Field Recording
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Growing up in North Yorkshire and now residing in Sheffield, I’ve always been lucky to have access to the outdoors. The nearby Peak District National Park is a brilliant place to record the sounds of nature, as long as you’re willing to time your visits to minimise extraneous noise from people, cars and planes.
The Wildlife Recording Society are a valuable source of expertise and the Field Recording Slack group is full of very talented people willing to share their knowledge. I contributed to a crowd-sourced Sound Library they organised for charity in spring 2022. The library is available in return for donations to Doctors Without Borders, The Red Cross and Unicef.
It’s also great fun to find and record unusual objects, and the hunt for things that produce interesting tones and textures never ceases!
These sounds make ideal source material that can be combined and further manipulated using software.
A few summers ago my friend and collaborator Josh Foers and I had the unique opportunity to record in a craft brewery here in Sheffield. As you can hear in the video, we managed to capture some excellent material which we have both made use of in various projects since.
We’ve continued to record in some great locations together, such as the historic Braime metal pressing factory in Leeds.
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I use a range of microphones for different situations, such as the tiny Lom - Usi Pro, a Rode shotgun and various contact mics. However, more often than not I reach for my trusty hand-held Sony PCM D100. Simply put, it’s convenient and sounds amazing. The reduced setup time compared to more elaborate rigs means you’re less likely to miss those fleeting but golden recording oportunities.
I’m currently working on sound for a video game which features lots of bucolic rural settings. There’s so many of these locations that I surprisingly found myself short of bird sounds, so another visit to the Peak District must be in order!