Doug Samuel Gatineau Soundwalk

I went for a walk in Gatineau park (just outside of Ottawa) yesterday. I am so busy lately, that I needed a reason to go there, it is amazing to me as I think about it now, that I could not just use the reason that I need to relax and go for a walk. Anyhow, the excuse was for a sound walk.

As I walked along the path, I came to a stream, and thought I would spend a few minutes recording that. It never ceases to amaze me what surprises are in store for the recording artist who is willing to put their mic a few inches from the subject! Just as with the steam train, which reveals new and unusual sounds just inches away from each other around the piston, so too did the stream have its own secrets. When I say close-mic, in this case, I mean really close mic! I had the cable dragging in the water and the mic almost in the water too - it certainly got splashed - and by a tiny little brook about a foot wide with just a gentle trickle running through it. But put the mic one centimeter from a tiny waterfall (tiny = 3 cm high) and I was deafened by a whole range of amazing sounds I had never heard before! Ear splitting high frequencies, and gurgling which reverberated off the rocks to produce some fantastic sound effects! I ended up spending over 20 minutes recording all the varied and fascinating sounds of that brook!

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