Bay 66 Skate Park ~ Soundscape

The soundscape

The brief was to record and mix a one-minute soundscape..

I find acoustic ecology’s faithfulness to the location appealing and so my aim was to represent a specific place or idea, in this case BaySixty6 skate park in Ladbroke Grove.

BaySixty6 is situated beneath a flyover and is next to the metropolitan line. As such it has a lot of ambient noise. The semi-open acoustic produces an interesting sense of space in the recordings.

This was mixed on Pro Tools and I used an Izotope Ozone mastering plugin (maximisation and stereo width for cd setting). I used minimal eq, some volume boost and fast panning (with ramp-shaped U-curves) to enhance the realism of ramp sounds. I aimed to cram the minute with lots of information about the space, to represent it as fully as possible.

A couple of difficulties recording at a skate park:

It can be a dangerous place with lots of loose boards flying around

Trying to close-mic a very fast moving target is a challenge and again, could be dangerous to us, the riders and the equipment!

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