{"id":167,"date":"2009-07-16T13:12:37","date_gmt":"2009-07-16T20:12:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/?p=167"},"modified":"2010-10-02T18:56:09","modified_gmt":"2010-10-03T01:56:09","slug":"creeping-crawlies-and-contact-mics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/2009\/07\/16\/creeping-crawlies-and-contact-mics\/","title":{"rendered":"Creeping Crawlies and Contact Mics"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Full-Contact

Full-Contact Audio: Contact microphones are cheap, fun, and beg for questionable uses.<\/p><\/div>\n

There are Japanese beetle larvae <\/a>living in my planter boxes. When we turn the soil, we sometimes unearth over a hundred at a time. We usually dig them out, leave them in a shallow bowl, and the local birds have a feast. I always wondered what disgusting critters that small sounded like, crawling around in a big ol’ pile.<\/p>\n

This seemed like a job for contact microphones, the small little piezo elements that detect vibrations through objects rather than through the air. You can make your own for less than $5, but being a complete soldering nimrod, I ordered two hand-built, XLR-equipped and Plasti-Dipped<\/a> contact microphones from Jeff Thompson at\u00c2\u00a0ContactMics.com<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0I jammed \u00c2\u00a0one of them into this slowly writhing mass. Totally gross<\/em>. However, the sound was not at all as I had expected: crisp, brittle, and not that<\/em> slimy. Since I’ve just recontextualized what this sound is, you’ll probably get all creeped out anyway. So enjoy. (Sorry about the ground loop hum, I was in a hurry and didn’t properly troubleshoot…)<\/p>\n

[soundcloud url=”http:\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/5763920″ params=”show_comments=true&auto_play=false&color=ee0000″ width=”100%” height=”81″ ]
\n[Piezo contact microphone into Sound Devices 702]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Contact mics and writhing insectoid creatures. What’s not to like?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,7,134],"tags":[19,10,20,14],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167"}],"version-history":[{"count":48,"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1835,"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions\/1835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}