Freesound Forums

Hi all,

a number of years back I came across a web site dedicated to people who recorded telephone poles. Not a music group, we are talking real phone poles.

the gent who ran it showed you how to make a "tin ear" of sorts which you attached to phone poles (fer real) and as the wind blew it set up vibrations in the wires to the poles. Every pole has a slightly different sound in any given wind speed/pulse (remember wind is waves just like a sea shore wave). SO it has a frequency and distinct variation due to weight of wires / materials in wires/ number of wires.

I can not for the life of me remeber how the web page was titled and am appealing to all here to go forth and bug yer friends who like unusual things.

If anyone can suggest a better place to ask this question that would be great. It was a crazy but kinda cool site, and I would love to build the "ear" and then put it up to either a mike or electret pick up and record it.

"Listening for a response

sparkie

Can't help you with the web page but a contact mic would serve your purpose.

Edit
I remembered this site, might be of interest.

http://wiredlab.org/

Thanks Benboncan

Somehow I have been to that site before. Pretty sure I would have found the link here at Freesound.
Some of the recordings here are amazing!

sparkmaster,

You should be able to get a contact mic from shops that sell guitar accessories.
Better yet, they are dead easy to make from piezoelectric transducers. You can buy these from an electronics supplier probably at £0.20
All you need to do is solder the leads into a 3.5 or 1/4 inch plug and connect them to the mic in on a recorder. I recomment that you also coat the piezo with 2 or 3 coats of enamel paint (for protection and durability). You should at least cover the solder points where the leads are attached to the piezo as these are very sensitive and can break during handling - it is very difficult to re-solder those thnigs back! to the enamel paint is reall y a good idea.

If you want to do it on the fast and cheap then at least put some sticky-tape over the solder points for a little bit of protection.

Once you got your contact mic you can attach it to any surface to record sounds.
Depending on what you are attaching it to you can use gluetack (or plasticine, or even chewing gum.... ewwww....) or stickytape. For other objects a clip or a clothes peg may work better. A rubber band is also useful...

I am quite busy at the moment so can't promise to make any recordings myself. At least not for a while...
Maybe one of the more frequent recording Freesound users will give it a go...

I have made a post on the 'sample requests' forum with a link to this thread.
http://www.freesound.org/forum/sample-requests/33038/?page=1#post63653

Hopefully this will make it more visible to those more likely to contribute recordings of the sounds in question.

metal guy wire ... http://www.freesound.org/browse/remixed/252182/

similar to ...

"Sound Design of Star Wars 

Laser blasts  
The sound of a hammer on an antenna tower guy wire (Ben Burt tapping the wires of a radio tower)"
http://filmsound.org/starwars/