In the Begining...

Here is the map with the route I took on my driftwalk. For my walking plan I decided to take a walk in Spring Green, Wisconsin where my parents live. I thought I'd walk from their house to highway 14 on the most direct route, which you can see above. On the way to the highway, I decided swing into town for a block or two until I got at least one good "town" noise. This way I could get both city and rural sounds and I did: 2 town and 3 rural. I hope you enjoy.

Driving Range

I stopped by a little mini-golf center that had a driving range in the back on Winsted St.. I set my microphones up at the end of the line of greens, facing them parallel to it so that they could pick up the sounds of the golfers all the way down the line. Click here to listen. Note: for best results, listen with headphones.

The Subaru

The Next sound I got was when I was Walking along the road towards town. I set my mics up by a tree facing towards the road. It's a fairly busy road so I waited awhile and captured a lot of sounds of different vehicles passing. I chose the one I did because it came after there was a long break between cars passing and I could get the sound of only the one car. It was a '98 Subaru (actually I don't know the year) and it was driven by a 40ish blond woman. The crickets were out and about too. Click here to listen.

Kids Reading Room

After I walked in the library, I saw that there was a children's reading going on in the kids section and a whole bunch of 3 and 4 year olds were starting to gather in the room. I thought I might attract attention if went into the children's section myself, so I went around to the teen section and set up my microphones on a shelf dividing the two sections. There were two librarians trying to gather all the kids together, but were having a little trouble with how many children there were (about 20). One of the kids kept trying to get one of librarians to read him a book he had, but they wouldn't, so he started slamming the books on the floor trying to get their attention--it didn't work, but I captured the noise nicely. They are the two thumps you here in this clip.

Newspapers and Water Fountains

After I recorded the kids, I went over to the newspaper section where they had chairs and tables set up for reading. There were about 4 or 5 people reading papers and magazines in the room and there was also an water fountain (not a bubbler, I'm from the west) on the far wall. The water cooler kept turning on after someone drank from the fountain and that sound frames this clip.

Crickets and Crop Dusters

On the last stretch of road I was walking on, I had a stroke of luck: cars stopped driving by me for a long stretch of time and there were some crickets in the field next to the road that were making a bunch of cool noises. At some point during the time I was recording, a plane flew over head. I could barely hear the plane with the headphones off and I was afraid that you wouldn't be able to hear it. When I played it back, however, you could hear the plane nicely. But for best results, listen to the clip with headphones. Click here to listen.