“Performing the Listening” is something that popped into my mind last week while thinking and reflecting on my recordings.
I’ve been recording the field or to be more accurate my experiences in a place for a little over ten years now. I don’t have any goal in mind before going out other than to be present and listen. I will on occasion look up areas on google maps that might look interesting and then hop in my car and find out whats going on there. But for the most part I treat my recorder very much like my camera and pull it out when a moment is happening.
I’ve acquired many different microphones for all the different possibilities of listening. I also now have a multi-channel recorder that allows me to listen to more than one microphone at a time. This is where I’ve really started experimenting as of late. Listening to the different layers in a place.
Now listening intently with our ears one will discover many layers with-in a place, but there’s also a bunch of stuff we are not hearing due to sounds outside the human frequency range. There are also vibrational sounds that are happening that don’t travel in the air. So being able to use specialty microphones opens up other possibilities.
Something I strive for in my work is capturing the moment I’m having as best as possible. I’m really not one to do any kind of post production on recordings or my photography. I simply want to capture what I’m experiencing the moment I hit the shutter or record button. I don’t alway get this feeling or witnessing but that’s alright. By keeping the expectations low I’m more pleasantly surprised to see whats on the SD cards when I get back home. Plus I’ve been doing this for a while so I do have a sense of what I might have.
Although this “leave it up to luck” with recording is much more challenging than taking pictures in this manner. Especially when I have multiple microphones I’m trying to listen too. Most field recordist would record their set up onto separate tracks that way they can do a mix down of the recording afterwards. This is the most common practice and it makes perfect sense. But not for me! Now I do need to hit Reaper (a software program) before I go sharing my recordings with all of ya’ll but what I’m doing on there is not very elaborate at all.
What I prefer to do instead is mix while I’m capturing the recording. This to me brings me into the recording. The more I do this the more it starts to feel like a performance. So instead of standing still or walking away from my recorder I want to be there deciding in real time what to bring up or bring down. This is what I call “Performing the Listening”. These multitrack recordings are being bounced down in realtime onto a single stereo track so theres no going back to fix something. It’s a limitation and a commitment that I quite enjoy. First off it makes my files so much easier to handle/organize and it really feels more like a capturing. Although sometimes I totally screw up and the whole days worth of recording can be sadly not worth sharing. This is rare and to be honest sometime it just not meant to be and I’m completely fine with that.
Below is an example of what I captured yesterday with this mind set. I had been to this little dam a couple years ago and when looking around on google maps yesterday I thought this would be a cool place to listen at. I brought my hydrophone, Geofon and my omnidirectional DPA’s. The first two recordings are non-air recordings. They are two separate vibrational recordings. One being of the sound vibrations underwater and the other of the sound vibrations above water hitting an iron latter that’s bolted to the concrete dam. Similar to the “Anti-Radio” recording I posted last week you can hear me mixing between these to layers. One thing I did do to one of the recordings is slow it down without changing the pitch (which goes against everything I just said, sense I had to do that in post production) I also put the hydrophone in the falling water part of the dam. This was a first for me and I did it to make it that much more other worldly.
The last recording of the day was up steam a little ways from the damp. A more typical stereo recording much like our ears but I attached a geofon to the iron handrail that was next to the stream. Both the wind and myself are causing the handrail to sing out. This added a very ominous but exciting feel to the listening.
Headphones are needed as always with recordings like this. Thank you all for indulging me, I hope you enjoy the listenings.
MixPre-Hydro/Geo underwater iron ladder lakin dam
MixPre Hydro/Geo in the waterfall iron ladder lakin dam (processed/slowed down)
MixPre DPA Geo mccloud river stream iron rail distant frogs birds
Lovely sounds. I very much agree with the focus on being present for the recording it's a big part of the attraction of field recording for me, not sure I could be as brave with the live multitrack mixing though!
Yes! love the idea, and result of listening and recording as performance.