Concrete Pumper

Concrete pumping on Bloor street.

I spent some time recording this pumper and its attendant concrete trucks in different ways. I have a tremendous amount to learn, and part of that is how the placement of the recorder changes the results. In another recording I positioned it facing away to catch the reverb and surroundings, while for this one I stood at the side of the road and held the recorder above my head. Let me tell you: that's a great way to be popular at a construction site.

This recording was made with the mics in the XY stereo configuration in an effort to pull in more of the machinery and less of the ambient. I'm not sure exactly how much that helped with my goal, but it certainly makes a difference for the width of the stereo field.

Concrete Pumper

Concrete pumpers working at Yonge and Bloor.

Concrete trucks were lined up for blocks along Bloor street, and some down Bay street as well, waiting their turns to supply the pumpers that were on the three accessible sides of the One Bloor East construction site. I took several recordings; for this one I faced the little Sony away from the action to catch more of the reverb from the surrounding buildings and the sounds of the passers-by. The rhythmic sound of the pump, its motor, and the alarms of the concrete trucks manoeuvring through traffic dominate the audio.

The video-for-audio file includes three photos. The first two show the recorder's position, while the last is looking west on Bloor street at the queuing trucks. I can count a dozen, which is only about half of them. Two trucks feed the pumps at a time, but it takes a long time to empty each one, leaving a lot of equipment idling on the side of the road.

Jackhammer

Construction and traffic at the intersection of Yonge and Gerrard streets.

A fairly typical afternoon with the addition of some jackhammers for ambiance. The crew digging up the eastbound lanes on Gerrard Street East were running a compressor and vacuum excavator, while traffic pass between them and the recorder causes their volume to peak and decline. This track has an overly abrupt fade out at the end but the volume increase at the beginning is how I found it. No other processing has been applied.

Included in this audio clip is a truck backing up, several buses driving past, a taxi's horn, people walking in heels, and snippets of conversation in at least a couple of different languages. To recreate the actual experience the volume should be set to be uncomfortably loud.