Here’s How Echo Collective: Fields Captured The Sounds Of Hockey, Hospitals and Rodeos

René Coronado and his companions have been releasing a number of great sound effect libraries through their Echo Collective label. But now they’re launching Echo Collective: Fields, a sister site targeting surround ambiences. I’ve spoken with René about the new site, their plans – and the three new ambience libraries they’re debuting this week.

Pro Hockey Crowds is the end result of a yearlong trek to and from the local pro sporting arena recording every home game I could get to.

I have unique access there with a press pass and free reign to bring in gear and wander about, so I figured it would be my own damn fault if I didn’t go record those games.

I did entire games from various positions, and had various run ins with production people and officials during the course of the project.

On the camera platform I once managed to get a local photographer to relocate so that his DSLR constantly snapping wouldn’t foul the recordings.

Outside the arena I was confronted by security more than once.

I went to a game the weekend after the Boston bombings, got all of my gear past the (very beefed up) security, and then rolled the entire game from under the bleachers at event level. The only place I didn’t get that I wanted was the video control room, but for clearance reasons I figured I wouldn’t have very much usable from there anyway.

Find out more about Pro Hockey Crowds here
 

Hospital Ambiences was fun as well. I got to take a Schoeps dual MS rig around an hospital for an entire day. There were moments where my guide and I put on scrubs and went upstairs into the OR level.

At one point I talked to an OR prep nurse, and she allowed me to rig a mic in an operating room in advance of a procedure that was about to happen. I ran my bag and mic in there, hit record, and went outside and waited. After a few minutes they wheeled a lady in and implanted an electrode into her spinal cord right in front my mics!

For HIPPAA reasons I couldn’t include that recording in the collection, but it was amazing to have those sounds right in front of me.

We covered the entire hospital for a TV series we were doing post on, but the sounds contractually were mine to do with as I pleased, so I edited them up and included them in this release.

I used the Schoeps double MS decoder plugin for that stuff and with some tweaking it really worked out well.

Find out more about Hospital Ambiences here
 

Texas Ranches and Rodeos was recorded at least 10 years ago.

I used to do radio spots for the rodeo here in town and I managed to talk my way into full press pass access to a couple of shows. This was before the time of H4ns and other such boxes, so I grabbed my trusty Tascam DAP1 (portable DAT recorder) and headed out.

I got tons of great crowds and ambiences but what really blew me away was the fact that when the show was over the cowboys kept on competing. With dozens of cowboys and events and only 2 hours to put on a show, they just wrapped up the in game presentation 2/3rds of the way through.

Before I knew it I was alone in this empty arena right up close to a group of cowboys doing the steer wrestling event. Those gate releases and the clean sounds of the cowboys wrestling the steers down with their bare hands have been eternally useful to me since then.

This library has been purchased from our studio a few times in the past for use on bigger projects, so I figured there would be a need for it out in the greater community.

A little later I went to a horse ranch owned by a voice talent I work with. She’s a friend, and again I felt an obligation to get the recordings solely based on the fact that I had access.

We spent the entire day walking and trotting with the horses, and at the end we gathered a dozen or so of them up and stampeded them past the mics and back. It was pretty thrilling.

Find out more about Texas Ranches and Rodeos here