Enquiring Ear

Field recording and found sounds

Category: urban

In villages, towns and cities, the soundscape naturally has anthropophony

  • World Listening Day 2013

    It’s R. Murray Schafer‘s birthday today. In 1973 he research the Vancouver soundscape, later extending it to compare five European villages from a soundscape point of view.

    The research became the basis of ‘Acoustic Ecology’, a discipline that R. Murray Schafer developed to further investigate ‘soundscapes’, which are understood as the sonic interface between living beings and their environment.

    World Listening Day is held on his birthday to celebrate Schafer’s contribution to the art of listeing to the world, rather than just hearing it. I’ve usually aimed to try and isolate sounds, other than in the lo-fi urban environment where you just can’t do that. However, in tribute to R. Murray Schafer’s ideas, I had a go, starting off with the birds at dawn. It’s a bit past the time for the classic dawn chorus, but these birds in a semi-rural location in Rushmere made a decent attempt at a soundscape for me.

    XY recording

    IMG_4926_lzn

    For a change I tried an urban field recording at Ipswich Marina, this recording starts with oystercatchers at the beginning, to the right is the sound of some construction work that has been restarted after a couple of years. A woman in a RIB motors to her boat moored somewhere in the marina which is mainly to the left. Some foot and bicycle traffic passes. The waterfront has been redeveloped for leisure over the last decade.

    Binaural recording with Soundman OKMII

    Finally I gave in to the separator in me and recorded the sound of this tarmac laying crew and their machine, in particular the backing up sound.

    The reversing sound is an electronic noise played through a speaker, which highlighted one of the issues R. Murray Shafer picked up –

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  • Chalice Well, Glastonbury

    Chalice Well, Glastonbury

    This is the sound of the flow inside the well-house at Chalice Well. Two springs rise in this area – the Chalice Well and gardens are home to the chalybeate Red Spring. This rises from a deep underground source with little variation in flow or temperature over the years and seasons. Only a few tens of yards away is the White Spring, which rises from the ground closer to the surface. There is a definite tone to the flow. The well-head has a pentagonal chamber underneath it and the resonance of this makes a peaceful steady sound.

    From a field recordist’s point of view life is made more difficult by the A361 carrying HGVs down Chilkwell Street.The wellhead is far enough away and loud enough that this doesn’t impair the recording.

  • Nightingale on the heath

    My bike ride to work takes me past open fields and for a short stretch over some sandy heathland. I was surprised to hear a nightingale in the distance – I had to stop and listen to the lovely sound

    this was recorded using an omni MP3 recorder so it’s not a fantastic species recording, but it captures the moment for me 🙂 The singing males have come all the way from Africa, and they have scouted their territories. They are hoping to call the females down from the sky as they arrive a couple of weeks later. It feels surprisingly early to hear nightingale song at the moment.

  • Campsea Ash Auction Rooms

    Campsea Ash Auction Rooms

    Auction in progress, classic auction patter

    The livestock and game auctions at Campsea Ashe bring out a whole much of characters, full of good old Suffolk boys with strong accents. And a few loud cocks too

    Loud cocks

  • Under The Pier show soundmark

    Tim Hunkin’s madcap creations at the Under the Pier show at Southwold have their own soundmarks. This rhythmic squeak from the animated sign is the one that most reminds me of this attraction.

    Southwold Under the Pier show

  • Poundland Ipswich opening fun day

    Poundland have taken over the old Woolworth’s store in Ipswich at the end of Spetember, and held a Family Fun Day today. I hven’t worked out what the family fun was meant to be apart from getting people to throng to buy poorly made tools, tat and thneeds but it certainly caused a massive queue so at least Mr Poundland was having a fun day.

    A long queue snaked past the tills, the hubbub was really quite remarkable. I don’t recall seeing this many people in Woolies.

    Poundland Fun day hubbub

    Poundland Fun Day queues
    Poundland Fun Day queues

    Some more rich pickings from the 6th Oct, the Halloween displays are in full swing, and a minute of classy comments 🙂 A bunch of teenage girls are looking to spice up their costumes, one teenage boy charges his mate with looking like a woman in that, and a lady desperately trying to get someone of a mobile phone to erase her messages, all in the space of a minute.

    Poundland comments

  • Southwold Pier

    Southwold Pier

    I’ve came across this post describing how to go about street recording. I had never really thought about the process before, so it was very hit and miss for me. Sometimes I would get good results, sometimes not so good. Des’s idea of creating a sound map of the area before recording is inspiring.

    In some ways it is common sense – in tackling anything it is good to have an idea of what you are trying to do. Just as a photographer frames his picture, the orientation and location of a recording is part of framing the experience, it is not enough simply to point a mic in the geenral direction of the sound.

    Sound does not have the frame of a photograph, and most field recording rigs take a wide-angle perspective if they were a camera. So getting in close matters. On a trip to Southwold Pier I figured I would try out the new technique.

    Sound walk through the amusements arcade

    This is a short walk past a lot of the noisy amusements. The attention-grabbing “Hey, let’s shoot hoops” from the first attraction is so American for what is a quintessentially English resort!

    The second is a recording from one place, in the building with the Tim Hunkin artworks/attractions. I did try and get the sea churning to give it some perspective, and the start of the fly attraction “You are a Fly” gives it a discrete start.

    Tim Hunkin attractions on Southwold Pier

    This one doesn’t quite get the balance between sea and the attraction right, but I am getting a feel for what the sound map can do for me.

  • Ice Cream Van

    Now here’s a sound I haven’t heard for a while – an ice cream van

    The chirping of the local sparrows start off the clip, then as the van comes round the corner the kids get excited and the honky tonk sound starts

    I’m not sure if this is a genuine mechanical ice cream van seriously off tune or a recording of one. It has an odd combination of honky tonk untuned notes combined with what sounds like really rough distortion at the end, but the recording is not over 0dBFS and not so close as to compress the OKMII mics

    Ain’t the web a wonderful thing. Apparently these have always been electronically amplified. They used to use a Swiss musical box amplified by vacuum tubes (valves) as long ago as the 1950s. Nowadays the amplification is electronic, and, ideally, output using Grampian Horn narrowband speakers aimed at the road surface. The Swiss clockwork has long been replaced by an electronic chip to synthesise the tunes. Beats me what is wrong with a CD of the music box – you could have up to 99 different chimes that way. However, that isn’t the way it’s done. Thanks to Tom at MusicThing for the heads up

    from 25 June 2006

  • Women singing in Ferihegy 1

    Women singing in Ferihegy 1

    Women singing at Ferihegy

    No, I don’t know why they broke into song here. However, the old Ferihegy 1 airport terminal has an air of faded grace that the more modern Ferihegy 2 just doesn’t. That is a soulless modern airport building. This is a marble-panelled cavernous space that clearly inspired this lot to sing.