Recording Swans!

Today I went to Lake Eola in Downtown Orlando to record some swans! Now before  I get too far into my adventure, I just wanted to mention why I recorded swans. I think a lot of people don't realize that swans actually make incredibly weird sounds. I was at this same lake several weeks ago and I was caught by surprise by the strange sounds the swans were making to each other. It was very dinosaur like, or at least how we portray dinosaurs in Hollywood. Although some of the sounds were very duck like, other sounds had a piercing horn quality to them and a low resonance that I just cant describe, almost like something you'd hear in an analog synth. None the less, at the time the sound fascinated me but much to my dismay I was unarmed at the time and had to retreated without any swan calls.

Now if you've never been to Lake Eola it is definitely a must see if you have any free time in the Downtown Orlando area. It's a beautiful lake right in the center of the city that is inhabited by several dozen large beautiful swans! On this particular day it was a beautiful Sunday afternoon and the weekly farmers market was going on. After purchasing some delicious Asiago cheese bread and some local Irish cheddar, my girlfriend and I ventured off to find some victims (Swans).

We had to do a bit of walking as the noise from the farmers market had caused the majority of the swans and ducks to swim to a more remote section of the lake. This worked for my benefit though because it became clear to me that the large crowd gathered at the lake on this particular day was going to cause a lot of noise in my recordings, luckily the swans were cooperative in the choosing of their location.

"Wait, no, please, coome bacck!"

However the swans were not cooperative in any other way as my first target turned tail and swiftly swam away. I did however capture several beautiful recordings of me entreating it in vain several times (sigh). Defeat was short lived though as it wasn't long before some more swans sailed in! One of them actually got close enough that I thought it was going to snatch my Tascam right out of my hand!

"Swan off the starboard bow!"

"Steady... aim... uh... please?"

The next problem became the battle between the wait for the swans to make noise and the amount of space on the SD Card in my Tascam DR05. It sometimes took several minutes of waiting in record mode before I captured a swan noise and this began to eat up my memory very quickly, even after switching down the sample rate and bit depth from 96khz 24bit to 44.1khz 16bit.

Helicopters and airplanes are quickly becoming my enemy

 Luckily some nearby people started to feed the swans some bread (obviously identifying a recordist in need) and this sped up the time between swan noises greatly, especially when a larger group of subjects arrived. I found that the black swans made noises more frequently than the white swans but that they also acted more aloof and were harder to get near, this was very disappointing as the black swans also made the dinosaur like calls I described earlier. I guess we can't always expect mother nature to cooperate, we just have to be patient and try again.

"Coome baacckk!"

In closing it was a ton of fun and I would definitely like to give it a shot again given what I learned from this experience. Speaking of which...

What I learned:

1. If you ever need animal recordings of any sort, don't just wing it. Animals in the wild are totally uncooperative and unreliable (Curse you swans!). In the future I would definitely plan out more time to record or consider going somewhere enclosed or with a guide to ensure a more reliable sound source.

2. Pick a less busy day to go and record. Although this seems like a no brainer, This was one of my first times going out into a public location and I totally underestimated how much space you really need from talking people to capture clean recordings.

3. Bring more data storage with you. The stand off with the swans was a war of attrition I couldn't win, purchasing a larger SD Card or bringing my computer to dump the recordings onto periodically would definitely be a great idea in the future.

4. Asiago cheese bread is delicious and awesome.

Thanks for reading!!!!!

-Matthew Hagberg