Sound - About Recording in the Field and Sonic Pi

Turns out that having high quality sound for my video recordings, surround recordings in the field or matching, interesting and free to use music tracks, is challenging.

Nikon Z6 built-in mic and the Zoom H4n Pro aren’t performing well in recording of surrounding sounds. I get some results though when using the shotgun mic, Rode NTG-2, connected to the camera. Having the Rode NTG-2 connected to the Zoom H4n Pro has limited monitoring capability. With this combination, recordings either turn out to be too low in volume or with too high level of noise.

There is an additional issue. There is no corner on Montreal Island where you don’t hear the constant growling of cars on one of the highways crossing the Island. You always have to deal with this annoying background noise. Additionally, when you spot something interesting to record, you can be sure of having nearby photographers who shoot on high speed burst mode: click, click, click, click. Try to get those clicks out of the recording.

I recently discovered Sonic Pi, a live music coding application used by Algorave musicians. It is a sort of instrument allowing me to generate electronic music. Here one my first samples:
Experiment 4

Montreal, July 10, 2020