In using sound as a departure point, we can easily drift into any number of fields, each with its own focus. Even though the medium is the same and concepts and techniques are shared, we end up with an array of different possibilities. With the simple formula of paying attention to sound, recording it, then editing it the result can end up being “art”(sound art, installation, experimental music), “science”(nature sound, acoustic ecology), “engineering”(acoustics, studio recording) or “entertainment”(film sound, sound design, radio) just to name a few. Apart from some random crossovers, it appears to me that each of these fields exists relatively independent from each other. Yet there is one defining link, the use and dependence on technology. There is one problem I’ve encountered during the process of giving sound workshop. Not everyone seems to understand the fundamental significance of sound, listening and our own cognitive process until you give them a microphone and a pair of headphones. How is it that it a technological interface helps so much to spark people’s imagination? I’ve often asked this for myself. If I’m so interested in acoustic perception, what’s the point to record anything at all? Yet I do and I’m quite deeply involved in using technology for recording and reproduction of sound.

Getting back to the various strands of audio cultures, I’ve come across some good “blogs”, particularly in the sound design field, of people who like to share what they record. It is possible that revealing some transparency in the process will help bridge some gaps between different fields. As people can see and hear more what goes on behind the scenes we can take note of some shared interests in the process, regardless of the outcome, particularly when it comes to thinking about awareness of our sound environments. It is also key that we maintain diversity and quality of our practices rather than quantity and authority to keep these respective fields open and dynamic. On a side note… I’ve noticed that the various fields here tend to be male dominated. This is a topic for another post, but when giving workshops I see no evidence that interest and attention and creative ability to to work with sound has anything to do with gender.

Sound Design / Film Sound / Field Recording

• Noise Jockey
• fieldsepulchra
• the music of sound
• sound + design
• chuck russom – audio guy
• ONPa ふろく.
• Surround2011.org
• Fieldcore

Nature Sound / Acoustic Ecology

• Nature Recordists email group
• Curt Olsen soundblog
• acoustic ecology news
• wildlife sound recording society
• listening earth blog

Misc. Projects and Resources

• Listen to Africa
• resources for studying sound recordings
• sound is art
• soundwalk.com blog
• positive soundscapes
• everyday listening

And to close, here’s a Newsweek article about audio ecologist Gordon Hempton’s work to raise awareness about silence and natural sound environments.

Here is a selected set of photos from a series taken in 2007. Abandoned spaces like this are from old soviet collective farms, however they  are rapidly disappearing. Structures like this decayed so rapidly because of the poor methods of construction. It was common for people to steal any valuable materials for their own use while letting the ‘collective’ (state owned property) to fall victim to the lowest standard. I converted the images to black and white thinking of them as a shadow of the place I visited to take these photos. What you see has since been destroyed (but has a new storage barn built in its place by a local farmer).

2010 New Years greetings to everyone. I’m posting some photos taken during the recent days of crystal clear but cold weather (-15C to -26C, 5F to -15F). Its a time when everything seems to come to a frozen standstill, everything except the last remaining moisture in the air which condenses as crystallized ice on all the surfaces. Much of it crystallizes directly in the air causing an endless flow of glittery sparks as it refracts in the golden beams of sunlight in the mid afternoon.

There will not be much to report for a few weeks but I’ll be posting some material from my archives.

short but good TV film about Loren’s work

Click here to view the embedded video.

Gathering inspiration from the metal fence highlighted in the previous post, I spent a few hours wandering Tampere to search for other metal fences and railings with similar resonant qualities. There were many, each with their own characteristics. The two I highlight here stood out. But there was also a practical reason for not recording more, it was windy and the temperature was just below freezing. In these conditions your fingers and equipment starts to go out fairly quickly. I’ve ruined numerous rechargeable batteries, nearly given myself frostbite and I suspect caused some dead pixels on my digital camera sensor because of working in below freezing weather (as a warning to others who might find themselves working in the cold).

metal railing beside highway (played lightly with a mallet): mp3 file

metal railing under highway bridge (untouched): mp3 file

Just under these railings was the kind of dirty roadside snow that usually indicates the beginning of the muddy spring thaw time when the white crystalline image of winter starts to fade. Rather than see this as a mildly depressive image I found it to be a fertile environment for investigating macro landscapes.

And as I was taking the ferry from Helsinki to Tallinn we past through the final remains of the frozen Baltic sea, a large field of ice pieces broken into a tapestry of cracks that were seemingly held together by subtle magnetic forces. For some reason my camera enhanced the cyan spectrum, casting a blue light over the sea-scape.

During a recent revenant sound workshop in Tampere, Finland we took some time out to introduce a few basic recording techniques used in the field (it is good to remind ourselves that “field recording” is more a technique than a genre). This was to show what kind of things we do in practice to the participants who seemed more than curious to know. So we went out just to explore the territory and do some sound hunting for one hour. It didn’t take long to make some discoveries as well as understand the ambient noise levels due to traffic. I’m posting these recordings for the benefit of Michael and Jenni, the two participants who I went with on this excursion and to show what what kind of sounds can be found by randomly walking around.

short binaural recording in a nearby park: download link

contact microphones on a metal roof (melting snow): download link

metal sign picking up traffic sounds and radio interference: download link

magic metal railing on the side of the road: download link

For now I decided to focus on the Sony PCM-D50 and what kind of recorder you get “out of the box”. I don’t have a new Edirol HR-09 to test and I wouldn’t recommend getting the old model. The Sony unit feels sturdy and seems well made, even more so than my old Sony minidisc machine that lasted 8 years (and still somewhat works). My dream is to have a modern electronic device that lasts more than 10 years. Is that so much to ask? I don’t think so since the first recordings I ever made (in the late 80′s) were on a reel-to-reel tape recorder that my father bought in the early 1960′s and still worked fine. Anyway, I went out today to make some “field recording” tests, particularly in quiet conditions. As you can see from the photos, everything is covered in snow, which heavily dampens nearly all sound reflections (I love this effect). On the first recording I’ll highlight the general capability of the built-in mics, which is that they are very sensitive and pick up distant sounds fairly well. For all these recordings the mics were placed in the 120 degree ‘open’ position.

General ambient sounds in the village with some close sounds coming from dripping drains (I even boosted the levels a bit):
dripping water drains with ambient sounds

The last two recordings reveal some problems. One big problem is that with really quiet sound sources you can’t hold the recorder without getting some form of body noise. Even when I put it on a tripod I had to be careful not to move at all otherwise it would pick up vibrations. Also some self-noise from the mics starts to appear. Ambient recording near frozen lake:
ambient recording near frozen lake

Even more problematic though, for recording is wind. While this is normal, one would think that the (totally over priced) wind screen would help. It could be that, the mics are so sensitive, any wind will affect them. That’s understandable to a certain extent, but the “wind” in this case was a light breeze, something you would expect on any normal day. The wind screen didn’t seem to help much. I turned on the low cut and limiter switches, but the recording is still seriously affected by the mics totally blowing out:
ambient recording near frozen lake in a light breeze

The solution of course is to use external microphones. No problem really except that you might want to occasionally take advantage of having built-in mics for certain spontaneous situations. The dilema here is if you can really depend on them if it’s not a perfect wind-less day.

When dealing with recorded sound, technology plays an essential role in nearly every step of the process. While I focus a great deal of attention on acoustic sound, the capturing, editing, processing, compressing and sharing of those sounds, all relies on and is affected by, technology. This is a very general intro and overview to some basic recording technology that I use. The methods used here are definitely not scientific by any means. With a bit of searching you can find more in depth reviews as well as well researched technical analysis of these devices. What’s shown here is just to give an impression. All this equipment is reasonably affordable and can help beginners get a start on working with sound as well as keep artists like myself busy. The main point I feel is accessibility and ease of use.

The two digital recording devices used are an Edirol R-09 and a Sony PCM-D50. The Edirol unit I’ve had for almost 2 years and I can say its a handy little unit that works well for most occasions. One of the main reasons I bought it was to be able to use rechargeable AA batteries so I wouldn’t have to worry about running low on power if I kept extra batteries handy. Its well worth it for the quality and flexibility it offers. The main drawbacks are durability and a weak preamp for mics. The device is pretty much made of plastic. While nothing has broken so far, I’m constantly concerned about how long it will last. As for the preamp it just doesn’t ever seem to have enough power and is a bit too noisy. For this reason I bought a FEL Battery Preamp, a great device for boosting any any signal to line level, including contact mics (to bypass the mic input). I think the revised R-09HR model made by Edirol has improved some of these issues.

The Sony PCM-D50 is still new for me, but immediately I can say it feels much more sturdy than the Edirol and has better quality built-in microphones. This of course makes it slightly larger and more heavy if you’re concerned about portability. For external microphones I’ve used a selection of cheap to mid-level to compare (and also because it’s what I have around). I started with the mics built into the recording units themselves. These are good for general use but you will definitely need to have a few different kinds of mics around for recording specific types of sounds or sound environments. Here’s the breakdown:

• Audio-Technica AT822 – well made single point X/Y stereo mic, good for general use and capturing close sound sources.

• Sound Professionals SP-BMC-12 mini-binaural mics with Audio-Technica capsules (discontinued?). I’ve had these mics for over a year and have enjoyed using them. The problem you will notice is that they are not very well matched. The left mic is louder than the right one.

• Homemade binaural microphones with Panasonic WM-61A capsules. There is a lot of info on the internet regarding these capsules. In short, they are one of the best deals in audio recording, with their open sound and flat response. These binaurals cost me about 7 euros in arts and sound as good as anything you can find up to 150 euros.

The sound clips below are divided into 15 second segments and are repeated twice, once to compare recorders and once to compare microphones. Again this is not done in any scientific manner. I just placed the mics about 1 meter away from the sound source. In this case it was a fire for the oven that heats our house. The high pitched noise is a refrigerator on the other side of the room.

Recorder | mics:

Sony PCM-D50 | built-in mics, Panasonic binaurals, Sound Professionals, Audio Technica AT822 (15 seconds each): Sony PCM-D50

Edirol R-09 | built-in mics, Panasonic binaurals, Sound Professionals, Audio Technica AT822 (15 seconds each): Edirol R-09

Edirol R-09 with FEL preamp | built-in mics, Panasonic binaurals, Sound Professionals, Audio Technica AT822 (15 seconds each). note: I think the battery in the preamp was low giving weaker levels than normal: Edirol R-09 with FEL preamp

Mics | recorder:

Built-in microphones | Sony PCM-D50, Edirol R-09 (15 seconds each): Built-in microphones

Panasonic binaurals | Sony PCM-D50, Edirol R-09, Edirol R-09 with FEL Preamp (15 seconds each): Panasonic binaurals

Sound Professionals SP-BMC-12 | Sony PCM-D50, Edirol R-09, Edirol R-09 with FEL Preamp (15 seconds each): Sound Professionals SP-BMC-12

Audio-Technica AT822 | Sony PCM-D50, Edirol R-09, Edirol R-09 with FEL Preamp (15 seconds each): Audio-Technica AT822

notes: Plug-in power was used on the Sony and Edirol recorder sn all cases. It is possible to change the direction of the built-in mics on the Sony from a 90 degree X/Y pattern to a wide 120 degree L/R pattern. For this test I kept the mics in the X/Y position. All MP3 files are compressed at 160kbps. In the second part I will use recordings of more ambient/environmental sounds.

7:30 in the morning woken by the sound of skwaking above central of Dresden. It was somehow more noticeable than any time  before. Every day at dusk thousands of crows and jackdaws gather outside this building converging on the rooftops and trees to roost for the night. This morning I got up and made my third attempt to record the phenomenon. Standing on the balcony I began to wonder what, if any, was the message of these birds. Why here? And why in this manner? The birds were flying in a dense spiraling form like a tornado around the clock tower of city hall (of all places). Again, if nature tries to tell us something, how do we listen? Do we read into these swarming actions as signs of a complex form of animal communication? The scientist Konrad Lorenz kept pets (including jackdaws) to research them but in the end often questioned the purpose of keeping animals as pets and in fact, over time, took a deep ecological stance of mans relationship to nature. He wrote in 1973 on what he saw as a paradoxical view of this relationship:

“All the advantages that man has gained from his ever-deepening understanding of the natural world that surrounds him, his technological, chemical and medical progress, all of which should seem to alleviate human suffering… tends instead to favor humanity’s destruction”

a conspiration of birds [128k 9:01 mp3]: mp3 file

It’s winter and the temperatures are not friendly for recording outdoors. In Dresden, where I’m in residence for several weeks at 7.stock, it’s been around -5 – 0 C during the day (not including the wind). I mention the wind because I’ve been working on the 7th floor of a building. While the view is great, the chilling winds are not. Regardless, I’ve made some attempts to construct simple installations out of wires and found objects, for exposing to the elements. One element that’s difficult if not impossible to communicate through sound is temperature. Without my telling, the recordings below, might easily pass as being made in a desert. There is still enough inspiring conditions for me to experiment even if its for 20 minutes a day. An old satellite dish provides a great resonant surface from which to capture vibrations from the humble system of stretched wires and dangling objects. If it warms up, even just a bit, I hope to have more material to share. The rest depends on the weather.

animate structures #2a (3:34 160k mp3): download link

animate structures #2b (4:12 160k mp3): download link

Extended greetings and creativity to all in the coming year. I passed the turning tide with a great group of old and new friends, in and out of doors. This recording was made on the first of a three day NoYears event held at MoKS. While drifting into the empty oil tanks in Mooste, Maksims Shentelevs played a jew’s harp while I bowed a long metal saw. Special thanks to Mr Holzer for the use of his Core Sound modded DPA mini mics.

harp, saw, ice (6:10): download link

These are some images I captured yesterday after a fairly cold evening (-10c) left ice crytal formations around our yard. Reading up on the process of crystallization gave some insight into these amazing forms. The “growth” of crystals is built on a complex layering of structures embedded within structures implying fractal-like behaviors that begin at the molecular level (although there still some mystery surrounding this). The knowledge of artificial crystal production is quite vast yet difficulties in producing the perfect conditions is often cited. This puts a different perspective on my tolerance of the cold weather knowing that it is also the ideal conditions for the delicate process of ice crystallization, a sublime expression of nature formed from one of the most commonly available substances.