Adventures on the Wacky Worm

Day three of the sound library adventure led us, appropriately enough, to Adventure Landing in Jacksonville, Florida.  We needed a roller coaster sound, and what better way to get a roller coaster sound than by recording a roller coaster?  The folks at Adventure Landing were amazingly cool about the whole recording process.  We got there early enough so that no other patrons were wanting to ride their coaster, and they let us take advantage of the whole place…. on the house!

The in-house coaster at Adventure Landing is the Wacky Worm.  Although it may not look like much, and indeed we are going for a massive, scream-inducing coaster, the sounds we got from this ride sound very big and thrill-inducing.  The size of this small operation may have been to our advantage even, due to the close proximity we were allowed.

There was literally no place on the tracks that we were not able to record with the help of a short boom pole and a Neumann shotgun mic.

Some of the best sounds came from the PZM stereo mic:

This next one created some particularly interesting sounds, although the vibrating metal got suprisingly violent to Brandon’s ears.

Here is our tour guide and super cool Wacky Worm conductor.  We were given free reign to explore the entire Adventure Landing operation.

Amazing what you can do with a couple of mics, a Sound Device field recorder and a Wacky Worm.