First Audio Experiments at Timna Park

I started audio experiments at the Hathor chapel on the evening of July 7 and at the copper mines on the morning of July 8.  I learned two important things.  At the Hathor chapel, I had intended to shoot more photographs, but the sky was hazy with dust.  As an alternative to my camera,  I pulled a Roland 26 recorder out of my bag. --but I did not have any external mics with me.  This turned out to be something of a blessing because I would not have used the Roland internal mics alone otherwise. And what I found was they capture a surprisingly effective spatial effect with the sound they capture, at least in the stone-surrounded environment I was in.

Then today I used 2 cardioid mics in the copper mines.  These mines are small. I am 5'2" and I have to crouch to walk through them.  The soft sandstone surfaces are irregular and include niches and recesses.  So in this environment, I found that pointing the cardioids in a coincidence pattern towards my sound source was more effective than pointing them at the stones and expecting sound bounce to enhance the sound.  This was the opposite of my results at the Santa Cruz Mission, where I found that pointing the same mics in the same pattern towards the corner of historic adobe walls and AWAY from my sound source captured a rich resonance from sound bounce.  

Not being a physicist, I assume this is because of a difference in shape/form and size of the recording area: the mine surfaces were irregular, curvy, and the space was small.  

Last night at the Hathor chapel I got fantastic sound bounces, but the rocks around me were huge--probably 60-80 foot faces.  Both the mines and the stones around the chapel are made of sandstone.  The mines were so soft, though, that I could see sand eroding in the wind before my eyes.  The huge rock faces were very hard sandstone, strong enough to build steps into and climb up a story without risk of the stones crumbling beneath you.  So perhaps soft sandstone is also more absorbent and hard sandstone is more reflective?

 I am fortunate to be with a team of scientists, including a physicist, so we are all talking about it.  This is the great thing about bringing people from different academic disciplines together!  

And I am teaching the marine researchers how to use my 360 Fly camera. They filmed a sea turtle today.  :)  

Here are some photos from the area around the Timna mines, where the Egyptians around the time of Ramesses III mined copper.  Recognize my sistrum from past posts?  The sistrum was one of the preferred instruments of the priestesses of Hathor.  They used it to channel the energy of Hathor to heal/soothe the soul and they used it to banish undesirable energies.