tugrik

(For more info on what these posts are about, please read the first one.)

BlueNoise #2
(Recorded in an open-walled structure. Nothing loud or harsh. 12/14/2009)

Download link: BlueNoise #2

Clip Details:

Behind my office is a 5-story parking garage in downtown San Jose. It's right beside the Shark Tank, Highway 87 and the Adobe building. This means it's directly in the flight path of the San Jose Municipal Airport. Leaving work in the evening means having no less than 2 or 3 planes pass by in the time it takes to walk from office door to vehicle. Usually they're huge jumbos that blot out all sound, but now and then there's a little business jet or the occasional turbo-prop. When you're inside open-edged parking structure it makes quite the odd sound. This time I remembered to fetch the little recorder from the van, sit on the tailgate and catch it.

This is a small turboprop going overhead as it heads to a landing at SJC. Afterwards is just the usual ambience of the parking structure with a few folks shuffling by in the background. Meanwhile the FedEx man has finished emptying the drop box by the garage's elevator and runs his little push-cart full of packages down the cement ramp, around the corner (out of earshot) and then back right by where I was sitting. The cement is tiled into smooth/rough/smooth/rough segments, which makes the cart's sound stop and start.

Yes, this is one of the more boring sound clips, I admit… but it's a very familiar one. It represents a part of my personal environment that I've heard every workday for the last two and a half years.

One thing I do promise to record from the same location on a future date: the place has a hugely different sound when there's a Sharks hockey game afoot. It's one of the primary parking locations for the Shark Tank and it gets a real vibe going as folks head to the game, but not until near the end of the season.