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Resonant/reverberant space is something I've thought about a lot since high school, but I never have dragged mics and equipment into a concrete stairwell or washroom before today.

I work at Alfred University in New York and our division of Expanded Media in the School of Art & Design has a four story stairwell which feeds the back of house to two of our galleries and the sonic/video arts studios. I set out four Tascam DR-100 field recorders and captured the sound of my wallet being dropped from the highest point to the lowest. In the accompanying artwork you can see two pictures of this stairwell (one from the bottom looking up [the bottom left picture], and one from the top looking down [the top right picture]). My calves always tighten up a bit at the top.

For the less reverberant space, I chose an old storage closet we're in the midst of transforming into a vocal/studio booth. It has rubberized floors, and a much lower drop-ceiling. I placed the quartet of recorders in the corners of the room, and then dropped my wallet from a much shorter height to the floor. You can see two images from this room set up in the other half of the cover art.

All of this for less than five seconds of audio total. In the first two seconds you'll hear the initial hit of the wallet, followed by a second quieter hit after it bounced in the concrete stairwell. At four seconds you hear the other room with a much more muted single drop (which to my ears sounds a bit like a champagne cork popping, but I've had champagne maybe twice in my life so I probably don't really know what that sounds like.)

More on the 683rd weekly Disquiet Junto project, Space Shot — The Assignment: Combine reverberant and non-reverberant — at https://disquiet.com/0683/