Digital Camera Sounds

My old digital camera makes a creaky D4 noise when the lenses open and retract, and it plays what's just flat of a B7 for its beeps, a very high note indeed.

Digital Camera

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June & July 2008 Compiled

We posted 16 sounds these past two months. I figured it was time for some compilations, so I whipped up the typical formats:

"Linear", a quick chronological run through all the sounds set to a beat.

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"Layers", i.e. all sounds at once. About a minute and a quarter long.

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"Mix", whereby I hone in on a few sounds and spin that off into something. 1 min, 39 sec.

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Til next time.

Aerial Truck Platform Backing Up Beep

For a week or so an aerial truck platform thing lumbered like an hydraulic dinosaur around the building where I work. The property owners were either cleaning or painting or treating the stone at the top of the chimneys and stuff. It seemed like important work--important enough to use a SkyLift, exactly as in this image I have stolen off Flickr.

Anyway, at one point the beast was inching its way down the alley outside my office window, all the while sending out its mating call: an E7 beep. And I captured a little of it. At the very end of the recording there is a cool sound of engine noise as well, something very brief but Death Star-ish.

Aerial Truck Platform Backing Up Beep

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photo by CovLtwt, used fair 'n' square

Microcassette Transcriber Sounds

Presenting the M-2000. And hey, that's no microcassette, that's a Transformer!

Listen to these euphonious sounds from yesteryear of an old piece of analog electronics.

Here's rewinding a tape. I hear simultaneous A3 and A#3.

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Now here's fast-forward. I hear A#3 and D#4.

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DVD Burner Fan

A small fan. In the white noise there's a faint whine sharp of a G5.

DVD Burner Fan

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Unidentified Spooky Sound

One night a few years back I was in my bedroom and heard a spooky sound coming from outside in the distance. I sought my microcassette-corder, opened the window, and captured a couple minutes of it on tape. I never figured out what it was. Motorcycles on the highway, racecars at the fairgrounds, an extraterrestrial spacecraft dropping a monolith for some apes? I hear G3, G#3, C#4, and D4.

Unidentified Spooky Sound

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Answering Machine W/ Mysterious Message

Someone left a brief message on my home answering machine tonight. It appeared to be a wrong number as the caller says nothing and you can hear a mysterious siren in the background. Wonder where in the city it came from? And if it was them being chased. I love this kind of stuff. Thanks for the call, anonymous person! The beep is a B5.

Answering Machine W/ Mysterious Message

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Garbage Truck Compressing

I had my sound recorder handy at last week's garbage pickup, and recorded the dulcet tones of a garbage truck working its compressing magic.

I hear both an A4 and an A♯4.

Garbage Truck

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Gas Generator

We had a pretty short but nasty storm last week, which resulted in us losing power for close to twenty-four hours.

A neighbor (well, technically a neighbor three doors down from us) had a gas generator running during the outage, and was nice enough to let us hook up our freezer to it via a series of extension cords, in order to keep our food from spoiling.

The generator is growling an A3.

Gas Generator

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Robin Chirp W/ Angry Squirrel

I was in my bedroom when I heard something that kinda sounded like a beeping. I went outside and realized it was a bird chirp. Seeking out the sound, I saw that it was coming from a robin in our neighbor's tree. There was a feisty squirrel making a racket in the same tree. I am not sure if the squirrel's chattering indicated that he was angry, but for some reason I like to think so.

The chirp seems to be pretty close to a B♭4, with an occasional dip to an A4.

Robin Chirp

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Weed Trimmer

Captured out my living room window, across the street. Guy was putting the finishing touches on a lawn with an old weed trimmer. It wavers in pitch around an A3.


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Pan Clang

Since dish washing is among my regular duties, clanging a pan of water against the sink is one of my favorite sounds. Here I clang an F4.


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Little Wedding Bell

I attended a delightful wedding last weekend in Madison, WI. On the reception tables were little bells to ring during happy couple kisses or just if you felt like it. Well of course I kept mine to turn it into a post here. It's spot-on an F5!


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National Weather Service Alert

I caught a strange weather alert on the radio from the National Weather Service in nearby Lincoln, Illinois the other night. They'd been broadcasting a few of these ones with clipped announcements. I never found out why. It has a comedic effect, though, because the tones are such dramatic attention-grabbers and then the announcement just goes kaput.

And those tones are: Middle C (the short opening and closing tones) and a long note middle-way between G#5 and A5 (played before the announcement--probably some thousands of Hertz).


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I wonder, are these tones nationally standardized across weather stations, or do your radio weather alerts sound different than mine? Same computerized voice?

I wasn't sure what picture to post this time, so I went with what I thought was cool: shots of doppler radar stations. Enjoy.

Leaf Blowers

Two guys were using leaf blowers to blow grass clippings off the pavement of the funeral home across the street from where I work. The tones waver in pitch around an A3. Some might call it noise pollution. I call it a duo of groundskeeping drones. In stereo...


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