...but why Field Recording?
What drives us to seek out sounds from our surroundings?
The repertory of possible happenings in a human life is fairly limited, and it always comes down to about the same story… it was obviously trying either to encyst me or to expel me, and for my own part I yearned for ‘something else’.
— Father Sogol in Mount Analogue by René Daumal
I have found myself reflecting on this passage lately...
It’s taken from Mount Analogue - a novel by the French writer René Daumal which I’ve recently picked up and haven’t been able to put down. It’s a cryptic, philosophical, allegorically rich work that explores the search for esoteric wisdom — a beloved cult classic of Surrealism, Pataphysics and Gurdjieffian mysticism…
“In the whole show there’s nothing but mystery and error. Where one ends the other begins...”
Sitting idly in a bar recently with a friend overlooking la Plaine in Marseille - a spot I’ve come to appreciate for contemplation and conversation alike - we had been discussing ideas for programming a new series of open field recording workshops when my friend asked me…
“What was it that inspired you to begin field recording?”
I answered, not with a why…
but with a when…
It was this recording, made back in 2016, where my adventure into the world of field recording truly began.
I had enrolled myself on a summer course at Goldsmith’s University - Field Recording and the Soundscape - which I think they still run. The course was structured over a series of evening workshops and field sessions where we were given the theory, techniques and tools to go out and record whatever we felt we wanted to focus on.
After fumbling several recordings getting used to the sensitivity of microphones and the operational functions of my digital recorder - the trusty Tascam DR-40 which I still have in my kit - I found myself drawn to make a visit to St.Paul’s Cathedral.
I had borrowed a pair of binaural stereo microphones for this excursion - the ones that sit in your ear and look very much just like normal earbuds. They work essentially by recording sound as heard by the human ears. I had to sneak my way past security and a sign that mentioned explicitly that no recording was permitted… but hey… I knew that to become a successful field recordist you had to be prepared to live life on the edge!
I sat down, as central a seat as I could find, and just began listening to the magnificent reverberations of this wondrous space. One sound that I have always been fascinated with is whispering. There is something quietly comforting, almost reassuring about it - it’s a sound that indicates the presence of something greater, something worthy of our attention…
So there I was trying to set my levels to capture these hushed murmurs ricocheting off the great cathedrals walls, when out of nowhere came this sound of the organ. So pure. Suddenly the whispers dropped and all that was left was this singing organ, lamenting, slowly opening and gently filling the great cathedral with waves of peaceful frequencies.
Of course, a first recording wouldn’t be complete without errors — clicks, glitches, rumbles and static can all be heard on this one — and whilst frustrating at the start, you soon realise it’s all part of the journey. Mistakes are necessary steps on the path to professionalism. I listen back and hear the young Mat lost in a moment of inspiration that would go on to change his path, and lead him to where he is now, writing this very piece about what brings us to field recording.
Seeking wisdom form the insights of others has inspired me greatly on my journey, and being here on this platform offers something that I want to explore more of in my work by way of opening out my discussions to readers and listeners.
So I reached out to some other writers, recordists and creators to find out what turned their heads and brought them towards practicing field recording.
“I felt that by recording sounds in the woods, lakes and fields, I could bring a little piece of that peaceful world out there back with me into my city apartment.”
“At the time I started getting into recording my surroundings, I started leaving the hectic city of Berlin every weekend to get out of the stress, the noise, and the pressure of late stage capitalism. I felt that by recording sounds in the woods, lakes and fields, I could bring a little piece of that peaceful world out there back with me into my city apartment. Another reason for me to make recordings was that I seemed to (re-)learn to focus my attention on my surroundings that way. It helped me in becoming more mindful and attentive. My biggest learning was that any noise, whatever it is, can become music just by the framing, and by directing your full attention towards it.”
“There was a frog chorus just up behind my house and the creek running through near the deck sang to us as we lived happily high atop a hill overlooking a vast valley below…”
Cosmos Rennert makes electro-acoustic ambient music under the pseudonym Hipnotic Earth.
“It was January 1st 2015. I just bought my first Zoom. There was a frog chorus just up behind my house and the creek running through near the deck sang to us as we lived happily high atop a hill overlooking a vast valley below. Not far down the hill was a hot springs resort where I worked and on whose land I lived. Little did I know that, after living there for 14 years, within nine months all would be gone, a hundred buildings and historic monuments; the entire town and beloved trees — but for tiny pockets of buildings and trees here and there, all would be scorched to nothing within hours. That winter and spring I recorded owls, hummingbirds, creeks, frogs, bird-orchestras and crickets all throughout the lands which are considered sacred by the original peoples inhabiting there, a neutral ground where tribes could meet and solve their problems peacefully. Just before the wildfire struck out of nowhere on that clear, beautiful day, I was about to release my first ambient album into the larger world on which I included some of the field recordings. These aural ASMR textures are special for me and ring true as powerful sounds and hold a lot of meaning. They are my first field recordings.”
“Field recording is a documentation of the ineffable mystery that is existence.”
William Randles aka Seven Rivers of Fire is an experimental artist based in Durban whose work features field recordings and natural soundscapes.
“My first experience of field recording was in 2018 and was a recording I made of the sound of people working on the street outside of the ground floor flat I was living in at the time in Durban. They were conversing, which is barely audible in the recording, in a language I don't understand while cars passed and birds called in the trees on the side of the road. If everything we hear is part of a greater theophany, then field recording to my mind is an act of preserving a language I don't and cannot ever hope to understand. It is a documentation of the ineffable mystery that is existence.”
Sotiris Laskaris is a sound designer, field recordist and dubbing engineer based in Athens, Greece. He recounts here the unpredictability nature of field recording - how even when we seek out a sound, however commonplace, there’s no guarantee that the sound is there to be found.
“Many many years ago, I bought a DR40 to use it for location recordings just as an attempt to learn how production audio works. So a friend of mine was creating a documentary and desperately needed sounds from suburbs of Athens, Greece (my residence) of cars honking at rush hour. Athens is a noisy place at rush hours and I thought that it would be easy to get DR40's stereo mics to record some horns. I went to the main square of my city, and NO-ONE was honking!! Honking for no reason in Athens is a daily routine but not that day! So I recorded for 30 minutes just in case the honking starts but nothing. I moved to another busy location and tried to record but only one or two honkings and that was all. That taught me patience in field recording.”
“When I listened to the recording that evening on headphones the visual images behind my closed eyelids were just as vivid as any photograph. Right then I knew I was hooked…”
“Year 2014 I had just got home with my new Sony PCM-M10 from B&H in New York city. I popped in some fresh batteries and hit my colorful neighborhood of Ridgewood Queens. It was a beautiful warm spring day and the people were out! I walked in and out of the corner stores and streets to the park and back. When I listened to the recording that evening on headphones the visual images behind my closed eyelids were just as vivid as any photograph. Right then I knew I was hooked. It's been a long learning curve dealing with technical problems for me as well but I do feel I'm getting somewhere on this up hill journey.”
I subscribe to
by . Andrew’s interviews are always deeply insightful and his latest guest - Patricia Wolf - is an artist I have admired for a very long time. You can check out the full interview here…
I like how it helps you just take a look around you and be there in that present moment, and just see how special and amazing it is. It’s very life affirming.”
“When I first got started with field recording…that was in 2019. I got a little more serious about it [and got] a really nice microphone and a recording device, whereas before I would record sounds on my phone. I liked those sounds, but I knew that they weren't the best quality so I decided to take it a little further. I'm trying to remember what prompted me to go into this, but I think it was just a combination of hearing other artists and field recordists presenting their work, and just really loving the hyperreal immersion into an environment and realizing that that's a really interesting audio experience. I just wanted to explore that. Once you do it, I mean…it's a classic story, and I see it unfolding when I take my friends out field recording for the first time: it's just this amazing experience where all of a sudden, you have this superhuman hearing and you just feel drawn to the present moment. You feel alive and really excited about the world you're in, but seconds before, you maybe didn't read it as being anything special or interesting. I like how it helps you just take a look around you and be there in that present moment, and just see how special and amazing it is. It’s very life affirming.”
Got your own field recording story you’d like to share…?
I’m going to feature more of these stories in future. I really dig hearing other people’s perspective — the challenges, joys, trials and tribulations, however arbitrary or convoluted - so please feel free to get in touch!
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Mat
🌻
Really eye (ear?) opening, and great recs on the artists/tracks. Forgive me if you're already aware of this, but you might be interested to know that there was a big boom for ambient recording in Japan in the Seventies -- popularly known as 生録, "nama-roku." It's what the portable radio-cassette players we know as "boomboxes" were originally developed for. Abroad boomboxes became sonic tools of a different type for early hip-hop artists, but in their home country they were prized for their ability to record ambient sounds. Here's some examples of advertising and even a magazine dedicated to field recording. http://plaza.harmonix.ne.jp/~ita/8882/yuuki.htm
Great article. Now I'm tempted to start another potentially expensive hobby on top of photography. Damn you make it sound (u see what I did there?😂) quite interesting this field recording thing!!