uganda Rainforests

Snippets of ambient recordings made in the savannas of Uganda.
Recording locations were Kidepo Valley National Park, Murchison Falls National Park and Queen Elizabeth National Park.

More info here
http://daanhendriks.co.uk/wildlife-nature-sound-recording/sound-recording-roadtrip-through-uganda/

Uganda Savannas

Ambient recording at dawn in a Swedish pine forest near the Black River, April 2018

Sennheiser MKH8020 x2 in DIY SASS  // Sound Devices USBPre2 -> Sony D100

Pine Forest At Dawn - Sweden, Black River, April 2018

Black Grouse lekking 

Image credit: RSPB

Sennheiser MKH8040x2+MKH30 Double MS // Zoom F8

Black Grouse Lekking - Sweden, Black River, April 2018

Male capercaillie lekking

Image credit: Stefan Taylor

Sennheiser MKH8040x2/MKH30 Double MS // Zoom F8

Capercaillie Lekking - Sweden, Black River, April 2018

Natural ambience recording of a Swedish pine forest just before dawn

Sennheiser MKH8020 in DIY SASS // Sound Devices USBPre2 -> Sony D100

Pine Forest At Pre-Dawn, Sweden, Black River, April 2018

Male capercaillie arriving at his lekking site at dusk in a forest around the Black River area, Sweden, April 2018.

Image Credit: Stefan Taylor

Sennheiser MKH8040+MKH30 Double MS // Zoom F8

Capercaillie Arriving At Lek - Sweden, Black River, April 2018

Black Throated Diver (Loon) calling around midnight on a lake in the Black River area, Sweden, April 2018.

Sennheiser MKH8020 in DIY SASS // Sound Devices USBPre2 -> Sony D100

Black Throated Diver (Loon) - Sweden, Black River, April 2018

Bittern and frogs recorded from a canoe on the Black River in Sweden.

Sennheiser MKH8020 in DIY SASS // Sound Devices USBPre2 -> Sony D100

Bittern & Frog Chorus - Sweden, Black River, April 2018

African Rainforest is an expansive collection of recordings made in the various types of rainforest that lie on the Ugandan side of the Albertine Rift, ranging from high-altitude afromontane to tropical lowland jungles.

From the spooky croaking choruses of black and white colobus monkeys to barking baboons, hooting DeBrazza’s monkeys, moaning Mona monkeys, screaming chimpanzees, warbling mangabey and the otherworldly twang of the blue monkey, these forests are packed to the brim with primates calling from the canopy. Yet beyond all the monkey exuberance, these recordings are characterised by tranquility and spaciousness, where slow lazy bird calls are interspersed by gently fluttering insect choruses and pinging tree frogs.

Available in stereo and surround and covering all times of day, African Rainforest not only features lengthy ambient recordings but also includes a number of close-up vocalisations of two kinds of great ape: chimpanzee and mountain gorilla, recorded on location in their natural habitat.

http://daanhendriks.co.uk/library/african-rainforest/

African Rainforest - library demo

African Rainforest - great apes bonus content demo

An elephant herd roars and trumpets dramatically throughout the night. Recorded on the Mweya peninsula of Queen Elizabeth National Park, Uganda, in July 2018.

Elephant Drama in Mweya, Uganda, July 2018

Frog chorus recorded by a pond in Madidi national park, Bolivian Amazon. Approx 7pm. 
Recorded with MKH8040 + MKH30 in MS configuration, using a Tascam DR680 at 96khz/24bit.

Frogs at dusk by a pond in the jungle - Madidi, Bolivia

Recording of oropendolas, approx 4pm inside Madidi national park, Bolivian Amazon.
Recorded with a Sony D50

These could be Olive Oropendolas but not 100%.

Olive Oropendolas (?) - Madidi, Bolivian Amazon

This is a demo of how I created some creature sounds using source material from the Creatures library by Boom Library. 

Tutorial:
http://daanhendriks.co.uk/blog/creatures

AngryBeast Source

AngryBeast Pitch

AngryBeast ReverseReverb

AngryBeast EQEditFade

AngryBeast GrowlyLayer

AngryBeast RaspyLayer

AngryBeast WhisperLayer

This is a demo of how I created some creature sounds using source material from the Creatures library by Boom Library.

Tutorial:
http://daanhendriks.co.uk/blog/creatures

AngryBeast ShortSnap

This is a demo of how I created some creature sounds using source material from the Creatures library by Boom Library. 

Tutorial:
http://daanhendriks.co.uk/blog/creatures)

AngryBeast Finalised

Source file from Boom Library - Creatures used for creating a monster vox... 

Tutorial:
http://daanhendriks.co.uk/blog/creatures

AngryBeast 01 Source

Processed version of the original source file for creating a creature sound, using Boom Library Creatures..

Tutorial:
http://daanhendriks.co.uk/blog/creatures

AngryBeast 01

Sound designer, wildlife/nature sound recordist, and qualified southern African (FGASA Level 1) nature guide.

Daan Hendriks

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