Cemetery on Halloween

Unless you’re in the party scene or an English teacher forced to dress up for class, Halloween can nearly go unnoticed here in Taiwan. At least it did for me this year.

I had planned to head up to Banpingshan mountain but it was getting a bit too late in the day for that. So with nothing in mind, I hopped on my scooter for a little “freestyling” recording.

I drove around until I saw a dirt path off to the side of the road. I followed it a while and eventually came to some sort of bee farm. I wasn’t ready for a bee recording at the moment, but thought I would try on the way back – this dirt road couldn’t possibly take me too far.

After another 5 minutes, I realized what the dirt road was meant for: a backway route to the top of a cemetery.

You typically see cemeteries in Taiwan on the sides of hills. I guess climbing from the bottom to the top would take some effort. So it’s probably easier to drive to the top and take a dirt path to the grave site.

At this point I figure why not record a cemetery!? It didn’t sound particularly interesting, but I’ve come this far…why not?

And I did…

It hadn’t dawned on me that I was recording a cemetery on Halloween until I got home – not that I’m superstitious or anything. There was this random old guy walking around with a dog. Hmm… (Cue scary music)

Here’s a snippet from the recording. I doubt I’ll use it for anything; it’s quite unremarkable. There are some scooters in the distance, birds and a typical school-style bell ringing towards the end. I used Harpex-B to create an ORTF stereo file.

Recording Chain

SPS200>Tascam DR680 (Busman Mod)

Processing

SurroundZone Plugin A>B-Format> Harpex-B>ORTF Stereo File

Download: 24bit 96k .rar file

(You’re free to use in your project with written permission)

Cemetery_Taiwan_ORTF_Harpex-B