I recorded our local Pipistrelle bats from my back garden last night - both 'common' and 'soprano' varieties.  It wasn't until I listened to my recordings this morning that I realised I had also captured the sound of a passing Noctule bat too! A real delight to hear one flying high overhead.  Bats make sounds too high in frequency for humans to hear - so the recordings need to be processed - usually in one of two ways.  Hetrondyne mixing - to shift the pitch of the sounds down in frequency to something that humans can hear. Or, 'time expansion' - basically stretching out the 'best bits' of the sounds in the time domain by slowing them right down.  Time expansion is similar to what is sometimes now called 'granular processing'. I used some of my 'music processing' equipment to process these sounds - once I had made a small library of the bat sound samples that I liked.  I turned it into a 10 minute 'symphony' using a variety of tape loops, pitch-shifting, granular synthesis, delays and a little bit of reverb.  I'm still experimenting with the mix between 'light touch' processing of my field sound recordings and something a bit more 'musical' - You might hear a hint of  a I–V–vi–IV chord progression of the Noctule towards the end of this symphony!  Recorded using an an Echo Touch Pro 2 microphone at 384 kHz (samples per second).  Equipment used for sound processing included a Chase Bliss Habit and Mood MK II, together with a Hologram Electronics Microcosm looper 'effects pedal'. Some reverb was added via both the Mood and Microcosm. No DAW was used - I mixed it all 'live' from the clips chopped on my Koala sampler. Simples! 
Photo of a nearby tree, taken in 720nm infrared.

Bat Symphony

A sound collection of ambience recordings made at international airports and during commercial flights.  
More info at http://www.shapingwaves.com/downloads/air-travel/


AIR TRAVEL - Airplane Onboard Boeing 752 Climbing

Shapingwaves creates themed, royalty free downloadable sound collections. These include unique ambiences, foley and object recordings, as well as designed sound effects. We cater to sound designers looking for new sound materials to expand their sonic palette, and to animators, filmmakers and game or application developers in need of professional sound effects and atmospheres for their projects. Our collections are recorded and designed in 96 kHz WAV format, carefully edited and enriched with detailed embedded metadata (soundminer, Audiofinder, compatible) and delivered using fast and reliable Amazon S3 servers.

AIR TRAVEL - Airplane Onboard Boeing 752 Climbing

SHAPINGWAVES

Related tracks