Aerial Truck Platform Backing Up Beep

For a week or so an aerial truck platform thing lumbered like an hydraulic dinosaur around the building where I work. The property owners were either cleaning or painting or treating the stone at the top of the chimneys and stuff. It seemed like important work--important enough to use a SkyLift, exactly as in this image I have stolen off Flickr.

Anyway, at one point the beast was inching its way down the alley outside my office window, all the while sending out its mating call: an E7 beep. And I captured a little of it. At the very end of the recording there is a cool sound of engine noise as well, something very brief but Death Star-ish.

Aerial Truck Platform Backing Up Beep

Link

photo by CovLtwt, used fair 'n' square

Helicopter In The Mix

I liked Helicopter In The Sky so much I mixed it with a few other sounds and some drum tracks. It's nothing special, really. Just a short experiment, it clocks in at 1 minute 29 seconds; Emerson Lake & Palmer music this isn't!

Helicopter In The Sky

I recently scored this recording of a passing helicopter. The pitch drops with the Doppler Effect, but if there's a note in the first few seconds it's somewhere between an F3 and F#3.

Ice Cream Truck Song

I was out walking one day when an ice cream truck came my way.

The song is based around a B4.

Car Honking

Honk honk! This is the horn of my Volvo 850, aka Big Red.

It's a G#4.

Idling Bus

I was out walking on my merry way one day when I turned a corner and there pulled over idling at the side of the road was a Springfield Mass Transit District bus. Luckily I had my Microtrak with me. This is recorded about ten feet from the back side of the bus. I think it turned out pretty cool.

I hear spot on a B2.



Now, here it is slowed down 200%.



And sped up 200%.



Play all three at once... if you dare!

Different Gas Pump, Same Notes

Splotchy shared the notes of his gas pump experience.

As for my own recent visit to the fuel trough, the notes turn out to be the same, even though the gas station brand was different!

As before, the machine plays a D5 to ask me if I want a receipt, and then it plays a C6 when I push "NO".

Gas Pump

I had to visit the neighborhood gas station for a minor fill-up (y'know, the $30.00 kind).

For the past couple of years I have paid at the pump with a credit card rather than actually interact with a human being.

I noticed that the gas pump makes two different kinds of beeps. There is a beep when the gas pump is trying to tell you something, and another kind of beep when it is acknowledging some action taken by the human interacting with it.

For this recording, the first beep you hear is a D5. The gas pump is asking me if I would like a receipt.

My "NO" response is replayed to me in the form of a C6.

Thank you, friendly gas pump!

Post Office Garage Watch Out Beep

I work pretty close to the main Chicago post office. When I walk down the sidewalk to my train, I'll occasionally have to stop because a car, mail truck or semi will be exiting from the post office's big garage.

I'll know to stop because a device of the garage door will start making a steady, loud beep.

It's not the most pleasant C6 I have ever heard, but it does stop me in my tracks.

Metra Door Dong-Ding

Tim has contributed the lovely strains of the Chicago El doors closing here.

So, I figured I'd record the El's suburban equivalent, a train on the lovely Metra rail.

Unlike the El, the tone starts low and then goes high. The tones go from a C5 to a F5.

Starting The Car

This blog has me paying attention to the notes all kinds of things make. The "fasten your seat belt" dings when I start my car are E5, for instance.

Street Cleaners In C

On July 3rd, 2006 I attended Taste of Chicago. It was the evening of the big fireworks display, and the place was a mad house. Thousands of people had jammed Grant Park, creating a solid block of bodies. No one could move. As usual, Lake Shore Drive was closed off the length of the festival, and the crowd swarmed it for the fireworks. After the display (which was amazing) a fleet of street cleaners, one for each lane, inched it's way along LSD to disperse the crowd, horns blaring. I just happened to have my trusty digital voice recorder handy. Turns out those street cleaners were blasting Middle C!