Bonfire Night fireworks, from Exeter city centre

Yesterday evening was 5th November — generally known here in the UK, or at least England, as Bonfire or Guy Fawkes' Night. I won't go into the historical background, but this is our big excuse to go crazy with fireworks.

So, just as for my thunderstorm recordings, I recorded this from my bedroom window sill, the weather being clement enough then for me to open the window as far as it would go. As for thunderstorm recordings, I had the recording level on the Sony PCM-D100 set low (between 3 and 4 on the adjustment knob) to ensure any 'close encounters' didn't get clipped.

The dynamic range is big, so for a useful listening level you need to boost the playing volume by a whacking 15 dB — or, if you don't have a volume level scale in dB on your player, you need to be able to hear the background sound (very quiet) after the 1-second fade-in at the beginning.

What I love about the sound of these firework panoramas I pick up is not so much the pops and bangs in themselves (soon boring as hell!), but the huge variation in nuances of their echos and reverberations. Generally, depending on exact location, each sound has multiple echoes, off different buildings, so the pops and bangs from each specific location have a different echo / reverb profile to those from any other location, and that profile would vary somewhat too according to their height.

In this recording the real fun starts late, towards an hour in, and then almost to the end. The firework activity in my facing direction (SW) gives way to one or more major firework displays some distance away on the other side of my abode (i.e., the NE side). That means that the directly heard sounds are low-level and of subdued tone, but their echoes on the buildings on this side are stronger — and each of those bangs has multiple echoes. When those are coming in quick succession, the echo effects are really weird and rather disorienting. At least, for this simple monkey, this is a really enjoyable entertainment, at least once in a long while.

However, give me a thunderstorm any day rather than the environmental cost of all that fireworkery!

Please remember to give this recording a rating!