Noisevember 30

I did it! Thirty days recording a sound.

Today we started going through the boxes in our small pantry storage area. Going through boxes and finding things to get rid of, like 2003 taxes and old phone bills, means you also find the things you intend to keep. Some of them you'll keep forever. 

One of those keeper boxes is all my old radio work. It includes my first traffic reports, demo tapes, raw interviews for features, and the finished features themselves. The formats include cassette, CD and minidisc, and there's even a DAT tape and a Zip disc. 

I hooked my minidisc player up to our radio and Aaron and I laughed listening to a "West Coast Watch" on Stanley Park, another on the BC Ferries, and this one on Coast Wolves. 

I recorded part of this feature out of the radio onto my recorder. Love love love. 

Noisevember 29 

This was a lazy sound for a lazy day. We went for a slow 12 km run through Shaughnessey and then spent the afternoon on the couch. We tried out the game Hive Nicole sent us for our birthdays (surely not last Christmas?).

Here's the sound of the tactile game's pieces. 

Katie won the game!

Noisevember 28 

Aaron and I went on a 5 1/2 hour walk on Saturday! The sun was out and it was a good way to spend as much time as we could outside. We took a snack this time so we could last the afternoon. Mid afternoon along the Seawall at Second Beach was very busy. In the recording you'll hear the sound of the waves and many languages. 

The walk got off to the best start when we ran into Mel & Jawad & Ayla coming off the Burrard Bridge on their bikes. It was so good to see friends and chat to them in person! It finished pretty well too - we stopped for fish & chips for dinner.

Noisevember 27

I'm on AV! There is no better way to start a week of holidays than by going for a run after clocking out at 4 pm. Aa and I pounded the pavement to the seawall and headed towards Science World for our familiar 8km route. 

Aa encouraged me to burn off some extra work energy and take off ahead of him so he's not in my clip. 

Next time I'm going to record a run with my binaurals and I will not wear my rain jacket!

Noisevember 26

It's not a cop-out! It's a true representation of life during pandemic policies and cold November rain. Zoom, Webex, Microsoft Teams—there are many platforms where we can gather for lectures and webinars. Last night it was Jesse Wente giving a presentation for Ideas on CBC, and tonight it's a panel on Site C.

Here are clips of West Moberly First Nations Chief Roland Wilson reminding us of a few of the warning signs that Site C should not have gone ahead.

Noisevember 25

It's much easier to get an interesting sound when you leave the house and especially fun to record sound at an elementary school! It's okay for adults to be there because it's also a public park.

There's so much activity at Taylor Park on a clear day when gym class is outside, community members are playing basketball, and a train pulls into the Skytrain yard.

Noisevember 24

On a day where the rain fell and the wind blew we got lucky with a break in the weather and Aaron and I went for a run after work. Even though it stopped raining, the ground was not dry. I took a shortcut between two cedar bushes on my way to the front door and felt my running shoe slip in mud. Unaware of the magnitude of the mud, I wiped my feet hard on the mat in the apartment lobby. I looked down to see clumps of mud. 

I felt bad for leaving mud there (and I'm obviously afraid of Carrol), so I grabbed our Dyson vaccum and tried to clean it up. It's mud and doesn't clean up well with a house vaccuum. No reflection on our awesome, life changing vacuum.

This recording isn't of the action in the lobby, but me cleaning a few corners in the kitchen. Both regular and max suction are featured.

Noisevember 23

It's Aaron's special recipe - raspberry lemon kombucha. He started making kombucha in January and went through a few experiments, spreadsheets and scobys before creating this mix. 

Here's the sound of Aaron pouring the-ready-to-be-bottled kombucha from the 2 gal jar into the 1 L measuring cup and then into the 750 ml bottle. That bottle will sit for six days to develop carbonation and then it'll go in the fridge. Once it's ready for the fridge, it's ready to drink. It's tasty!

Noisevember 22

My parents 💖

Here's a clip from today's FaceTime call with my parents. We don't chat enough this way and I really like it when we do. Today my dad said we should do this regularly and so we set a time to talk again next Sunday at 4:00 pm.

I recorded only two minutes of our conversation twice. Unfortunately I didn't have the recorder rolling for any of my dad's gems, like "that's a pink job" when referring to my mom cleaning the microwave. 

In this clip you can hear all four of us, and the dryer.

 

Noisevember 20

More COVID-19 restrictions have been put in place this week - socialize only with members of your household, non-essential travel is not permitted and among others, masks are mandatory in all public indoor spaces. For work this means we're back to working only from home and there are no more office days. So much time is spent in the apartment.

Today's sound is common in the apartment and isn't going away. It's boring, but captures what's happening daily in the apartment. It's a recording taken at my work desk while a CBC radio show plays in the background, the host and guest discussing the pandemic. Saving grace here is that Rosemary Barton is the best radio host!

Noisevember 21

This is how we start our day. Every-single-day. The sound of the water pouring over the ground beans is soothing to me every morning.

I love this coffee making ritual, and even though I've recently reduced my caffeine intake and drink half-caf in the morning (chased by a couple cups of black tea not long after), this ritual isn't going anywhere.

Noisevember 19 

Here are the beautiful morning birds outside our bedroom window. They're in the trees beside the apartment and maybe even coming to the feeder. I also caught the sounds of lunchtime birds! The kids from the school nearby are playing in the background. If you really listen you'll hear the vibrating wings of a hummingbird.

 

Noisevember 18 

 

Trust me, this sound was recorded on November 18 despite what the internet date stamp says. It was an office day and I spent most of the last hour of work scanning historical photographs. They were photos from 1935 of the Great Fraser Valley Ice Storm. The amount of snow in Chilliwack forced electrical lines to fall to the ground causing wide-spread power outages. The photos also capture ice frozen to electrical wires. 

 

Just this week 130,000 customers lost power on Vancouver Island and the South Coast due to a wind storm. Eighty-five years later and still, we'll never be stronger than nature.

 

This recording of the scanning machine hard at work was taken at 3:57 pm, I'm off at 4:00!

 

(Edited for time. Your time, I had to sit through the three minutes of scanning).

 

Noisevember 17

Here's the recycling truck emptying the bins at the apartment next door. I had to run outside to grab the sound as I missed recording the truck outside our apartment. My arm was outside the window with the recorder in hand and the truck close by, but I forgot to press record!

These sounds bring back memories of Cowichan.

 

Noisevember 16 

When you spend all day working from inside your apartment and are barely brave enough to battle the elements, rain and 5pm darkness for fresh air, it's good to remember that people are still out there and that the world continues to go on outside your walls and windows. Somedays I need to witness that activity. People are still coming home from work, doing errands, walking with friends. I captured a little of this at the corner of 12th and Granville around 6pm. 

It was actually kind of quiet, considering the location.

Noisevember 15 

All of my time is spent either in the apartment or in local nature. I didn't think you'd want to hear the wind again, so how about lasagne? Aaron had the idea I could capture the cheese bubbling, only it didn't bubble, but you can imagine the melted, slightly browned cheese on top. 

Mmmm! 

Noisevember 14 

I forgot to post this sound on Saturday. We went for a long, three hour walk at Iona Beach today, choosing the route along the jetty straddling the Fraser River and the Pacific Ocean. I also forgot my recorder and had to use my phone for recording today. There were many sounds out there as we saw eagles, herons, seals and hundreds of snow geese, but what my phone mostly picked up was wind. 

Noisevember 13 

The rain stopped this afternoon and the wind picked up. This recording is from a walk at lunch when I was trying to capture the clink and clank of the metal pieces on sailboat masts (the rigging?), but mostly I just got the wind. 

 

Noisevember 12

It's been raining today and there hasn't been any reason to leave the house except to get some fresh air. Here's the rain falling on my orange umbrella in the evening. Always the rain.

Noisevember 11

Today is Remembrance Day. 

The Victory Square Remembrance Day ceremony was abridged this year because of the pandemic and attendees were asked to take it in from home on TV, so that's what we did. Hearing the Last Post in person is powerful, and we found it had a similar effect from home. 

Noisevember 10

The canopy of maple and cedar trees covers the short, dirt path from 7th avenue to the seawall. It can't be more than 200 metres, but I'm grateful for those 200 metres offering access to a coniferous forest in the city. When I was going to work regularly and riding to the Skytrain, I would take that path twice a day. When it's dark I'm not afraid in there. Walking up the path in the early evening tonight, I noticed for the first time the different spots with running water.

Noisevember 9

Flurries are in the forecast for higher elevations tonight. We aren't supposed to see any snow on the ground where we're at, but we are feeling the cold today, especially after a walk in the rain. With a few recent runs still scorching the soles of his sneakers, Aaron is back into exercise and tonight's training was a workout from my Sweat app.

Hear a sample of the exercises we did during Upper Body Pump.

Those are weights clinking together, not beer glasses. 

 

Noisevember 8

The National Research Council's official time signal began on November 5, 1939. Wow, if I'd known that I would have done this one three days ago!

The longest running radio CBC Radio feature just celebrated 81 years on air. The long dash, originally called the Dominion Observatory Signal, began as WWII was breaking out in Europe and the time signal was to help railways, shipping companies and everyday Canadians set their clocks to the exact time set by the National Research Council. Today, most of our clocks keep pretty tight time, even when we gain or lose an hour, but I still like to watch my phone switch over to 10:00 with the long dash, just to make sure. 

I also like to think how it connects us all across the country, kind of like this newscast's breaking news story—Alex Trebek died this morning.

Noisevember 7

Thank you, America, for not letting the world down this week.

It was four days of waiting to find out whether Americans blew the election. Saturday morning we heard that Joe Biden took Pennsylvania and won the U.S. election. Kamala Harris becomes the first Black woman, the first South Asian woman, the first woman to be elected to the White House.

There were many moments of her speech on Saturday night worth sharing, here is just one of them 💖.

Noisevember 6

It's the first Friday since the end of Sober October and it shouldn't seem too far out of Left Field for me to want to have a cider.

Noisevember 5

After a few days of steady rain we had a break in the weather today and took advantage of dry streets to go for a run. Aaron has an ongoing love-hate relationship with running. What was it he said after his first (and only?) marathon? "I'm never running again." Today was his second time running in less than a week and he's traded in stretching for cold baths as the complete cure for sore muscles. His method is preventative and as soon as he's home, has stripped his sweaty gear to the floor and let the cold water run long enough to almost cover his quads, he plunges in to the ice COLD water. 

Hear the agony and bravery here.

 

Noisevember 4

The Skytrain was busy on the way home from work today. Transit riders included the half-masked, the half-baked, an anti-masker and a squealing baby. All this activity stressed me out and affected my focus on recording. I'm done with transit (until next week)!

 

Noisevember 3

Three fresh baked loaves of Aaron's homemade sourdough bread came out of the oven tonight. This week's bread is mostly white flour with some rye for additional flavour and fibre. Delicious! 

This is Aaron cutting into one of the loaves.

Sample rate of the recording: 44100 Hz

Sample rate of the bread: double-time

Noisevember 2 - Walking in Leaves

It's Aaron and I on a post-work walk taking in the last of the daylight after yesterday's time change, and experiencing the crunch of the fall leaves underneath our shoes. Shaughnessy has huge maple and chestnut trees that drop colourful orange and yellow leaves on the sidewalks, boulevards, streets and parks.

Noisevember Returns

"We need to know who we are, who we once were, and who we will always want to be (as my uncle Lenard George always says)." This is from My Conversations with Canadians by Lee Maracle. 

I decided to resurrect Noisevember 10 Years Later, but hadn't yet written a post to introduce the project when I read this last night and it resonated with me. Who am I now? I'm not sure. Who was I once? I was an audio producer and I loved radio and sound. Who will I always want to be? I want to always stay connected to audio - to recording, editing, mixing, imagining, creating. 

This is a start to finding my way back there. 

The first sound I ever recorded was the radio. It was probably a song from LG73, maybe from the weekly countdown. Possibly Starship "We Built this City". Yesterday morning I caught the "90s Brunch" on CFOX. It was the perfect combination of love and nostalgia coming together encouraging me to record - the radio and the music that had the biggest influence on me. Our Lady Peace, U2, Oasis all in one hour! 

Third Eye Blind, "How's it Gonna Be" made the tape.