Aaaaand We’re Back.

With blackjack. And hookers. #futurama

The last post on this website was May, 2013. Almost a year ago.

Well, time to break the silence. It’s been a very busy and intense year, filled with both tribulations and triumphs, which is why Noise Jockey’s been on a sabbatical. But enough lollygagging. It’s time to get back to business.

Why now, after all this time? Maybe it’s the fact that some studio upgrades have me looking at audio anew. Maybe it’s because this week is the Game Developer Conference here in San Francisco, and my new office is only a couple of blocks away. Maybe it’s because I finally saw All Is Lost and played The Last of Us, both stunning artistic statements with some of the best sound work I’ve heard in a long, long time. Maybe it’s because I’ve been consuming gigabytes of new tunes that are changing how I look at music composition, genre, and sonic palettes. Maybe it’s just because all of you in the online sound community are good people and I’ve missed you all.

The audio fires are back in my belly. There are a bevy of new audio posts that are cued up and ready to roll. Good times ahead. I look forward to re-engaging with old readers, and starting conversations with new ones. So: I (re)welcome you back to Noise Jockey.

More very, very soon. Stay tuned.

Join me at AES, October 28!

Thanks to the just-darned-lovely and ubermensch Shaun Farley, I’ll be on a panel at the 133rd AES Convention in San Francisco this October 28, 2012 at 4:15pm. We’ll be talking about breaking into sound design with folks from EA, Skywalker Sound, and much more, with some extremely talented panelists…certainly moreso than me. (I mean, Ann freakin’ Kroeber?!? Sweet.) Hopefully I can contribute my own story into the conversation, coming to sound design from the design angle and the more visual side of things.

If you’re around, I’d just love to say howdy before or after the session. I’ll also be walking the show floor that day, so if you see me, say hi!

[Editorial note: Yes, this site has been quiet recently. Yes, things are great. Just busy. More soon, though!]

Merry (8-Bit) Christmas!

Who knew pine trees grew on sandy Caribbean atolls?

This sound was recorded on Christmas Eve in 2008, on a tiny speck of sand and palm trees in the Caribbean called Glover’s Reef, at the edge of an atoll dozens of miles off the coast of Belize. Someone had hauled a pine tree to the island and decorated it. While palm trees swayed in the wind and the surf broke all around (which you can hear in the background), a small Christmas card sound chip strapped to the tree – so small I couldn’t find it in the dark – played ultra-low-quality Christmas carols all night long.

[I have featured other interesting recordings from Belize before.]

Hope your holiday season, no matter what your persuasion, is filled with love and peace…and a decent signal-to-noise ratio. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/8225448″ params=”show_comments=true&auto_play=false&color=ee0000″ width=”100%” height=”81″ ]
[Zoom H2 recorder, 90° capsule spread]

Site Maintenance: Old Sounds are New Again

It’s been entirely my fault that, for some reason, all the pre-SoundCloud audio samples here on Noise Jockey were not showing up (July 2009–August 2009). Now they’re fixed and all hosted at SoundCloud. So, come with me, will you, and walk down memory lane while we…

• Recoil in horror to my first evil dog-recording session!
• Wince at the sound of an eBow playing a Thunder Tube!
• Marvel at the many voices of the lowly shoe stretcher!

Thrills! Chills! Stuff! Things! Excessive Punctuation!!!!!

Yours ever so truly,
-The Management

Say Hello to Sonic Terrain

I’m thrilled to announce the existence of Sonic Terrain, the world’s first portal dedicated entirely to field recording in all its myriad forms. I’m a co-founder and editor alongside Miguel Isaza (of Designing Sound), and we’ve enlisted the help of Colin Hart and Michael Raphael, surely with more editors and contributors to come. We all think this will be a great place for those who record outside of the studio environment to share and learn from one another. From music to science, from entertainment to fine art, we’ll be covering it all, through both aggregated and wholly original content.

Sonic Terrain has just launched today, but there’s a lot more in store. Oh, yes, do we have plans. Please visit, comment, and drop me a line at nathan [_at_] sonic-terrain [_dot_] net if you’ve got something you’d like to contribute. We’ll see you there!

Noise Jockey is One Year Old Today!

We ain't tough, but we sure is noisy.

Today marks the first anniversary of Noise Jockey’s very first post. Like any one year old, it can be annoying and loud but have moments of awesomeness that make it all worthwhile.

99.9% of those awesome moments have come from you, this site’s visitors. I’ve gotten back far more than I’ve given, which makes me humbled, honored, and much better informed than when I started.

Noise Jockey is simply the blog of a creative personality that’s driven to explore, share, and learn. I’ve found that its readers are exactly the same. You all amaze me with your own blogs, audio explorations, and even online sound communities…if you’ve not yet done so, check out each other’s online audio goodness in the sidebar.

Here’s to another great year of sonic wackiness, and I hope you’ll continue to join me.

Field Workshop Notes, Part 1: Video Diary

[Sound Design] Field Recording Workshop 2010 from Noise Jockey on Vimeo.

I’m just back from the 26th Annual Nature Sounds Society Field Workshop. I thought that I’d share some video diary entries that I shot with my new iPhone 4. As far as I know, this is the first time that video of this workshop has ever been seen online.

I’ll be sharing more of the learnings, experiences, and recordings in the coming weeks. For now, I hope you enjoy this set of dispatches from the field.

[You can read about the gear I took with me in a previous post.]

Preparing for a Field Workshop

This weekend, I’m attending the 26th Annual Nature Sounds Society Field Workshop. Held in the Sierra Nevada mountain range at an SFSU field research station, this year’s instructors will include Gordon “One Square Inch of Silence” Hempton and others, with naturalist and illustrator John Muir Laws as a guest lecturer.

I thought it might be interesting to share what I’m bringing with me to this interesting outing. (Well, OK, fine, I really needed to make a packing list and I just suckered you into reading it.) Later this summer, I’ll not only share some recordings and photos from the field workshop, but will recap the gear used and how it all performed.

So, what am I bringing?

Read the rest of this entry »

David Sonnenschein Webinar: May 21

As announced a few days ago on Designing Sound, David Sonnenschein, author of  Sound Design: The Expressive Power of Music, Voice and Sound Effects in Cinema, will be hosting a live webinar entitled “Psychoacoustic Tools for Creativity,” May 21 from 9-11am Pacific Daylight Time. It’s open to students, professionals, and hobbyists of all stripes.

David Sonnenschein

Last month, an international group of eight members the online sound community (myself included) attended a “beta test” webinar with Sonnenschein, and it was excellent. The format will be about half lecture and half discussion of attendees’ work, submitted beforehand. I think that the opportunity to learn more about how the human brain interprets audio is essential learning for anyone involved in music or sound, just as the study of visual perception is paramount to visual and interaction design. This class will focus on taking theory and making it practical in one’s work.

Here’s David’s own description of this webinar.

SEMINAR TOPIC:  PSYCHOACOUSTIC TOOLS FOR CREATIVITY

Do you desire to produce really effective soundtracks that reach your audience through neurobiological resonance, tapping into how they subconsciously perceive the world through sound?  Would you like more access to your own brain power for finding innovative approaches and solutions?  Every professional sound designer can benefit from understanding and experiencing the science of sonic storytelling. In this seminar we will explore the neurobiology and psychology of hearing and how these underlying principles can support creative sound design.

WHAT WE’LL DO

In the second half of each unique 2-hour seminar, David will screen, analyze and discuss video clips pre-selected from submissions by the participants (max. 5 min., 100mb file size). If you have something ready or a work-in-progress, send info on the genre, length and any particular area of sound that you’d like to discuss, to dsonn22@gmail.com.

It’s a steal, too: You get access to one of the best minds on sound design for US$40. It’s limited to 25 people, so definitely sign up soon. If you’re active on socialsounddesign.com (see my earlier post about this awesome community), you’ll probably recognize a lot of peeps in the class.

To paraphrase our state’s governor in Predator: DOOO EET! GET TO DA CHOPPAH!

Who are you?

According to Google Analytics…

1. You spend an average of 3 minutes on NoiseJockey.net. This suggests you actually listen to the sounds. :-)
2. 60% of you are directed here from other sites; of that, over 20% of you are arriving from DesigningSound.org.( I thank everyone who runs sites in this increasingly vibrant sound recording/design community who read and support Noise Jockey! You rock!)
3. 60% of you use MacOS, and 35% of you use some flavor of Windows. I’m gonna assume the 2% of you who visit Noise Jockey on the iPod, iPhone, or iPad are lamenting Apple’s refusal to support Flash.
4. 42% of you use Firefox, 36% of you use Safari, and and less than 7% of you use Internet Explorer. There’s a word for that: Progress.
5. Almost half of you use laptops to view this site, but at least a quarter of you have big-ass monitors, too.
6. Noise Jockey’s visitors are quite international. A hearty “merci beaucoup” goes out to the 10% of you that parlez Français, possibly visiting from SoundDesigners.org. (A personal thanks to Benoit is appropriate here, and apologies for not having taken French since middle school!)
7. You made post that you found most annoying also the most-viewed/heard. (Thanks to David Hobby at Strobist.com for the pick-up).
8. You commented the most on the first video I released. More to come…

Numbers only tell so much. How many of you are female vs. male? How many of you are professionals vs. hobbyists? What else do you do for fun? That’s what’s most meaningful, and the statistics above only paint part of the picture.

If you want to share more, do so in the comments below. But more importantly, visit each other’s sites and blogs. Join an online sound community. (Some of my favorite blogs and communities are listed in the “Aural Linkage” sidebar.) Record something and start your own blog!

Or, at the very least, just listen. To where you are, every day. Your life will be richer for it.