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| Medical Helicopter in Flight |
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Why This Sound?
- Unique "chopping" sound of propeller blades
- Heard all over Chicago
- Reminds me of Children's Memorial Hospital (Top-rated hospital in Chicago)
Living near Children's Memorial Hospital, the sound of medical helicopters arriving and departing has become a sound that I hear pretty often. It can be depressing thinking about the child who is suffering in the helicopter, but we try to stay positive around the house so when we hear the chopper hovering above us we tell each other that it is delivering something to save a child's life! Regardless, in the six months or so I have lived here, the sound of a helicopter overhead is a sound that will forever remind me of Chicago.
Recording Location:
The actual recording of the helicopter was taken from my front porch, but the helicopter was just above the heli-pad on top of Children's Memorial Hospital. The recording captures just how close my apartment is located to the hospital.
Technique:
- Timing
- Mic-placement
Again, the hardest part of this recording was capturing the sound of the helicopter (which I hear about 2 times a week) in the short amount of time that it hovers above the hospital. Timing has proved to be one of the key factors in this kind of field-recording that I have been doing over the past few weeks. As for mic-placement, I chose to not use the external condenser mic and just use the built-in microphone to capture more ambient sound. To record I simply faced the portable voice recorder in a horizontal position with the face of the recorder pointing up towards the source (the helicopter).
The personal tie-in and emotional content made all the difference here. I'm glad you found a way to combine the technical with the human.
ReplyDeleteThe map, the picture, and the audio are all great. This one was really cool to listen to, I also like how you can hear other things going on behind just the helicopter sounds.
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