Recording the opening of Cultural Harbour Kronborg

Thats the name of the place, sorry….

The last 10 years the harbour in Helsingør where I live, has undergone some dramatic changes. The moat around Kronborg castle has been remodeled into the way it looked several centuries ago. The old docks have been turned into museums, and the user area around it all had been made more user-friendly. Its been a long while, but its been worth the long wait.

Today was the grand opening. To celebrate this, 3 of the cannons from Kronborg were firing, the shipyards whistle, the local icebreakers whistle, and the ferry foghorn was singing along. The city church bells and a local girls band, were playing too.

I decided to try to record the event with my Mkh 8020´s. I placed the mic rig on the roof of the old shipyard, and waited.

The mics captured, to my ears at least, a very special thing. The cannons being my absolute favorite. The tail and reflections just sounded so cool, and weird.

After the third cannon-shot, it pretty much turned into chaos, with all the above things playing at the same time.

Crazy how the ear and brain can focus and listen to one thing, and filter away other stuff. I don’t remember the actual experience as being chaotic, but when monitoring the recording afterwards, I could easily hear the chaos there 😀

Here is a picture of the place, with a short description of the different whistles, cannons, crowds etc.